Penumbra Community Reactivation Proposal (December 2025)

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Penumbra Community Reactivation

Proposal (December 2025)

We are excited to share our plans for restarting and revitalizing the Penumbra community during December 2025.

This proposal is intentionally short-term, focused, and designed to deliver measurable impact before preparing a broader 2026 roadmap.

We welcome feedback from the community.

What is the Penumbra Community Team?

Mission

To rebuild an active, informed, and globally aligned Penumbra community by enabling contributors to create content, support users, and grow awareness of the Penumbra ecosystem.

Values

• Community education should be open-source and accessible.

• Contributors should be empowered to collaborate and be rewarded fairly.

• Growth should be transparent, measurable, and aligned with Penumbra’s long-term goals.

2025 in Review (Brief)

Penumbra community activity has been quiet over the past year.

This proposal focuses on:

• Relaunching engagement

• Rebuilding contributor structure

• Restarting communication channels

• Creating consistent educational + social content

December is a transition month to restart the engine.

Areas of Focus for December 2025

Community Engagement

• Relaunch Game Nights

• Penumbra Christmas Campaign (points + prizes)

• Trivia sessions and daily interactions using Engage Bot

• Community hangouts / AMA sessions

Contributor Discovery & Onboarding

• Contributor form open through Dec 5

• Selection of contributors across:

• Development

• Documentation & Research

• Content Creation

• Graphic + Motion Design

• Regional Ambassadors

• Onboarding documents + guidelines

• Task structure for December

Content & Education

• Graphics, short-form videos, explainers

• Consistent updates on X

• Rebuild basic documentation for newcomers

• Begin planning a 2026 education strategy

Ecosystem Collaboration

• Initial conversation on Penumbra + NEAR Intents

• Explore small collaborations with aligned communities

• Strengthen regional representation through ambassadors

Operations & Infrastructure

• Improve Discord structure

• Activate Engage Bot

• Social branding, templates, boosts

• Tools + subscription setup (design software, bot tools, etc.)

• Weekly internal coordination meetings

Deliverables for December 2025

By the end of December, the team aims to deliver:

• Penumbra Christmas Campaign (18th–25th)

• 4 Game Nights

• 1–2 Community Calls / AMAs

• 10–15 pieces of content (graphics, videos, threads)

• Engage Bot configured with daily activities

• Contributor onboarding + expectations guide

• December community performance report

• Draft Q1 2026 community plan

Community Team Lead Contributors(December 2025)

Venom (Operations, Community Management, Social Media & Engagement Strategy)

Cryptonzkie (Operations, Community Coordination,Content & Social Media production)

ZecHub (Advisors)

Erwan (Advisor)

Additional December contributors from form:

• Content creator(s)

• Designer(s)

• Ambassador(s)

• Developer contributor(s)

• Documentation / research contributor(s)

Compensation

Community Team Lead Contributors (December Only)

Venom — $6,000 * 1 month = $6,000

Cryptonzkie — $6,000 * 1 month = $6,000

Volatility Buffer — $6,000 * 1 month = $6,000

Actual salaries are $6,000 each for Venom and Cryptonzkie, with an additional $6,000 combined volatility buffer to protect against market downturns.

If the token price remains above the reference price at payout time, the unused portion of the $6,000 buffer will be returned to the budget fund.

The buffer is only to be used if prices drop 20–50% below the current level, preventing impermanent losses and ensuring stable contributor compensation.

Community Contributor Roles (December Tasks)

We will onboard contributors across development, documentation, research, graphic design, motion design, content, and regional ambassadors.

These contributors will support the community rebuild, technical education, ecosystem awareness, and content production.

Total budget for all contributors (December): $7,000

Campaigns & Activities

• Penumbra Christmas Campaign + giveaway – $2000

• Digital Marketing initiatives - $2000

• Social Media Branding Initiatives - $3000

Tools & Subscriptions

• Canva - $8

• Discord boosts - $107.99

• Bot tools - $184.01

• Misc operational support - $1700

Total: $34,000

Why This Proposal Is One-Month Only

• Low-risk

• Transparent

• Allows community to evaluate real output

• Provides measurable data for future proposals

Budget Summary

• Community Team Lead Contributors

• Community Contributor roles

• Christmas campaign

• Operational tools

• Social branding + design

• Community growth & engagement

Total Requested: $34,000

782,084.74 $UM from the Penumbra Community Pool ($UM price as of today: $0.04347355)

5 Likes
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I’m really encouraged to see the community waking back up, but I want to offer one piece of framing that I think is important as we head into 2026.

Penumbra isn’t a “community project” in the usual sense.

It’s a private-public settlement rail.

That means the community’s role isn’t just engagement or content but also helping the world understand why Penumbra exists:

  • Institutions cannot operate on public blockchains.

  • Privacy-by-default is becoming a compliance requirement, not a user preference.

  • Multi-account segregation, audit-capable shielding, and private intents are essential for cross-chain institutional flows.

  • No other system today can provide this combination at the rail level.

A strong community matters, but only in service of that larger purpose.

If December is a reboot month, then the most valuable thing we can do is re-anchor around the actual mission:

Penumbra enables private, compliant, multi-chain settlement which is the cryptographic equivalent of a modern clearinghouse.

Everything else (education, content, onboarding, calls, ecosystem outreach) should align with that north star.

This isn’t meant as critique… just an encouragement to aim the narrative higher and more accurately.

The technology is unique. The community should reflect that.

3 Likes
3

One final note just to anchor the frame I shared earlier:

everything we’re rebuilding on the community side only makes sense when we see Penumbra as infrastructure other systems depend on, not a typical chain trying to attract users.

The clearer we make that for contributors, the more aligned and powerful the entire 2026 reboot becomes… content, docs, onboarding, ambassadors, ecosystem partnerships.

It all points to the same North Star:

helping people understand how to plug into the private settlement layer.

That’s the coherence that’s been missing.

3 Likes
4

Thank you for sharing this,we’ll make sure all our work is aligned and reflects Penumbra’s core mission and anchor all our contributors in that direction. Really appreciate you taking the time to break this down.

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how do you plan to sell such amount considering there is no liqudity / volume?

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For a refresh, I think this is a great step…

But if I’m not mistaken today is the 11th day of December and part of the quotes in here states for commencing on the 18th… my question is… what happens from here ?

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I want to start by saying that community-driven marketing initiatives are extremely important, especially when they are born organically from within the Penumbra community itself. Efforts like this are often the most authentic, cost-efficient, and aligned with long-term ecosystem values, and I strongly believe they play a key role in reactivating awareness and participation.

That said, I think it’s also important to recognize that on-chain activity is currently quite low, and while community engagement and education are necessary foundations, they may not be sufficient on their own. In parallel, we should explore direct incentives for liquidity providers or on-chain participants, as liquidity and usage are critical signals of ecosystem health. Even modest, well-targeted incentives together with an aggressive marketing campaign could help bootstrap activity and reinforce the impact of community and marketing efforts.

Additionally, I have some reservations about whether a single-month campaign is enough to produce reliable, sustainable data. While a short, low-risk pilot makes sense, meaningful trends in engagement, retention, and on-chain usage often take longer to materialize. A slightly extended timeframe, or at least a clearly defined follow-up phase contingent on performance, could provide more actionable insights and better support mid- to long-term planning.

Overall, I see this proposal as a strong starting point, and I believe its impact could be amplified by:

  • Complementing community marketing with on-chain incentive mechanisms, and

  • Considering a longer or staged campaign structure to ensure results are robust and sustainable.

Looking forward to contributing to the growth of Penumbra.

1 Like
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One thing I want to flag: there’s a risk of conflating “community activation” with end-user marketing.

Penumbra already solves a very specific problem at the clearing / coordination layer. The people who need that are not discovered through giveaways or campaigns…they discover it when they hit a hard constraint elsewhere.

I’d be curious whether part of the community effort could focus on making those constraints legible (clearing, coordination, privacy at settlement) rather than trying to manufacture usage directly.

3 Likes
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Thank you for the initiative! Lots of great points in the proposal and comments/feedback.

I’d agree that this is a great starting point but an end-to-end strategy including a BD plan to attract liquidity inflows via partnerships/clients and tech roadmap (e.g. features, on/off-ramp integrations, mobile wallet support?) would really propel the marketing/education reach as people resonate more with ecosystems that are building and growing.

This can be a community effort and I’m happy to help however I can. I believe penumbra is uniquely positioned and was simply ahead of its time so hope the community can come together to deliver it’s real potential!

P.S. Would also be helpful to understand how much the Community Pool currently holds in order to assess a realistic runway and budget plan across all programs accordingly.

2 Likes
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Update:
Based on community feedback and timing considerations (holidays, access, execution runway), we’re refining the proposal to shift several initiatives to January / Q1.

December is being treated as a planning and alignment phase, with execution beginning after proposal approval.

We’ll discuss further on the upcoming community call.

4 Likes
12

As a discord member, I have found the game nights and engagement posting annoying and to be frank, a bit scammy feeling. I’m not big on games I guess, but I don’t see a lot of value in it personally.

I’m not seeing a lot in this proposal related to engineering and development. For example, how will penumbra handle security vulnerabilities that regularly crop up? What about longer term development plans that require technical project management?

4 Likes
13

thank you for the effort to put the proposal forward. really appreciate the community activation initiative.

just because there is 25m $um in the community pool and the current market price is $0.038, it doesn’t mean we have a million dollars to spend. easier to think of the war chest in terms of available market liquidity, which is roughly 3x less than what’s proposed to be spent in a single month.

as a network, we’re not in a position to employ anyone full-time right now. if we were, that person should be a technical contributor with deep protocol knowledge. since no one from penumbra labs seems available for that role, the better path forward is incentivizing contributors through modest grants and bounties that don’t stress market liquidity.

some math on why this proposal doesn’t work at current scale:

  • current inflation: ~30k um/month (0.36% annually)

  • proposal: 782k um in one month

  • that’s 26x the inflation the market currently absorbs

  • daily volume is ~23k um—this proposal equals a full month of trading activity

even if recipients hold everything, existing holders will rationally front-run anticipated supply. with these parameters, you’re setting the odds against yourself before you even start:

nuking valuation signals a struggling project and rewards sellers over believers—the opposite of what marketing should achieve.

that said, i do think forming a community multisig with a smaller pot for tips and retroactive funding makes sense. as rotko networks, the fourth largest validator in the network, we’re happy to participate in such a bounty-formatted multisig at no cost, to give all stakeholders confidence that any spending has tangible potential to increase protocol liquidity rather than drain it.

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wtf are we even discussing if it’s not upgrade to 2.1.0 and following pruning implementation?