What does the Cardano Foundation do for Cardano token integrations?
The Cardano Foundation plays a critical ongoing role in the maintenance of key components used by exchanges and custody providers. These components are essential to ensure a smooth integration and stable experience for ADA deposits and withdrawals, this also includes Cardano Native Tokens (CNT’s).
Components:
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GraphQL (initially built by IOG using DB-sync)
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Rosetta (Java version using Yaci store for performance improvements)
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Cardano-wallet
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The Token Registry Github repository
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The Token Registry API (supporting both CIP26 and CIP68 versions of CNT’s), which has also been embedded in GraphQL for performance improvements.
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Hosting a Token Registry API accessible to the public.
Since 2021, our Core Integrations, Engineering, and Exchange Relationships teams have worked closely with exchanges and custody providers to make Cardano asset onboarding as seamless and cost-effective as possible, addressing a key adoption barrier. While we actively advocate for new Cardano token integrations and facilitate introductions, providers ultimately make integration decisions based on their own business interests and assessment of each token’s ecosystem value.
Why does the Cardano Foundation not pay for specific CNT integrations?
The Cardano Foundation has historically not paid for specific CNT integrations because we want to maintain a level playing field for all projects on Cardano. Us paying for specific integrations would mean picking winners (and conversely and more concerningly, losers) in a diverse and complex ecosystem, which is not something we feel is within our mandate.
What is your role in Cardano governance?
The Cardano Foundation has been actively engaged in Cardano governance since inception as both an ICC member and as a DRep. As we transition the CC role to the community, we will continue to advocate for our vision of Cardano as a DRep. As a DRep, the Cardano Foundation also has representatives on many Intersect committees and community-based activities. We have voted on all Governance Actions, over 40 times to date, and always provided a detailed rationale. We have a live stake of nearly ₳233 million and 331 delegators. We have recognised the concentration concern regarding our genesis ada, which is why we have delegated ₳140 million to a set of seven community builders and developer DReps.
We have also supported Cardano Governance through Cardano Academy resources, funding global workshops, developing an open-source voting tool for DReps, SPOs, and the CC, governance flowcharts, co-coordinating hard fork processes and more – all aimed at enabling the community to engage easily and meaningfully in on-chain decision making. We will continue to make governance as accessible as we can, where we can. https://cardanofoundation.org/academy/video/governance-on-cardano.
How was the current Cardano Foundation board elected?
As already outlined in past AMAs, from 2020 onwards, the (previous) CF board had become somewhat dysfunctional. Following a challenging period, concerns were raised about the effective functioning of the organisation as a whole. Consequently, as is its statutory duty under Swiss law, the Swiss Foundation supervisor engaged an external legal firm to guide the Cardano Foundation into calmer waters in January 2021.
This legal firm facilitated the process for the selection of a new board. This was agreed by all involved to be the only path to a resolution of the conflicts in the outgoing board. The selection process was carried out by a head hunting firm who conducted interviews with the outgoing board members, as well as with IOG Leadership. The new and current president of the board was elected unanimously, including by the IOG board representative. Following this, two more board members were elected, again unanimously, with 1 abstention for 1 new member. The outgoing board, including the IOG representative, then voluntarily resigned as a group. Finally a fourth board member was appointed.
The Cardano Foundation continues to be committed to build a thriving ecosystem by driving forward our focus areas of adoption, education and operational resilience in an accountable and transparent manner.