Cardano Foundation’s Project Catalyst F13 Proposal Selection

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Cardano Foundation’s Project Catalyst F13 Proposal Selection

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Refining the Foundation’s evaluation process to enable comprehensive, transparent voting

The Cardano Foundation promotes the diversity, quality, and quantity of on-chain activities by focusing on three core areas:

  • •Operational resilience: maintaining a resilient blockchain.
  • •Education: contributing to blockchain understanding and legal certainty.
  • •Adoption: creating conditions that diversify blockchain growth.

As such, we aim to scale our participation and impact in Project Catalyst F13, building on the experience and insights gained in F12. With the Foundation’s voting in F12 serving as a pilot for programmatic participation in Project Catalyst 2025, F13 represents another step forward. Implementing an updated proposal review process reinforces the Foundation’s commitment to promoting transparency around its strategic objectives.

Establishing a proposal review process

An interdepartmental group of subject matter experts from the Cardano Foundation, representing approximately 30 Foundation staff members, collaborated to filter over 1,800 proposals. These individuals considered the Foundation’s objectives and those of the broader Cardano ecosystem, reflecting the ethos and principles of Our Cardano. This approach to Project Catalyst participation reflects insights gained from diverse community stakeholders and reinforces the value of collaboration.

The Cardano Foundation has allocated 180 million ada in voting stake toward proposal selection in Fund 13, intentionally amplifying the impact of voting and its in-depth proposal review. View the full rationale and selected proposals here.

Join us for an informative Cardano Roundtable Talk on 10 December 2024, at 13:00 (UTC), as we delve into the impact of large ada holders and DeFi protocols on Project Catalyst F13 voting. This open discussion will explore the voting strategies of key stakeholders, the role of DeFi in borrowing voting power, and the implications for Cardano’s governance.

Watch the roundtable live stream on YouTube or X (formerly Twitter) on the @Cardano account.

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Well, it is good to know that Cardano Foundation has voted for some projects.
A lot of proposals with great potential impact often fail to receive funding because of the voting system in place making it difficult for budding proposers within the ecosystem to receive funding in Project Catalyst. There are also other impactful projects which have not been captured, I don’t know the mechanism used in the selection of the projects by the foundation but I believe this should be considered in subsequent Catalyst Funds.

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This is an inherent problem with the proof of stake mechanism. It creates plutocracy, minorities will be ignored and the rich will get richer.

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Posting some thoughts here which i also share on X via this tweet as well as this one

Some reflections on the CF (Cardano Foundation) Vote at Catalyst . . .
Reading through and typing out while thinking loud

Committed Underdogs
CF voting choice lists quite some projects which have a very strong committment and little drag to marketing, many projects which may not be the loudest, however, many gems in there from longterm contributors with proven track record. Letting one assume that CF has a quite good understanding on ongoing efforts which often dont receive much public recognition.

Global distribution
Its interesting to see that CF seemed to take care of picking proposals a bit from all around the globe, seems there has been some sort of priority around global distribution, many local communities found their way on the voting list. Once again suggesting that CF has a fairly accurate picture of the cardano ecosystem, its community and countless efforts around the globe. when wondering about criteria on which CF may have voted, the careful reader may find some clear hints at: https://cardanofoundation.org/our-cardano

X9
CF already voted in previous Catalyst rounds, in Fund12 with ~20M Ada, increasing their active vote by X9, suggesting that CF feels much more confident and mature with the use of its assets, one could assume that the X9 reflects the some of the internal performance evolution of CF, a stronger team with stronger actions and yet, there may be a reason CF does not use their full stack (~590M Ada) to vote with. The 180M Ada voting power in Fund12 reflect less than 0.5% of the current supply and less than 10% of Ada voted in F13 so far. Stats and learnings from Fund12 likely had their weight on CF adjusting its tactics while not making the mistake to fully dominate the scene or to thrive distructive engagement

There’s more to it too…
Many may not have followed that CF hosted a serie sessions at the Catalyst After Town Hall, open for anyone to join and to reflect and ideate with CF Folks on their engagement at Catalyst (past/present/future). CF Catalyst engagements reach back already to early Catalyst rounds, and a lot of community feedback has been actually implemented over time. So, CF stepping up is actually really something what had been brough up at catalyst community already for a long time. Still have some good memories of CF in early Catalyst rounds, where we pushed hard to get CF engaged in Catalyst and really glad that the early statement of “not relevant since not on mainnet” changed. It was hard back then since it didnt seemed clear how, why, when CF should do whatnot at/with catalyst. Seems they have their stuff pretty well together now.

So, guess overall, some very good things which we can observe at the CF:

  • seems to have a quite strong understanding of the Cardano eocsystems across many corners
  • improves its governance engagement as fast as effective
  • actively engages with the community on its evolution
  • has a strong ethical determinator on its decisions - is pretty open on how they engage at Cardano gov thingies

Actually, a foundation to be sort of proud about. (Wasnt always the case tho)*

Some recommendation for the next round:
CF at Catalyst has quite a history already, its not the first time CF is engaging at Catalyst, also in engaging with the community in ideating on CF > Catalyst engagements e.g Alex hosted a series of session at Catalyst Town Hall with catalyst community members to ideate and reflect on CF > catalyst things, … CF also officially announced to step up their engagements at Catalyst F13 …
However, the F13 Article announcing the voting choices only mentions very brief on previous F12 engagements, tho seems that many folks are not aware of that. For future rounds, would definitely recommend to provide some more historical context and making it easier for folks to understand that this is not coming out of the blue, but a year long process taking more and more shape.

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I’d like to speak to the manager :person_red_hair:t2:

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