Catalyst Fund 14: Spotlight on Enterprise Adoption

[omarbadr36]

Catalyst Fund 14: Spotlight on Enterprise Adoption

Hello wonderful Cardano community

Catalyst Fund 14 is officially live, and wow… the proposals are streaming in like a torrent of innovation from every corner of the ecosystem. We’re talking everything from cutting-edge developer tooling to DeFi wizardry, identity solutions, and infrastructure that could make a tech enthusiast squeal.

At EMURGO Labs, through our research and execution with notable Web2 enterprises, we decided to focus on something we vehemently believe in and have complete conviction on; What is critically important for Cardano’s long-term success is RWA enterprise adoption, it being the next frontier for Cardano’s scalability and sustainability.

Enterprises are like the cruise ships of the tech world. They carry tons of passengers (users), have huge cargo (data), and navigating them requires skill, foresight, and a sturdy anchor (regulation). The journey from Web2 to Web3 isn’t a smooth dock, it’s more like steering through a stormy harbor. Legacy systems, compliance hurdles and onboarding teams who have never coded a smart contract? Yeah… it’s tricky. But enterprises are also game-changers: one successful integration can create a ripple effect that accelerates Cardano’s mainstream footprint.

Disclaimer: “The content of this post is for informational purposes only. The evaluations, scores, and comments reflect our team’s independent assessment of Catalyst Fund 14 proposals through an enterprise adoption lens.

The Cardano community should conduct its own research and due diligence before taking any action.”

[VIEW DASHBOARD HERE]

Why Enterprise Adoption Matters

Let’s pause to explain why enterprise adoption deserves its own lens:

Strategic Impact: Enterprises = big adoption wins. One successful integration can produce network effects and rapidly accelerate Cardano’s footprint.

Ecosystem Growth: Providing enterprises with the right tools and frameworks empowers developers, creates new business opportunities, and strengthens the ecosystem.

Real-World Validation: Enterprises demand solutions that scale, comply, and integrate seamlessly. Proposals that meet these standards serve as proof points for others.

Long-Term Sustainability: Startups and small developers are vital, but enterprise adoption ensures Cardano’s ongoing growth and usage beyond niche communities.

Our Evaluation Lens

Fund 14 doesn’t have an official “Web2 → Web3” category, so we applied our own enterprise adoption lens(es) across all proposals. Our goal is to highlight proposals that can realistically help enterprises step into blockchain without losing sleep.

To make things simple, we focused on four core pillars, weighted to reflect their respective importance:

Pillar	Weight
Enterprise Relevance	35%
Adoption Pathway	25%
Delivery Credibility	25%
Value for Money	15%

1️ Enterprise Relevance (35%)

Question: Does this proposal actually matter to enterprises?

We looked for:

• Smooth integration with existing systems (ERP, CRM, databases, APIs)
• Compliance-ready tools and frameworks
• Scalability to millions of users
• Operational feasibility for non-blockchain teams
• Clear articulation of the business problem

Scoring scale (0:5 stars):

• 0 : No relevance to enterprises
• 1 : Weak relevance, mostly experimental
• 2 : Moderate relevance, some value but incomplete
• 3 : Strong relevance with clear use-case
• 4 : Very strong relevance, likely to accelerate adoption
• 5 : Exceptional enterprise relevance, immediate applicability

Partial relevance counts too: some proposals may not be fully enterprise-focused but provide indirect exposure to Real-World Assets (RWA), offering enterprise value over time.

2️ Adoption Pathway (25%)

Question: How easily can enterprises adopt this solution?

We evaluated:

• Clear roadmap: pilot → POC → production
• Developer experience: APIs, SDKs, documentation, and low-code/no-code support where applicable
• Risk mitigation: security, auditability, regulatory compliance
• Onboarding support: guides, tutorials, and training

Scoring scale (0:5 stars):

• 0 : No adoption pathway
• 1 : Vague or unrealistic roadmap
• 2 : Roadmap exists but with high friction
• 3 : Clear pathway, manageable onboarding
• 4 : Strong pathway, minimal friction and high support
• 5 : Seamless adoption experience, ready for enterprise pilots

3️ Delivery Credibility (25%)

Question: Can the team deliver on its promise?

We assessed:

• Team experience, domain expertise, and track record
• Realistic milestones and KPIs
• Technical and operational capability
• Awareness of regulatory and operational constraints

Scoring scale (0:5 stars):

• 0 : No credibility
• 1 : Weak, unproven team
• 2 : Some credibility, uncertain delivery
• 3 : Solid team, plausible delivery
• 4 : Strong team, high likelihood of delivery
• 5 : Exceptional team, proven track record, very high confidence

4 Value for Money (15%)

Question: How efficiently does the proposal use funds to achieve impact for Cardano?

We looked at:

• Cost per user, enterprise engagement, or milestone
• Budget allocation: technical delivery vs overhead
• Milestone-based transparency
• Potential multiplier effect on Cardano adoption

Scoring scale (0:5 stars):

• 0 : No value
• 1 : Weak value
• 2 : Some value, moderate impact
• 3 : Solid value, reasonably efficient
• 4 : Strong value, high efficiency
• 5 : Exceptional value, maximum impact per ADA spent

Total Score Formula

Total Score = (Enterprise Relevance * 0.35) +
(Adoption Pathway * 0.25) +
(Delivery Credibility * 0.25) +
(Value for Money * 0.15)

Our Expanded Evaluation Process

Evaluating hundreds of proposals for enterprise adoption is no small feat. We didn’t just skim abstracts, we went full-on detective mode, bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of six of our in-house experts spanning technology, development, product and enterprise strategy.

Team Composition:

• 2 Product Experts : Focused on adoption feasibility, business problem alignment and clarity of use-case.
• 2 Tech Experts : Examined scalability, system integration, security and technical feasibility.
• Our CEO : Looked at regulatory compliance, operational fit and real-world enterprise readiness.
• 1 Analytics Lead : Designed scoring frameworks, dashboard, and ensured process consistency and minimal bias.

We organized the evaluation into three rigorous passes:

Pass 1: Scan Pass (Quick Filter)

• Each proposal reviewed in ~5/7 minutes to filter out projects without clear enterprise potential.
• Notes taken on domain, potential use-case, and red flags.
• High-level scoring on enterprise relevance only.

Tech & Tools:

• Shared cloud workspace for collaborative notes
• Quick scoring sheets with pre-defined criteria

Goal: Eliminate proposals that clearly didn’t align with enterprise adoption, saving deep-dive efforts for the most promising ones.

Pass 2: Deep Dive (Full Four-Pillar Evaluation)

For proposals passing the scan, we applied the full four-pillar framework:

Team Approach:

• Product and CEO led discussions on business problem clarity and roadmap feasibility
• Tech experts conducted architectural assessments, integration checks, and risk analysis
• All six members participated in group review sessions to debate nuances and calibrate scoring

Process Highlights:

• Detailed notes captured for each pillar
• Strengths, weaknesses, and risk factors documented
• Scores entered into a central scoring dashboard for real-time aggregation
• Discussions logged in a collaborative system to maintain transparency and auditability

Tech & Tools:

• Scoring dashboard with visualizations
• Heatmaps to identify top performers across multiple criteria

Pass 3: Reality Check & Peer Review

• Could a skeptical CIO, CTO or operations lead green-light this proposal?
• Peer reviewers rotated to minimize bias, ensuring proposals were evaluated outside their primary domain
• Cross-functional debates ensured no critical technical, operational, or regulatory issues were overlooked

Outcome:

• Only proposals surviving rigorous scrutiny were considered
• Process generated actionable insights for proposers: clear notes on strengths, weaknesses, and adoption friction points

Shortlist & Dashboards

Here’s a sneak peek at how shortlisted proposals will be presented

| Proposal | Team | Ask | Enterprise Impact | Adoption Score | Delivery Score | Overall Score |

We also built interactive dashboards for transparency:

• Enterprise relevance vs adoption pathways
• Distribution of delivery credibility
• Value-for-money metrics
• Overall proposal scores

[VIEW DASHBOARD HERE]

Lessons Learned

1. Adoption friction is real : brilliance alone isn’t enough; enterprise onboarding is crucial
2. Documentation matters : no enterprise can adopt what they cannot understand
3. Track record is king : proven teams consistently scored higher
4. Innovation vs practicality : highly innovative projects sometimes lack immediate enterprise applicability. Balancing both is key

Closing Thoughts

Catalyst is more than funding; it’s strategic ecosystem building. By curating proposals through an enterprise adoption lens, we aim to:

• Highlight proposals with real-world impact
• Encourage proposers to think beyond crypto-native audiences, long gone are the days of Web2 and Web3 isolation and silo-ing
• Provide the community with a transparent, repeatable evaluation method

Enterprise adoption is key to Cardano’s growth. With careful selection and community support, we can help ensure Cardano becomes the default choice for businesses exploring Web3.

Thank you to all proposers contributing to this vision! Your innovation matters: whether or not your proposal makes our shortlist this time.

The EMURGO Labs Team

[COSDpool]

@omarbadr36 it’s significant to the Cardano community that the Emurgo reviewing team didn’t consider that standards could be relevant to enterprise adoption… which is taken as a matter of course by the rest of the tech industry and understood to be crucial to the blockchain industry.

The Standards designation was exclusive to the Cardano Open: Ecosystem category, which was not represented in your list of results — judging by the minimum ₳72K “Ask” of proposals in your short list vs. the ₳60K maximum in this category. My guess is that ecosystem-focused proposals weren’t considered relevant to your assessment because of this statement above:

Ecosystem Growth: Providing enterprises with the right tools and frameworks empowers developers, creates new business opportunities, and strengthens the ecosystem.

i.e. the “trickle-down theory” — in this case, an assumption that ecosystem advances naturally come from the enterprises, who then deliver them to the community.

Standards in particular, and potentially other community-evolved aspects of the Cardano ecosystem, natively support the two most heavily weighted “pillars” of your evaluation: Enterprise Relevance and Adoption readiness (“Pathway”).

I’m not trying to influence your results, but am only concerned about what your methods have apparently overlooked. The particular industry focus of RWAs should at least have opened up the discussion to Standards: considering that interoperability in this new industry will be impossible without them.

I appreciate the rigour of your team’s assessment and your candour in explaining it so abundantly to the community. With mixed feelings, I even appreciate the confirmation that big-budget developer proposals were the only ones considered relevant to “adoption” rather than the spontaneous, decentralised evolution observed through verifiable proposals emerging from the ecosystem itself.

I would please encourage your team, and any members of the community, to consider the bidirectional support of enterprise and ecosystem through this proposal… since the background writing illustrates how accomplishments in the Standards domain are an original and vital aspect of enterprise adoption:

Community CIP Editor Robert Phair: 6 month budget

[tomasgarro]

Thanks for putting this together, shining a spotlight on enterprise adoption is crucial for Cardano’s long-term growth and will help voters make informed decisions.

I’m also glad to see the Rainforest Alliance proposal shortlisted in this category. If anyone wants a deeper dive, I wrote up an overview here: the Rainforest Alliance is coming to Cardano

We’ve put a lot of effort on advocating for Cardano’s ecosystem for this one, and this is a huge opportunity to showcase real-world impact of Cardano’s tech through a globally recognized, international NGO that’s impacting the live of millions of farmers.

If you want to check out the rest of our enterprise-related and growth-focused proposals, you can find them here: STORM Partners Catalyst proposals or simply search “STORM Partners” on Catalyst. Your vote and support make a real difference.

[Ehimare_Oriasotie]

Phenomenal work putting this together and highlighting solid catalyst proposals.

Please check out our proposals by simply search “NKRYPT”.

We are building the social layer that Cardano needs to drive adoption. We have built a fun platform where users can create posts, lock it with ADA and reward them for engagement.

You can check it out our platform: https://nkrypt.space

Please support our proposals once more by searching “NKRYPT” on the catalyst voting app

[Panche_Isajeski]

First impressed by the framework in place for review.

Second really glad that you focused on enterprise adoption, as this is the area where we can really make impact&exposure with Cardano.

PS. Thanks for shortlisting CoVo proposal; as this really helps land ownership enteprise use case.

[jashar]

Hi Omar and team!

Thanks so much for this great analysis and for highlighting the importance of enterprise adoption in the Web3 space. We believe that if more ecosystems shared this focus, the industry would move toward mainstream market adoption much more quickly.

One question we have for you: did your analysis also include proposals from the ecosystem category? We submitted four proposals for Fund 14, all with a strong enterprise focus (our core area of expertise), and were just curious to know if they were actually part of your review process.

In any case, thanks again for your work, and we’d love to hear back from you.
Best, Natalie & Jashar of So So Scaled!