Hello there, beautiful soul!
Hope this message finds you well.
How is the cooldown been so far? I hope everyone is enjoying their well-deserved slowdown of the pace. Even though we are officially in the break period, work continues at warp speed to ensure all the projects are ready for their distribution of initial payment from Fund9 Cohort. Great effort across the board is exerted from all the participating members of Challenge Teams as well as the patience of projects who are undertaking the pilot of outlining Statement of Milestones.
Thank you everyone for the ongoing engagement and willingness to work side by side as we navigate a lot of new pilot initiatives.
So what else has been taking place? Let’s review.
Town Hall
Catalyst Town Halls are currently suspended in lieu of a cooldown period. The broadcast is expected to resume in a couple of weeks.
Town Hall Playlist: link here
Break Out Rooms: https://bit.ly/33i38SB
- Want to open your own room next time? Book it via this form at least 24hrs in advance and get those conversations rolling!
Next: To be announced. Register now via this recurring link.
Cooldown, what now?
Have you had a chance to share your thoughts? Would love to hear from you via Fund9 survey that is now currently in circulation. Every perception is important and will help us show what’s important and where to look for improvements. As usual, the outcome of this survey will be shared publicly for the benefit of all in the ecosystem. You can see the Fund8 version here for your reference.
There’s also a question at the end that asks if you’d be willing to be contacted in the future to talk about your experience in a greater depth. If that’s something you’d be interested in, make sure to indicate YES. What’s even more exciting, out of 600+ respondents so far, almost three-quarters of all have already said yes. This highlights the ethos of continuous willingness to improve and help build systems for the better. Thank you for your continuous trust.
Fund9 Feedback Form: https://bit.ly/Fund9-Feedback 
Catalyst Circle Town Hall
There may be no ‘main’ Town Halls on air, but that doesn’t mean there is a shortage of interesting events taking place. One of which, the Catalyst Circle Candidate Forum that took place earlier this week in place of the usual TH time slot. Did you miss this one? Not to worry, you can catch the recording here. This event was moderated by Bullish Dumpling and organizational support from Catalyst Swarm.
When: Wednesday, Nov 2 @ 5PM UTC
Where: Register for zoom event via this link
Who: Review candidate statements on Cardano Forum here
This event will be once again recorded. Community members are encouraged to appear in person, or watch the live stream, or catch a replay later on. There’s already at least one twitter space scheduled as well, set a reminder here.
Election will take place with a platform built for the purpose by the DripDropz team. The election window will be announced once all the details have been finalized.
If you are reading about Catalyst Circle for the first time, I encourage you to read this initial blog post that introduced the idea and also this most recent forum post that outlines recent developments. Thank you also goes to the Eastern Town Hall team for the graphic above.
Updates from PA/vPA Cohort
Incentives distribution for (v)PA Cohort took place yesterday. Please check your wallets. This tranche is now completed.
It may be the case that not ALL rewards have been distributed. This could be for a variety of reasons, including missing wallet in the appropriate ideascale field or results of the allocation lottery. In any case, should you believe that your allocation has not been properly received, please email catalyst@iohk.io with your assessor ID to troubleshoot. There will be a second tranche scheduled to clear outstanding ‘missing’ allocations.
However, make sure to cross-reference your assessor ID on the aggregate file first - ‘Proposal Assessors - Final’ tab - to see your allocation first. Note: this distribution did not include natives as that’s not handled by the Catalyst.
In the interest of keeping everything in one place, we’ve updated once again the master file:
vPA Aggregate File - Fund9 - Google Sheets
Please, reference the ‘EDIT LOG’ tab for relevant edits/explanations for further analysis and scrutiny. Log also includes three petitions that were part of the community-led resolution process. You can reference the folder here.
Any doubts? Suggestions? Let the community know via PA/vPA telegram chat or discord channel here. You chould also visit community channels in the Catalyst Discord direct as well for more conversations.
When voter rewards?
With regard to voter rewards, we have an unresolved technical blocker. This is due to the fact that the intended distribution will not be directly from Treasury anymore - as seen in the past - but likely as a direct transaction. We are working on resolving this blocker to help distribute these at the soonest. Apologies for the issues with this, updates will be shared once progress is made. We would also push an announcement via the voting app to help bring awareness to voter rewards distribution when it occurs.
New kind of CIP in town: CPS
"A Cardano Problem Statement (CPS) is a formalized document for the Cardano ecosystem and the name of the process by which such documents are produced and listed. CPSs are meant to complement CIPs (Cardano Improvement Proposals) and live side-by-side in the CIP repository as first-class citizens.
A common friction point regarding complex CIPs is how their main problems are stated. For example, the ‘Motivation’ section in CIPs is sometimes not sufficient – or simply underused – to describe the various aspects of a problem, its scope, and its constraints in the necessary detail. This lack of clarity leads, in the end, to poorly defined issues and unfruitful debates amongst participants who understand problems differently.
The introduction of the Cardano Problem Statements (CPSs) addresses this gap by defining a formal template and structure around the description of problems. CPSs are meant to replace the more elaborate motivation of complex CIPs. However, they may also exist on their own as requests for proposals from ecosystem actors who’ve identified a problem but are yet to find any suitable solution…"
“ADA and decision-making power”
Cardanians published their own take and overview of what governance is about. Here’s the intro below but make sure to share your thoughts on the topic in the comments of the reddit post. Enjoy.
“Many people perceive decentralization only at the level of network consensus where decisions are made about adding new blocks to the blockchain. This is only the most visible part that is often talked about and is to some extent measurable. Decentralization is based on software that block producers (pool operators) and other participants install on their computers. All software contains bugs and must be updated and upgraded. Who has the right to decide on changes to the source code?..”
Caught my attention: Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Come check out this regular German-speaking twitter space scheduled every Tuesday at 5PM UTC. Make sure to follow this twitter account to not miss it when it takes place next time.
Empowering Universities
Can you imagine the future where any University could develop its own Blockchain lab, channeling innovation to Catalyst and feeding Cardano with new projects and developers to increase adoption? This event tried to experiment with this direction. And what a great outcome.
Past few days, this event was looking to engage universities with Cardano’s blockchain and develop their own educational programs. Universities from Venezuela, Israel, France, Vietnam, Uganda, Liberia, Japan, Kenya, Goma, Ethiopia, Oman and Mexico were present. You can find all the presentations and day recordings below:
- Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4z978rqko
- Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38z-_qH8me4
- Day 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEozz22qI1g
Join to EMURGO Academy community for deeper dive here.
Catalyst Project Completions
282 projects have been completed to date by submitting their self-reported close-out reports and videos. There is so much goodness taking place in this ecosystem. Navigate to COMPLETED tab to keep track of all their work. Not seeing your favorite project completed yet? You can check their progress on other tabs and also the monthly reporting output documents. Save the links below:
- Monthly Reporting: Catalyst Public Reporting Tracker - Google Sheets
- Monthly Report Output Data: Public Catalyst Monthly Reporting - Google Sheets
- Proposal Journey: Proposal Journey in Catalyst (public) - Google Docs
- Want to do more? Check this call to action about accountability and participation!
Are spreadsheets a little too much? Leverage community tools like Lido Nation which you can find here.
Get in touch
And that’s a wrap. Let’s talk Catalyst & governance via twitter, or telegram, or reddit, or wherever is your home online and keep conversations engaging on these very important topics.
Enjoy your weekend ahead!
Danny & the Project Catalyst team
Daniel Ribar
Community at Project Catalyst & Governance
