Hello there, beautiful soul!
Hope this message finds you well.
First of all, let me wish you Happy New Year. 2022 was quite an eventful year from start to finish. 2023 seems to be no different with very many exciting developments ahead. Whether in the Cardano ecosystem at large with the recent introduction of the CIP-1694, or many of the next steps towards the evolution of processes and tooling in the Catalyst as such. Make sure to catch the introductory segment on what’s ahead of us from this week’s town hall in the later part of this newsletter.
I am looking forward to sharing this journey with you.
Let’s dive into what’s the latest.
Town Hall
TH Recording: https://bit.ly/3k4qnaF
TH Slides: Project Catalyst Townhall - Jan 11 - Google Slides- TH 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: Jan 18 at 5PM UTC. Register now via this recurring link.
Cardano Summit 2022 - Musings
If you remember, Catalyst community members had the first real opportunity to meet in a larger group since its inception. Petr Smelik and Gustaf Ubby came along and captured the atmosphere of the event itself but also a larger picture of what Catalyst is about as well. Thank you for putting it together so that the community can enjoy it!
Enjoy the 5-minute video here: Catalyst Community Workshop 2022 on Vimeo
Catalyst Circle Elections
In December, the Catalyst Circle vote concluded with the final tally now available. Congratulations to everyone who managed to participate in the process from any direction. Whether as a candidate, voter, or simply an observer. This event has marked another great milestone for the community on the pathway to further develop and iterate on existing tooling and processes.
Here are some of the key highlights that came out of this event:
- 1,140 Voting Wallets
- 66.68 Million ADA Voting Power Represented
- Use a Snapshot at least one epoch old for voting power
- 189 Wallets only voted for a single candidate
- 706 Wallets voted for 5 candidates
- Minor UI changes could potentially reduce single voter cast ballots
If you’d like to dive into more data and analysis make sure to check out the following links.
- Official Results: https://dripdropz.io/vote/3/results
- LidoNation Statistics: Catalyst Reports | Lido Nation English
- Vox Populi Survey: https://forms.gle/pbtShRrf3VZbPtYG9
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 forum post that outlines key requirements for candidates.
Feedback Loop
With the Circle elections now over, what better time is spent than looking at the process retrospectively for additional lessons learned? The Facilitator’s Collective has stepped up to help with that endeavour.
The Facilitator’s Collective is a pocket of the Catalyst community who are specifically interested in exploring meeting facilitation. With this initiative, they are also exploring the facilitation of community sentiment and experimenting with different formats. Here is their latest update:
"Back in December, the Facilitators’ Collective ran a “Vox-Pop video” event, asking people for their thoughts about the recent CCv4 election. You can see the video here (9mins length). "
“We didn’t have many participants – but the vox-pop, as a method of collecting community input, is a bit new to Catalyst, so we hope that seeing the video will spark people’s enthusiasm, and there might be a bigger response next time someone does one! (Contact facilitators-collective@proton.me if you’d like to try running one, and we’ll be happy to advise!)”
"Following on from this, we’re running a survey, as another way to collect input about the same topic. The question is simple:
- Did you vote in the CCv4 election?
- If you did, we’d like to know what the key issues were for you, that determined who you voted for.
- And if you didn’t vote, we’d like to know why you decided not to."
“The survey’s here and it closes on Sunday 22nd January 2023, at 23:00 UTC. You can give your name, or stay anonymous. Afterwards, we’ll publish the answers in a doc, which we’ll share in the description of the initial Vox Pop video linked above, and in the various community channels like Discord and Telegram. We’ll also share it with Circles past and present. So please follow the link, and let us know your thoughts!”
2022 Community Highlights Review
In the last newsletter, there was a call to action to share your 2022 wins. However, the form wasn’t working as intended. Hence, it was now replaced with another to allow submissions.
Let’s resurface the effort and work that may have been unnoticed over the course of the year to recognize and elevate these instances to what they deserve. There are many amazing things taking place that don’t get noticed. This is your opportunity to shed some light on them and celebrate all of the accomplishments, and learnings.
- Open invitation to submit a max 5-minute video reel on behalf of a varied community of communities
- There’s no specific deadline - whenever these videos come in - we’ll review them and consider for playback during upcoming town halls
- Where to submit?
- Submission form: https://forms.gle/utNbK1GfiEzBSrSA8
- Please pay attention to the form description for additional details for compliance. Thank you in advance.
Looking ahead into 2023
With the release of the Voltaire CIP and all the announcements at IO ScotFest, this year promises to be full of evolution - with Project Catalyst continuing to play a significant role in driving innovation and growth across the Cardano ecosystem.
In the coming weeks, we will be introducing the concept of Special Voting Events.
A Special Voting Event (or SVE for short) is a vote held outside of regular Project Catalyst fund cycles. Using Catalyst tooling, it’s the vehicle for obtaining community consent for decisions that do not correspond to innovation or Project Catalyst challenges.
SVE’s are complementary to CIP-1694 and offer a route to achieve community consent on important decisions before CIP-1694 is live or for decisions that do not correspond to a governance action. You can watch the timestamped segment from the town hall that provides a bit more context.
Last week in CIPs
Here’s the recap from my colleague Ryan Williams that writes these fantastic CIP round-ups. I figured you’d like them, too. So here’s the latest to get up to speed. You can catch past and future summaries via this Cardano forum thread here as well. If are unsure what CIPs are about - please check out this link to dive deeper: https://cips.cardano.org/.
What happened in CIPs last week?
- CIP-??? Improved Rewards Scheme Parameters [New CIP Proposal]:
- This proposal aims to improve the rewards scheme parameters, notably by removing minPoolCost, adding minPoolRate, and increasing k.
- A particularly well-written proposal with some good discussions around it.
- Draft CPS-??? Spending Script Redundant Execution [New CPS Draft]:
- Spending scripts are currently executed once for every UTxO being consumed from a script address. However, there are use cases where the validity of the transaction depends on the transaction as a whole and not on any individual UTxO.
- CIP-0079 Implement Ouroboros Leios to increase Cardano throughput:
- This proposes the next evolution of Ouroboros being implemented in Cardano.
- CIP-??? Merkelised Plutus Scripts:
- This proposal suggests changing how scripts are hashed, from the hash of its serialisation to a hash of its immediate children’s hashes, forming a Merkle Tree from the AST.
Next Meeting:
- CIP Editors Meeting #60:
- Jan 17th 9:30 am UTC
- Held on Discord - here.
- Agenda TBD.
Catalyst Project Completions - 350+ and counting!
350+ projects funded by Catalyst have been completed to date by submitting their self-reported close-out reports and videos. 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!
- Next meeting will take place towards the end of January 2023
- You can also reference this town hall slide for the first meeting outcome.
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
