Hello there, beautiful soul!
Hope this message finds you well.
This past week, some of the world has changed their clocks to summer timezone. This is a kind reminder that town halls continue airing at 5PM UTC. This means that in some parts you may need to manually adjust your calendar. Another set of time changes is expected to take place this weekend already. Keep an eye on this not to miss the latest broadcast.
Despite the time change bonanza, last week we had a great presentation and brief discussion around legal frameworks when it comes to blockchain. DLT360 team presented their impressive close out series on their funded proposal. You can check out their timestamped segment here. Great insights. We also had three other community project presentations in form of Neural IDs/NFTs, Meta DID experiment, and Haskell Course for Developers. Congratulations on completing your projects.
If you have a project that you are about to close out and wish to share with the community, reach out to me and let’s schedule your presentation for one of the upcoming town halls. Let’s tell the world the amazing things you’re up to!
This week, WADA presents their impressions from winning the film festival, Community Advisor challenge team shares their insights, and the Catalyst team presents the first insight into proposed direction for Fund10 adjustments. Starting with assessments stage. Make sure to catch the details further down.
For now - what’s the latest? Dive in.
Town Hall #117 - Last Week
TH Recording: http://bit.ly/3JJg5XQ
TH Slides: Project Catalyst Townhall - Mar 15 - Google Slides
Town Hall #118 - This Week
- TH Recording: https://bit.ly/3Zeb5z0
- TH Slides: https://bit.ly/40rttp7
- TH Playlist: link here
Break Out Rooms: https://bit.ly/33i38SB
Next: Mar 29 at 5PM UTC. Register now via this recurring link.
Voltaire Musings
Governance conversations continue. Have you had a chance to participate yet? There are some opportunities for you.
Great ways to dive into conversation is reading up www.1694.io portal or catch the latest with the community initiative Voltaire News! yet? Check out this timestamped segment from the last town hall to learn more. But in a nutshell: a new collaborative community newsletter started by Governance Guild to help the community keep track of the CIP-1694 debate.
Additionally, following on from the earlier CIP-1694 workshop in Colorado, the organizing team would like to invite all community members to a conversation on the 30th March via Zoom. It will be an opportunity to recap the workshop with attendees, hear more about CIP-1694, as well as discuss future workshops and the next steps along the path to the Age of Voltaire.
If you wish to add your perspectives to CIP 1694, make sure to share them here. Add your voice as the era of Voltaire rolls out!
Chasing the WADA dream
Nucast Film Festival announced the successful completion of the unique decentralized event that brought together filmmakers and cinephiles from all around the globe! 
The festival ticket holders had the opportunity to vote for the best short film. 
The audience award goes to “Chasing The Wada Dream” directed by Petr Smělík. This documentary was supported by Project Catalyst. You can also check out this LinkedIn write about about festival here. Petr also held a great presentation and interview with some of the WADA members during the latest town hall. Make sure to catch the segment here.
More about the film: www.adafilms.art/wada
Project Catalyst is looking ahead
There are number of proposed changes for Fund10 that are going to be gradually shared over the weeks to come. This week, we began with looking at what an alternative path looks like for the assessments stage in Cardano’s Project Catalyst.
Catalyst funding rounds have been on pause for a little while now. Thank you everyone for your patience and continued support as we’ve navigated these past months. 2023 is shaping up to be an important year for Cardano, and equally so for Catalyst.
Since F9’s end, the Catalyst team’s been deep in research, discovery and design mode. Holding many workshops with the community, a lot of 1:1s, and received additional user-centered feedback from fund surveys, social media & more. All that stock has been carefully considered and time’s come to share the findings and a suggested proposal for the next steps. Starting with the assessment stage.
You can catch the main town hall segment timestamped here or you can also breeze through this twitter thread. Your input would be very valuable. The after town hall recording will also be made available shortly on Catalyst Swarm Youtube list.
Bounties? Yes, please.
Did you know that Catalyst Swarm is pioneering and experimenting with bounties in the ecosystem? There are a variety of different bounties found on the swarm Dework bounty board [regularly updated - new tasks continuously added], in which you can partake in and earn some rewards (ADA, Gimbal tokens or AGIX). Check out the bounty board via this link.
Funded Project Workshops
Catalyst has recently reached 450+ completed projects, an amazing milestone but the next question is ‘wen 500?’
To continue to support funded projects, the Catalyst team is committed to facilitating business growth and technical workshops. The aim is to create as much education and resources as possible to support the growth, development, and success of projects building in the Catalyst ecosystem.
We want to increase the cadence of these sessions and keep the community connected with the process. So we are opening up speaker/guest slots for business and technical leaders within the community to sign up and deliver presentations at the workshop sessions, taking place on the bi-weekly coordinator meetings.
To help facilitate, you can sign up via this form: Funded Project Workshop Speaker Form
New Funded Project Guidelines
The Catalyst team has been collecting feedback from funded projects via various workshops and retrospectives on iterations for post funded process flow. As the complexity and volume of requests grows each fund, several processes have been introduced as a proposal to help address some of the growing challenges.
We would love your feedback by leaving a comment on this document. The goal is to consider any additional comments and feedback before rolling out the new guidelines to be in effect from April 1st.
Thank you in advance for your kind time and efforts.
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/.
RW: What happened in CIPs last week?
- CIP-??? Supercharged Native Scripts [New Proposal]:
- This CIP proposes replacing the current native scripts used for minting Cardano Native Tokens with simple smart contracts.
- CPS-??? Voltaire era Governance [New Problem]:
- This CPS tried to frame a set of motivations, goals, constraints, and open questions for the very broad topic of Cardano governance.
- This is to accompany CIP-1694 to allow for discussion of the problem of governance rather than the technical solution.
RW: CIP Editors Meeting #62 – my notes:
- CIP-0084? Ledger evolution (meta):
- Looking good to merge – due to the nature of the proposal it does not need much engagement past the Ledger team.
- With post meeting clarification on RSS CIPs application to the Ledger category, this is in Last Check for the next meeting.
- CIP-0030 Upgrade to latest format & propose version / extension scheme:
- With small amendments to remove positional arguments, this can be merged as it has a lot of positive discussion.
- CIP-0090? Extendable dApp-Wallet Web Bridge:
- Author (me) present to discuss.
- Overall needs more discussion from wallet providers.
- Number can be assigned.
- CIP-0091? Don’t force Built-In functions:
- Lots of good discussion with author engaging very well.
- Assign a number and look to merge in the next meeting.
- CIP-0092? First-class errors in Plutus:
- Author present and provided great explanation.
- Benchmarks/analysis on how much more efficient this is would be nice.
- CIP-0089? Beacon Tokens & Distributed Dapps:
- Seems to be some off-github discussions around this proposal - would be good to link them.
- Can assign a number.
- Somewhat informal, might benefit from a CPS.
- CIP-0088?: Native Asset Policy Registration/Information Certificates:
- Can assign a number.
- Author has had some good engagement.
- More comments and discussion around related CIPs and CPSs should be added.
- CPS-??? Reading metadata in Plutus contracts:
- More detail is needed.
- This is more of a feature request than a problem statement. Furthermore this is a feature which had purposely not included by the Plutus team.
- So this is rejected for now.
- CIP-0030 Add chain id to differentiate between testnets:
- Has good support.
- This should fit as an extension to CIP-30 as discussed in #466, although it is unclear if the author wants to pursue.
- CIP-0077? Verified Stake Pool Identity:
- Could benefit from more discussion by SPOs.
- Good and timely proposal.
Next Meeting:
- CIP Editors Meeting #63:
- March 28th 5pm UTC.
- Held on Discord - here.
- Agenda TBC
Further varied governance and Catalyst community conversations can be also followed on the official Cardano forum here. Don’t be shy to be part of the conversation.
Mini-Proposal Workshops
Tevo Saks, a long standing community member, is one of champions always pushing the edge of iteration and education. These days, Tevo has been holding a series of workshops on a variety of Catalyst process topics.
If you haven’t already, we highly recommend watching this overview of what these workshops are and keeping an eye on the latest uploads in this playlist or in this miro board overview. Loads of new and fresh content. If you’d like to get a birds eye view of all the work done to date - check this miro board with all the boards.
Thank you, Tevo, for all the hard work over the years. You are an inspiration to many.
Gimbalabs presents: Plutus Project-Based Learning
This week, Gimbalabs launched the new version of their Plutus Project-Based Learning program. The two previous versions led them to this fantastic version: https://plutuspbl.io
No doubt, PPBL v3 is the answer to the question: Where do I start as a Cardano developer, now?
now = no money, no pre-requirements, no gatekeepers.
Note 1: Great news: Gimbalabs Plutus PBL is in the process of being translated into several languages, including: Indonesian, French, Vietnamese, Japanese, Spanish. Soon it will be in your own language.
This program is open source, which makes it adaptable to the needs of different organizations. If you:index_pointing_at_the_viewer: want to train your employees, your students, your community, your team members, your family and friends: the time is now 
(the now from above, remember?). Need help: leave them a message on twitter: @gimbalabs
Let your journey begin!
Register to vote (or check if you still have a valid QR/PIN)
Don’t forget to register to take part in a Catalyst Special Voting Event (SVE) if you haven’t already. If you have cast a vote in the past you just need to ensure you still have a valid QR and PIN code available. Here’s the guide. Not sure what SVE is just yet? The Catalyst team also shared a quick update during this month’s Cardano 360 show and you can catch the timestamped segment here. More information is coming soon.
Caught my attention
Did you ever wonder how Cardano Treasury functions? And its origins? Markus has written a fantastic tweet thread that dives into this topic. Markus has been a long time community member and stake pool operator since the early days of Cardano. Definitely worth a read. Dive into the tweet here.
Catalyst GitHub Repo - Weekly Round-Up
One of this year’s primary objectives is to make it easier for Community members to understand how Catalyst works on the technical side and to access the Catalyst technical backend to increase transparency in systems. The major side effect later this year is expected to be around the ability of the community to come along and start co-creating/helping build/suggest improvements to these foundations.
This repo is the starting point and we’re seeking improvements to it throughout the months to come. For now, feel free to bookmark the pages and lurk around as we get it ready:
- GitHub - input-output-hk/catalyst-core: ⚙️ Core Catalyst Governance Engine and utilities.
- Catalyst Core Documentation - Page Redirection (draft/WIP)
Community Events
Many community events are taking place regularly across the ecosystem. In the image above and below you can find a snippet of what is available out there. A great way to lurk around and over time participate even more directly. You can browse more via this link.
Catalyst Project Completions - 450+ and counting!
400+ 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!
- 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 or via projectcalyst.io website directly.
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 day ahead!
Danny & the Project Catalyst team
Daniel Ribar
Community at Project Catalyst
Note: References in this newsletter to the 3rd party projects, products, and services are provided for information purposes only and are not endorsements. Everyone should carry out their own investigations before relying on the information provided in this newsletter.