Hello there, beautiful soul!
Hope this message finds you well.
Over the last 18 months, Project Catalyst has achieved many great things, received and processed over 6.1k proposals, reached over 1.7M votes, and funded around 1.2k projects and more than 800 funded in 2022 alone. Thus far, 275 have been completed, a number which continues to accelerate as time moves forward. These achievements are a testament to the community’s passion and belief in Project Catalyst and the Cardano ecosystem.
As we move into the 10th iteration of Project Catalyst, there’s broad recognition that processes need to mature, be simplified, become more autonomous, remain inclusive, and continue to demonstrate value to the broader Cardano ecosystem. As a result, some crucial changes and updates are on the horizon.
In Fund9, we’re trialing milestone based reporting for funded projects. Successfully selected projects in the Dapps, Products, and Integrations challenge, and projects that requested funds with a value ≥$75k, must now report requirements based on clear milestones and provide a statement of milestones and proof of achievement to continue to receive funding.
Moving to a milestone-based reporting mechanism enables projects to demonstrate progress to the community and ultimately believe in their vision. In addition, it is an extra layer of protection for the Cardano Treasury and the community.
In the future, these large-scale projects/enterprise-level funding should go through a different track completely. More on this in due time.
One of the founding principles of Project Catalyst is through innovation, collaboration, and iteration, we collectively facilitate and enable those that perhaps otherwise would not have the means to make positive real-world changes to express their ideas and achieve funding to realize them.
We thank the community for their passion and diligence and welcome all feedback.
None of you are taken for granted and we cherish your engagement greatly.
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?
Time to pause and reflect.
Slowing down allows us to release energy to look at the process of Catalyst and reflect upon opportunities how to meaningfully improve and iterate forward. One of the major reasons to have a cooldown is to allow for that collective clarity without rushing toward the next deadline. Let’s focus on a set of collective outcomes instead.
As a result, there currently isn’t a start date pinned down for Fund10. It is our intention to take into account a comprehensive stock of all signals and experiences before moving on to the next funding cycle.
I encourage everyone in the community to gather together and discuss/debate and hold retrospectives. Document them in a long form and share the outcomes widely. As part of reviewing our most recent fund, we’ve put together Fund9 iteration of the feedback form. We’d appreciate greatly your time helping us fill in the gaps and highlight where to focus our attention to.
The outcome of this survey will be shared publicly together with all the key insights. You can see Fund8 version here for your reference.
Fund9 Feedback Form: https://bit.ly/Fund9-Feedback 
Catalyst Circle v4 - Meet Your Candidates
Over the past weeks and months, the interim working group of Catalyst Circle has been prepping diligently to bring about the governance process for the election of the 4th iteration of the Circle. If you are reading about Catalyst Circle for the first time, I encourage you to read this initial blog post that introduced the idea.
Otherwise, you can review candidate statements on Cardano Forum here. There’s no shortage of quality people competing for your vote to serve the community. This election is being supported by the great minds of the DripDropz team that have stepped up to help facilitate this learning opportunity.
If you are wondering how the nomination process was facilitated, catch this forum post by Felix Weber. More updates are expected shortly about the next key events and dates. The key expected event is centered around ‘The Catalyst Circle Candidates Debate’. Stay tuned via community channels.
There’s a new TH in town.
You can learn about this latest addition to the global Catalyst village in this timestamped YouTube video. In their words, South-Asian Townhall is a virtual platform for members of the South-Asian community. It is a place for them to share new ideas, learn about web3, Blockchain Technologies, Project Catalyst, and get involved with important decision-making processes that will have an impact on the future of Cardano eco-system.
Updates from PA/vPA Cohort
Last night, Catalyst United discord was hosting a presentation on Fund10 improvements look forward. If you’d like to review the meeting, you can find slides here and recording over here. Key themes revolved around
- Big picture overview of the Catalyst Improvement Process
- Intro to Catalyst United HackMD, Dework and Discord @Simon S
- Infrastructure & process for guidelines improvement work @Jeffrey Mashaw
- Rewarding: Catalyst WG, vPA treasury & bounty creation @JeremyB @DanMercurius
- Regular meeting and decision-making system @JeremyB
Any doubts? Suggestions? Let the community know via PA/vPA telegram chat or discord channel here.
Gimbalabs’ 5th Session for the East
Imagine “a dApps from the East” platform that acts as a future catalyst for other dApps. This is what these sessions are for, identifying those builders. Gimbalabs will continue to have Live Coding Sessions for the Eastern Time Zone.
These early 6 sessions are focused on identifying future trainers for the Eastern Hemisphere community.
From these sessions a proposal will be submitted to compensate for weekly sessions, translate the PPBL & to provide consistent assistance to questions by local devs.
If you want to speak directly with Plutus devs, learn more on Plutus and educate your community, this session is for you!
Day/Date: Saturday, 22 October 2022
Time: 11:00 - 13:00 UTC
Media: Zoom Meeting (Breakout Room Gimbalabs)
How to join? 
Click to Register to the Zoom link
How to start learning Plutus? Click to Learn More
How about oversight?
Community Governance Oversight (CGO)‘s meeting on Thurs 20th October focused on planning the final report for our F8 proposal. The report will share insights on four areas of Catalyst governance that CGO has maintained oversight of during recent months: dReps, Challenge setting, Catalyst Circle, and Catalyst parameter changes.
On the subject of parameter changes –we need your input! We want to hear from you if you’ve noticed something which you feel amounts to a change to Catalyst parameters. It could be anything that alters how Catalyst operates, from changes to the proposal reporting process to changes to what currency a Fund is denominated in. Report them using this form, and let’s try to get a community-curated overview of what the main Catalyst parameter changes have been over the last couple of Funds, how they’ve been communicated, and who they affect.
Even if you don’t know all the details of a change – send it in any way, and we’ll do the rest. In a couple of weeks, we’ll share what we’ve collated so far.
Meanwhile, join CGO in our Discord server for a conversation on governance-related topics. With the forthcoming Circle v4 elections and the preparations ahead for F10 including the advent of dReps, Catalyst governance is a hot topic during the cool-down!
Last Call before we kick off!
It’s almost that time to meet and kick off conversations with community agency on what the next iteration of accountability of funded projects in Project Catalyst looks like. Are you interested in participating? Or are you interested in understanding existing challenges and what lies ahead? Come join us and help pave the way for this instance of the Catalyst experience.
You can read more about this call to action in this forum post. If you’ll be interested in participating, either reply to me here directly or via the forum post. More than 50 individuals have already expressed their interest, looking forward to having you on board as well.
Caught my attention: Cardano Rio 2022
“On Sep 23 & 24, 2022, the event hosted 25 presentations, including lectures, panels, and conversations. Funded by Catalyst and organized by the local community, Cardano Rio 2022 showed clear signs that, if given the proper support, Brazil could emerge as a strategic country for Cardano’s worldwide expansion.”
Catalyst Project Completions
275 projects have 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 favourite 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 participate!
Are spreadsheets little too much? Leverage community tools like Lido Nation that 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