Digest July 22, 2025: Learning Resources by Linda, Discover Cardano, Cardano Academy | Blockfrost Announces ‘July of Code 2025’ | Intersect MBO 39 Treasury Proposals + X Space July 23 | AMA with Frederik Gregaard July 24

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Welcome to the Cardano Community Digest!

Published by the Cardano Foundation Community Team every two weeks, this Digest will provide you with news, updates and events about the project and ecosystem!

If you are interested in receiving the Community Digest in the future directly via email, please sign-up here!

In this edition of the Community Digest, we highlight community educator Linda’s video series on Cardano wallets and DeFi, alongside Discover Cardano’s accessible explainer shorts and the Cardano Academy’s free blockchain courses. We revisit key discussions from the Nested Transactions Roundtable Talk and the Bitcoin–Cardano interoperability X Space. Blockfrost’s July of Code 2025 hackathon is now live, inviting developers and creatives to build on Cardano and FireFly. The Cardano Leios Scaling Team reports breakthrough performance gains, while the Foundation’s Q2 Java Ecosystem Digest showcases significant tooling updates. IOG unveils a powerful new tool to automate formal verification of smart contracts, promising to slash development costs by 90%.

Intersect MBO submits all 39 Treasury Withdrawal proposals with a Special X Space scheduled for July 23 to connect proposers and voters. Lastly, the Cardano Foundation announces an AMA with CEO Frederik Gregaard focusing on strategy, the Reeve financial reporting tool, and the 2024 Financial Insights Report. Plus, their latest “Let’s Talk Cardano” podcast episode features Tokenance’s RE-TWIN project, highlighting how Cardano and AI are transforming real estate tokenization. All this and more in today’s Digest.

Additionally, we’d like to inform you that Blog | Cardano serves as a central hub, routing ecosystem information directly to you. Community members can contribute by providing their own updates. For more information on how to contribute, visit cardano.org/docs.

Learning Cardano: Resources by Linda, Discover Cardano, and the Cardano Academy

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Community member Linda, also known as @Cryptofly777 on X, has released a series of highly educational videos covering Cardano wallets such as Eternl, VESPR, and more. View here

But that’s not all because Linda goes even further. She has also released shorts about Cardano DeFi. And if you thought that was it, well… not quite. Linda has actually been publishing an ongoing series of educational videos on her YouTube channel. Take this one, for example, where she explains Wallet Security including some handy tips.

If you enjoy short-format videos and want a simplified understanding of various aspects of Cardano, from staking to governance, to learning about the many projects building on Cardano, you may want to check out Discover Cardano. Several of their recent releases cover: What is Delegation?, What is a Sidechain?, What is Governance?, What’s a DRep?, and much more.

And while you’re at it, you may also want to explore the Cardano Academy. The Academy offers free, self-paced online courses on blockchain and Cardano technology. Learners can study on-demand, including on mobile, with gamified exercises to reinforce learning. Enrollment is free on the Academy site. To earn the CBCA certification, candidates must pass a proctored exam administered by Pearson VUE. (The current exam fee is USD $99.)

From Bitcoin Interoperability X Space to Nested Transactions Roundtable Talk

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On July 21st, the Cardano Community YouTube and X channels hosted a new Roundtable Talk, focused on: A Follow-up to Nested Transactions.

The original discussion from December 2024 introduced Nested Transactions, what they are, how they work, and their potential impact on the Cardano ledger. That session aimed to establish a shared understanding of this complex topic. The latest talk revisited the subject, now exploring both technical and governance aspects. Key questions included:

  • Where does the readiness stack for Nested Transactions currently stand?
  • What are the alternatives, and what would be lost or gained by taking a different approach?
    …and more.

Featured speakers:

  • Matthieu Pizenberg, Senior Software Engineer | Cardano Foundation
  • Michele Harmonic | Harmonic Labs
  • Alexey Kuleshevich, CIP Author & Ledger Team Lead | IOG
  • Samuel Leathers, Head of Product | IOG
  • Raul Antonio, CTO | FluidTokens
  • Dominic Algernon Wallis, Founder | kompact.io

The discussion offered valuable insight into both the technical path forward and governance considerations for Cardano. :movie_camera: Watch the full episode here: YouTube Link

Also worth highlighting is the Community X Space hosted on July 3rd, which addressed the growing narrative around Bitcoin and Cardano interoperability. The conversation brought together contributors from multiple projects, including FluidTokens, BitcoinOS, Tap Protocol, Sundial Protocol, and many others. :headphone: Replay the Space here: X Link

Blockfrost Announces ‘July of Code 2025’

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Blockfrost’s July of Code 2025 is now live. This is a month-long hackathon inviting devs to build open-source apps showcasing Cardano use cases on Hyperledger FireFly. You can think of examples like, DeFi orchestration, DAO portals, or real-time analytics. There’s also a College Track with both technical and creative entry options. And the most interesting part is that no prior Web3 experience is needed. Submissions close Aug 7, with winners announced at Rare Evo on August 10. Prizes total 6,000 USDM, with 3,000 USDM for first place. Full details and submission form are available at julyofcode.dev.

Cardano Leios Scaling Weekly Summary

The Cardano Leios Scaling Team has released their latest weekly summary report, showcasing quite some progress in protocol development and performance testing. The team successfully demonstrated over 1,000 transactions per second using the Stracciatella variant, with more than 95% spatial efficiency and transaction lifecycles under two minutes.

Their analysis of the Linear Leios variant suggests it could reach up to 500 times the throughput of Praos. Simulation capabilities were improved, and new experiments confirmed that even small transactions can be processed efficiently under high load. Read the full summary here.

In addition, the Cardano Foundation published its Q2 2025 Java Ecosystem Digest, highlighting steady progress across tooling and infrastructure. Over the past quarter, more than 90 pull requests were merged and 60+ issues closed. Updates include improved Rosetta Java support, optimizations to Yaci Store for governance and rewards data, and key upgrades to Java libraries like the Cardano Client Lib and Connect with Wallet. Security, performance, and developer experience remained central themes throughout April, May, and June. Read the full Digest here.

IOG: A new era of smart contract verification on Cardano

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IOG has introduced a powerful new tool for fully automated formal verification of Cardano smart contracts, designed to dramatically lower the barrier to secure development. By leveraging Lean4 and SMT solvers like Z3, the tool can verify contracts without requiring developers to write manual proofs. It integrates directly into CI/CD pipelines and aims to detect logic flaws early with replayable counterexamples. According to Haskell developer Jann Müller, this could reduce the cost of writing secure contracts by 90%. Still in development, the tool promises scalable, contract-level verification that’s fast, affordable, and accessible to all developers. Read the full blog here.

Intersect MBO Submits All 39 Treasury Withdrawal Proposals — Special X Space Scheduled for July 23

Intersect MBO recently submitted 39 Treasury Withdrawal proposals. It’s now up to DReps and the Interim Constitutional Committee to decide which ones will be funded. To be approved, each proposal must gain support from at least 67% of active DRep stake and 5 out of 7 iCC members. Voting is open until the end of Epoch 576 (August 17, 2025), though proposals can be ratified earlier if they meet the required thresholds at an epoch boundary.

To support informed decision-making, a Special X Space has been scheduled for Wednesday, July 23, 2025, from 17:00 to 20:00 CEST. The Space aims to bring together all 39 vendors, giving them a chance to provide a refresher on their proposals and explain how their work benefits the Cardano ecosystem. This is a great opportunity for DReps and ada holders to engage directly and ask questions before casting their vote.

:round_pushpin: Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
:five_o_clock: Time: 17:00 to 20:00 CEST
:link: X Space link: https://x.com/i/spaces/1vAxRDkOqvzGl
 :date: Add to calendar: https://www.addevent.com/event/FN26158779

Frederik Gregaard to Host AMA on Foundation Strategy and Finance + Podcast Highlights RE-TWIN Real Estate

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The Cardano Foundation has announced an upcoming X Space AMA with CEO Frederik Gregaard. This session will focus on the Foundation’s strategy, the recent launch of Reeve, and key highlights from the newly published 2024 Financial Insights Report.

For those unfamiliar, Reeve is an open-source solution designed to bring financial reporting on-chain. It enables organizations to publish verifiable, tamper-proof financial data on the Cardano blockchain—helping foster transparency, reduce costs, and simplify compliance. Learn more about Reeve here.

The 2024 Financial Insights Report outlines how the Foundation allocated $22.1 million across operational resilience, education, and adoption, along with an additional $7.1 million toward core operations. Highlights include support for decentralized governance, educational partnerships, and real-world enterprise use cases. All financial data is accessible via Reeve, further strengthening the Foundation’s commitment to transparency and long-term ecosystem sustainability. Read the full report here.

The Foundation also dropped a new “Let’s Talk Cardano” episode on Spotify, featuring Tokenance’s Fulvio Magni and Francesco Pagano. They introduce RE-TWIN, a SaaS tool that uses Cardano and AI to create on-chain digital twins of real estate—complete with deeds, contracts, and tax data. The episode highlights how this tackles document loss and asset tracking, their partnership with YurekAI, and why Cardano was chosen to power this scalable solution.

Cardano Reddit Top 9 Most Engaged Topics

Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit

Cardano Forum Top 9 Referred Topics

Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)

:spiral_calendar: Upcoming Community Events

  • 07-23 DRep Working Group - Budget Approval: Each session will focus on providing up-to-date information about the budget process. Our goal is to create a collaborative environment where DReps can engage in discussions, ask questions, and share perspectives - link
  • 07-23 Filip Blagojevic: On Cardano Over Coffee: Apex Fusion brings together battle tested technology and teams from UTXO and EVM worlds in a novel tri-chain architecture to innovate for the future, together. - link
  • 07-23 Let’s Talk Cardano Treasury: To mark a historic milestone in Cardano’s governance journey, this X (Twitter) Space aims to bring together all 39 Treasury Withdrawal proposers, explaining how their proposal benefits the ecosystem - link
  • 07-24 Intersect OSC Meeting: The Open Source Committee meets bi-weekly on Thursdays! Join in and stay up to date with changes to Open Source in 2025 - link
  • 07-24 Product Committee: On Cardano Over Coffee: This is discuss the Product Comm 2030 vision roadmap and to talk about the workshops that have been done along with those that are upcoming - link
  • 07-24 Spidex AI : On Cardano Over Coffee: Spidex AI is a DeFAI platform built to simplify and supercharge Cardano DeFi. Powered by a network of specialized AI Agents, Spidex AI lets you interact with DeFi seamlessly without hopping between apps or complex tools - link
  • 07-28 SPO Table Talk: CIP50 - Understanding the Impact of Pledge Leverage - The implications of CIP50 are significant. Not only could it reshape the current rewards scheme and affect the role of the existing pledge parameter, but its implementation would also require a hard fork. This makes it a critical topic for open, transparent community discussion. From a governance perspective, this could mark the first time SPOs are asked to weigh in on a Governance Action that introduces a new parameter at the protocol level—an important milestone for on-chain governance in Cardano - link

For an overview of weekly events, visit the Cardano Calendar

Many thanks and greetings from the Community Team!