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!
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In this edition of the Community Digest, we highlight
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Genesis Hacker House Applications Now Open For Cardano Builders & Arouet Community Director Position: Applications are now open for Draper University’s Genesis Hacker House, while Arouet Holdings is seeking candidates for its Community Director position.
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State of Cardano Governance Report 2026: The newly released report examines DRep participation, voting power concentration, SPO engagement, and offers recommendations to strengthen Cardano governance.
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CIP Updates: The Net Change Limit Parameter, On-Chain Surveys and Polls, and Utilization-Scaled Pledge Bonus have been completed, while several new proposals continue through active review.
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Community Newsletters: Recent updates from Cardanians and Lucas Macchiavelli cover V11 hard fork readiness, CME futures, Bitcoin DeFi developments, Leios tooling, and other ecosystem news.
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Community Learning & Developer Engagement: Recent Developers Office Hours explored the Go-based Dingo node and the future roadmap of the Scalus Development Platform.
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Cardano Foundation Updates: The Foundation shared updates on policy engagement, enterprise adoption, Digital Product Passports, legal standards for AI agents, and new educational content from Cardano Academy.
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Intersect MBO Updates: Intersect highlighted the latest van Rossem hard fork readiness, preparations for the Constitutional Amendment Portal, and ongoing Constitutional Committee election activities.
All this and more in today’s Digest.
Genesis Hacker House Applications Now Open For Cardano Builders
On 7 July 2026, Draper University announced that Genesis Hacker House applications are now open to Cardano Builders.
You probably are asking yourself what this is. Well… It’s a 4-week Silicon Valley residency at Draper University for early-stage technical teams building on Cardano, with an optional 4-week extension.
The selected teams (15 total) will get:
- Up to $20,000 in investment for a target of 2% equity
- Full residency at Draper University
- Mentorship from experienced founders, operators, and investors
- Rapid product validation support
- Direct access to builders and VCs
- A dedicated Pitch Day in front of angel investors and early-stage VCs
Applications are due July 10th 2026, with final offers going out July 15th and an acceptance deadline of August 3rd.
Apply: http://draperuniversity.com/cardanoprograms
In addition to Genesis Hacker House, applications for the voluntary Cardano Community Director role on the Arouet Holdings Board are now live. First announced as a call for candidates in the June 24th Digest, the application form went up on June 29th. Arouet is looking for experienced candidates from across the ecosystem with strong governance, investment, and community credentials. Applications close August 3rd 2026. Apply here:
Developer Spotlight: Nuvola Digital
For the Developer Spotlight we recently conducted an interview with Raul De Benedittis, CEO of Nuvola Digital LLC, sharing how his aerospace and naval engineering background shaped his vision for decentralized infrastructure on Cardano.
Read why Nuvola selected Cardano as their settlement layer, how encrypted file sharding protects data across global networks, the role of partner chains in scaling, and why the crowdshare model democratizes participation in DePIN.
Learn how Nuvola Drive simplifies Web2 to Web3 migration, and why privacy-first cloud storage matters for real-world adoption. The full blog here
State of Cardano Governance Report Is Out
On July 6, Maureen announced on behalf of Beyond MVG that the State of Governance 2026 Report is now live.
The report is the result of months of on-chain analysis, interviews, workshops, surveys and governance discussions, and pulled in more than 50 contributors, including DReps, SPOs, Constitutional Committee members, tool builders, governance projects and community members. The core question the report set out to answer: how healthy is Cardano governance, really. A few of the findings:
Per the report, DRep voting power is concentrating: the Gini coefficient rose from 0.916 to 0.935, and active DReps fell from over 600 to around 300. It also found SPO governance participation dropped from 55% to 37%, mostly due to tooling friction. Six recommendations follow, including DRep pay and better wallet tools.
The full report can be accessed here.
RealFi Phase 1 Testnet is Live
On July 6, 2026, the RealFi Phase 1 Testnet officially launched on Cardano. RealFi describes itself as a stablecoin ecosystem built to connect on-chain capital to real-world credit markets rather than circular incentives, and this testnet is the first chance for the community to get hands-on with the protocol.
Phase 1 opens three actions in the test environment:
- Swap: exchange between supported test digital assets and test USDr
- Stake: deposit test USDr to receive test sUSDr, the protocol’s efficiency layer
- Unstake: convert test sUSDr back to test USDr
If you’re interested in testing these features, hop on over to the RealFi Portal at preprod.realfi.co. More detail on participation and rewards is expected through official RealFi channels soon. View here the Cardano forum announcement.
Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIP) Updates
The Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) process lets any stakeholder propose changes to the protocol. Proposals can be technical (address formats, transaction metadata) or conceptual, framed as a Cardano Problem Statement (CPS). They enter open review, gather feedback from the ecosystem, and either advance toward adoption or remain as reference material. We cover several proposals bi-weekly. This snapshot comes from Robert Phair.
Active Review
CIP-0190 candidate: Proof of Existence Transaction Metadata - consideration for merge after 1 month availability for review. Effectively establishes the CardanoWall service as an open standard: usable for proofs of publication and consistency from simple text objects to trees of documents and source code.
Others considered at `Last Check` before merge:
- CPS-0025 candidate: Small pool disadvantage in VRF tiebreakers
- CPS-0032 candidate: Handle Provider Interoperability
- CPS-0033 candidate: DRep Voting Power Concentration
Completed
- CIP-0173: Net Change Limit Parameter
- CIP-0179: On-Chain Surveys and Polls
- CIP-0187: Utilization-Scaled Pledge Bonus
Cardanians: Weekly Ecosystem Updates
On July 6, 2026, Cardanians released its latest Ecosystem Newsletter, highlighting several developments across the Cardano ecosystem. According to the update, Cardano is nearing readiness for the V11 “van Rossem” hard fork, with the upgrade already completed on Preview and Preprod testnets, 88% of recent blocks produced on V11, and most major exchanges prepared for the transition. The newsletter also notes that Cardano’s CME futures will reach the six-month milestone in August, satisfying a key requirement under the SEC’s generic listing standards for a potential spot ADA ETF.
Additionally, Cardanians highlights new developer and user tools from Cexplorer, including free PRO Pass NFTs that increase API limits for builders and the launch of Pay by Cexplorer, a service for creating and sharing ADA payment links. For this and more, view the X thread.
Cardano Newsletter: Weekly Cardano Digest #131
On July 6, 2026, Cardano Ambassador Lucas Macchiavelli released the latest Weekly Cardano Digest (#133), covering several developments across the ecosystem.
According to the digest, CSWAP announced that BTC Karma, one of the first Bitcoin-native DeFi protocols running directly on the Cardano mainnet, now supports the Phantom wallet. As per the update, Bitcoin holders can connect Phantom and stake BTC in just a few clicks, earning yield while participating in the Cardano ecosystem. CEO Jon Kravetz noted that more wallet integrations are already in development, with further onboarding paths on the way.
On the tooling side, TxPipe announced new Leios support in Pallas, its Rust library for Cardano. As per the digest, developers can now interact with the Ouroboros Leios protocol directly from Rust, with the update ready to run against the live Musashi Dojo Leios public testnet. This gives builders early, low-level access to Cardano’s next-generation scaling layer as it moves through public testing toward a mainnet hard fork targeted later in 2026.
For more highlights from this week’s digest, head over to the full issue here.
Spotlight on Cardano Content Creators
This week, we’re shining a light on some of Cardano’s community-driven content creators and ecosystem contributors. Across interviews, educational sessions, technical deep dives, and community discussions, these individuals and teams continue to help make Cardano more accessible, informative, and engaging for builders and community members alike. Here are a few recent highlights from across the ecosystem:
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Crypto Dossier (on RealFi & USDr on Cardano)
Crypto Dossier published a video digging into Cardano’s RealFi initiative and the USDr stablecoin. He traces RealFi’s goal of banking the unbanked back to early IOG concepts from 2021, tying it to Cardano’s ongoing work on digital identity, KYC solutions, and pilot programs in Ethiopia and Tanzania. The video also covers the recent testnet launch and discusses how USDr could serve as a core stable asset for the ecosystem, with potential effects on DeFi usage, liquidity, and ada demand: Watch It Here -
Linda (a Recap of ‘Cardano’s Big Month’)
Linda published a video summarizing recent Cardano developments, including the RealFi testnet launch and USDr stablecoin infrastructure, the live Ouroboros Leios testnet, and the upcoming Van Rossem hard fork. She covers what these updates mean for throughput and real-world finance integration going forward: Check out her video here on X.
Community Learning & Developer Engagement
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Next-Gen Node Diversity: Exploring the Dingo Go-Based Cardano Node with Chris Gianelloni | Developers Office Hour - In this session, Chris Gianelloni, CEO of Blink Labs, explores Dingo, a high-performance Cardano node and block producer written in Go. The discussion covers the importance of implementation diversity for network resilience, Dingo’s architecture, its development roadmap, and how alternative node clients contribute to Cardano’s long-term decentralization. The full episode can be viewed here.
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The Future of the Scalus Development Platform with Alex Nemish & Oleksii Khodakivskyi | Developers Office Hour - Scalus Development Platform Roadmap – In this session, Lantr co-founders Oleksii Khodakivskyi (CEO) and Alex Nemish (CTO) explore the evolution of the Scalus Development Platform. The discussion reviews the past year’s progress, outlines the roadmap ahead, highlights upcoming features and integrations, and explains how developers can contribute to the open-source project. The full episode can be viewed here.
Updates from the Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation has shared several recent updates, highlighting progress across global policy engagement, cross-industry standards, institutional partnerships, and educational initiatives.
The Foundation was highly visible this month, with engagements framing Cardano as a serious partner for regulators, enterprises, and standards bodies alike. At the Point Zero Forum in Zurich, held June 23–25, Foundation leaders joined sessions on programmable money, verifiable identity, and agentic AI in finance, and co-hosted a session with GLEIF alongside a Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) roundtable focused on moving regulated financial institutions onto public blockchain infrastructure.
On the compliance front, the Foundation continued building out its Digital Product Passport (DPP), positioning Cardano as public infrastructure for the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). For the full report, read here.
Expanding its standards footprint, Cardano Foundation has joined the Legal Context Protocol (LCP), a new open standard launched by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Integra Ledger to attach verifiable legal terms to transactions carried out by autonomous AI agents. The protocol addresses a gap current agent-payment infrastructure doesn’t cover: which legal terms apply to a deal, what jurisdiction governs it, and how disputes get resolved when something breaks. Want to learn more about this, read here
On the enterprise front, the Foundation updated its industry-facing pages on cardanofoundation.org, laying out concretely how different sectors can put Cardano to use. The Financial Services page frames the pitch around cross-border payments still averaging a 6.35% cost, and compliance eating up roughly 19% of annual revenue for banks and fintechs, with Cardano’s answer being deterministic transaction fees, compliance logic built into the asset layer, and full lifecycle tokenization for bonds, funds, and receivables. Explore Financial Services here.
The Supply Chain page leads with its own numbers: 53% of environmental claims checked in a recent EU Commission enforcement sweep were found vague or misleading, and counterfeit or misdeclared goods account for $467B in global trade annually. Explore Supply Chain here.
On the educational side, the Cardano Academy recently released two new short-format videos. One looks back at the Cardano Constitutional Convention held in December 2024, where delegates from over 50 countries, elected across more than 60 community workshops, gathered in Buenos Aires and Nairobi to deliberate and vote on the Cardano Constitution. Watch the video here. The other traces the history of double-entry bookkeeping as a way into explaining how blockchain-based record-keeping builds on that foundation. Watch the video here.
Update from Intersect MBO
For the past week, Intersect Weekly Update #118 confirmed several notable governance milestones worth highlighting. On the technical front, let’s look at the van Rossem hard fork that has cleared all technical benchmarks: 89% of block production has upgraded to node version 11, with exchanges and DApps both surpassing the 80% adoption threshold. The Hard Fork Working Group voted unanimously to recommend ratification, with on-chain DRep voting now above the 60% threshold.
The same weekly report also gave a first look at something Intersect has been building for quite a while behind the scenes. They’re preparing to launch the Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAPs), a dedicated workspace where community members can formally propose constitutional amendments or flag governance concerns via Constitutional Issue Statements (CIS). As Intersect put it, this isn’t about rushing constitutional amendments on-chain, it’s about creating a shared public workspace where ideas can be raised, improved, challenged, refined, bundled where appropriate, and prepared properly before the community decides what should move forward.
Beyond the weekly report itself, Intersect’s blog and social promotion around the Constitutional Committee election have also been worth a closer look. Ten candidates are now standing for the four available seats, a notable jump from the five who had registered by the June 21 deadline. Voting runs through July 23 at 21:45 UTC, with each DRep able to select up to four candidates, and each pick carrying that DRep’s full delegated voting power. Intersect has been using the run-up to push DReps to actually read candidate proposals rather than sit the vote out, since a body this consequential loses legitimacy fast if turnout stays thin. Who’s standing in the 2026 Constitutional Committee election
Cardano Forum Top 10 Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
- Cardano deserves an app that actually needs Cardano — our earnest attempt (Rational Protocol, preprod alpha)
- Marketing Doesn’t Fix a Broken Governance
- Cardano governance doesn’t belong in a Discord server
- Applications Now Open: Voluntary Cardano Community Director
- Cardano Event Recap – Networking Day 2026: Blockchain Startups – Building in the AI Era
- Developers Office Hours #67 – CIP-113 KYC: From Standard to Implementation
- Posada_io — Treasury Proposal: The Retail Door Cardano Never Had
- Is there a fully open-source hardware wallet DRep voting solution?
- Looking for feedback on SummA, a Cardano swap comparison tool
- Scalus 2026 Resubmission: Smaller Scope, Lower Ask, Dijkstra Readiness & Scoped Runtime
Upcoming Community Events
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07-09 Hard Fork Working Group: Intersect has been informed of a proposal in brief, for the next Cardano mainnet hardfork. A tranche of work related to the core haskell node, funded by the treasury has neared completion, been identified and put forward as a candidate for a mainnet hard fork - More Details Here
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07-11 IndiaCodex’26 Cardano Hackathon: Inaugural Event: The official start of India’s 10-day nationwide hackathon, beginning offline in Hyderabad with team formation, mentorship, and a shot at 6.5k ADA in prizes! Kick-off in Hyderabad hosted by Nucast in collaboration with Hyderabad DAO - More Details Here
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28-07 Rare Evo 2026 (28–31 July, Las Vegas): Rare Evo returns to ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas for its annual cross-chain blockchain and AI conference, featuring speakers from across the blockchain, fintech, and policy worlds. Intersect Enterprise member Rare Network LLC hosts the event. rareevo.io
For more weekly events, visit Cardano Events
Many thanks and greetings from the Community Team!