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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Gimbalabs Hackathon 2026: The Piece of Pie Hackathon continues to showcase Cardano’s “build in public” culture, with teams competing across multiple tracks and real-world milestones.
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CIP Updates: New proposals explore mobile wallet deep-link signing, utilization-scaled pledge bonuses, and urgent transaction prioritization, while several major CIPs and CPSs continue through review.
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Aiken v1.1.22 Released: The latest Aiken release introduces compiler optimizations, tooling improvements, expanded Linux support, and fixes across the development stack.
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Cardano Summit 2026 Proposal: DReps are now voting on the revised Cardano Summit treasury proposal, featuring a reduced budget and a renewed focus on ecosystem impact in Singapore.
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Community Learning & Dev Engagement: Recent sessions explored Hydra scaling, supply chain traceability through Zengate, and the future of scalable Cardano applications.
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Cardano Foundation Updates: The Foundation shared updates on accelerator programs, RWA education, open-source engagement, and blockchain-powered payment innovation with Mastercard.
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Intersect MBO Updates: Intersect shared progress on the upcoming hard fork, Budget 2026 voting, treasury research tooling for DReps, and infrastructure readiness around Node v11.0.1.
All this and more in today’s Digest.
Gimbalabs Piece of Pie Hackathon 2026
Building in public is having a moment in the Cardano ecosystem, and Gimbalabs is right at the centre of it. Their Piece of Pie Hackathon is a 12-week event running through to July 19th, and it does things a little differently. Rather than relying on judges to pick a winner, participants qualify through consistent, verifiable public work, posting weekly progress updates and shipping something real.
There are 33,000 ada on the table across four tracks. The Builder Pie rewards teams for building consistently over the full 12 weeks. The Cardano Pie, the largest slice at 20,000 ada, is reserved for projects building on Cardano mainnet, with qualifying teams also earning a chance to pitch to the Draper Dragon VC Fund. The Real User Pie goes to teams that land at least one real paying customer, and the Feedback Pie rewards participants who contribute recorded feedback sessions to other builders.
The Cardano Foundation is the official sponsor of the event, backing the Cardano Pie track and the Draper Dragon pitch opportunity. Enrollment has closed, but the build period is very much still live and worth keeping an eye on. Final presentations run from July 12th to 19th, with payouts wrapping up shortly after. Follow the progress and learn more at: https://www.gimbalabs.com/piece-of-pie
For a deeper look at what Gimbalabs is building and why it matters, the Cardano Forum post is a good place to start:
Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIP) Updates
Three new proposals have entered the pipeline this week:
The first, Cardano Wallet Deep-Link Signing, tackles a gap that CIP-30 cannot address: mobile-native DApps running outside a wallet-controlled browser context. Rather than relying on relay servers, QR codes, or WebSockets, the proposal defines a deep-link protocol that lets a native mobile DApp ask an installed Cardano wallet to handle signing operations directly through the OS URL-handling mechanism. Reference implementations are in active development by Flux Point Studios on both the DApp and wallet sides.
The second, Utilization-Scaled Pledge Bonus, proposes a targeted adjustment to the reward formula that scales the pledge bonus by pool utilization. As things stand, the per-delegator share of that bonus shrinks as a pool grows, which cuts against the behaviour the protocol’s incentive model is designed to encourage. The fix makes the bonus proportional to how much of a pool’s saturation capacity is actually filled, strengthening Sybil resistance without introducing any new parameters.
Rounding out this week’s new submissions is a CPS: Prioritising Urgent Transactions. Developed off the back of community interviews at Buidler Fest 3, it frames the absence of protocol-enforced urgency signalling on Cardano as a problem that needs solving, and opens the floor to solutions such as tiered or dynamic pricing. Any proposals coming out of it are expected to target linear-Leios.
Active Review
- CIP-0113 candidate: Programmable token-like assets — developer feedback is actively being sought, see the call for review
- CIP-0182 candidate: Optimistic Constitutionality
- CPS (unconfirmed): Coordination of Hierarchical Handle Namespace
Completed
- CIP-0177: Ouroboros Tachys - Faster Cardano partner chains
- CIP-0181: Remove DRep Requirement for Reward Withdrawals
- CPS-0026 & 27: Approaches to Fully Homomorphic Encryption and Post-Quantum Signatures
Aiken v1.1.22 Released
The Aiken Team recently confirmed the release of Aiken v1.1.22, and it comes packed with meaningful improvements across the toolchain. On the compiler side, there are low-level optimizations covering builtins, constants, and boolean expressions. The “aiken bench” command has also received a glow-up, now displaying max size projections alongside human-readable numbers. Blueprint generation gets a new flag that exposes types sitting outside the contract ABI, and a long-standing LSP issue has been resolved, meaning the language server can now suggest imports from modules outside the project dependency tree.
Rounding things out are a series of fixes across the parser, formatter, code generation, and test framework outputs, plus expanded Linux support for aarch64 architecture. Full release notes are on GitHub: https://github.com/aiken-lang/aiken/releases/tag/v1.1.22
If you want to go deeper, Matthias Benkort, Technical Director of Open Source Development at the Cardano Foundation, recently hosted a Developer Office Hour walking through the stdlib v3.1.0 release and an early preview of the v1.1.22 features. Worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A7_zJMhoSM
Cardano Summit 2026: DReps, Your Vote Matters
The Cardano Summit has always been one of the ecosystem’s most significant moments for bringing the global community together, and 2026 is shaping up to be no different. Timed alongside TOKEN2049 in Singapore, the event puts Cardano’s builders, governance maturity, and ecosystem projects in front of a global audience at one of the most important financial hubs in Asia. As Martin Lang put it, “Holding the summit this year might be the most important one ever. We have to show that we are still strong and pushing.”
The proposal has been revised in direct response to community feedback, bringing a 22% budget reduction while retaining a tier-one experience, increased Cardano Foundation internal resourcing to reduce external vendor costs, and a decoupling from EMURGO’s TOKEN2049 sponsorship proposal. It also lays out the strategic case for Singapore as the chosen location and the impact the event can have on critical integrations including USDCx, LayerZero, CIP-113, and Bitcoin bridging.
Voting on the Revised Cardano Summit Treasury Proposal closes this Friday, 29th of May. If you are a DRep or delegator, this one is worth weighing in on.
https://x.com/Cardano_CF/status/2058883053880009014?s=20
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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Linda (Crypto content creator | Cardano: MALU Pool & DRep)
Linda just dropped a sharp new video breaking down why the exploding crypto AI boom, especially AI agents handling autonomous commerce, could be one of Cardano’s biggest opportunities yet. She covers McKinsey’s estimate of up to $5 trillion flowing through this space by 2030, how giants like Google, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, and Coinbase are racing to build payment rails for AI (not humans), and why Cardano is uniquely well-positioned with x402 support via Masumi, Midnight’s privacy features, its deterministic eUTXO model for reliability, and strong security overall. Super well-produced and worth a watch! Watch It Here -
Peter Bui (Cardano Ambassador)
Peter Bui recently released a great new video highlighting why strong DApp discovery tools are essential for Cardano’s growth. He walks through the newly updated cardno.org DApps directory (with on-chain activity and transaction data), the long-standing CardanoCube as a key ecosystem map, and AdaStack’s rich project data, APIs, and explorer features. But that’s not all, because he also explains how these platforms help newcomers, builders, and researchers discover what’s actually being built on Cardano. Super informative and worth watching! Check out his video here on X.
Community Learning & Developer Engagement
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Building Scalable Cardano Applications with Hydra | Developers Office Hour - During a recent Developers Office Hour, Sharan Konerira and the Hydra team from Input Output Global explored Hydra, Cardano’s Layer 2 scaling solution designed to support high-performance DApps. The session covered the Hydra Head protocol, instant finality, high TPS, and zero-fee transactions, alongside practical use cases including micropayments and gaming. The team also shared insights into Hydra’s future development roadmap and ecosystem integration plans. The full episode can be viewed here.**
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Cardano Seminar: Zengate - What it Takes to Make Blockchain Traceability Work in Supply Chain - In a recent Cardano Seminar, Zengate Global was highlighted for their work in real-world assets and supply chain management on Cardano. The presentation explored how blockchain solutions are being applied to under-digitized upstream markets, helping improve coordination, transparency, and trust across global supply chains. Sam Lambert, co-founder of Zengate Global, also shared insights on compliance challenges, EUDR regulations, future financial services, and lessons learned connecting on-the-ground operations with enterprise adoption. The full episode can be viewed here.
Updates from the Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation has shared several recent updates, highlighting ecosystem progress across education, open source engagement, accelerator programs, and payments innovation.
The Foundation has opened applications for service providers to support the Fall 2026 cohort of the Cardano Accelerator Program, running through the VentureHub platform. This cohort is themed around Real-World Trust, with a focus on verifying origins and data on Cardano. Service providers with relevant expertise are invited to apply and contribute to the next wave of projects building on the network. Find out more and apply here.
The Foundation also launched a new case study on the Cardano Academy titled ‘Blockchain for RWA’. The course examines a live tokenization infrastructure running on Cardano, tracing the full journey from physical asset to its tradeable digital twin. The course makes the case that Cardano’s deterministic security model and native asset design are uniquely suited to handle the complexity of physical asset management - and exactly at a moment when institutional players are beginning to digitize at scale. Explore the case study here.
Besides that, the Cardano Foundation recently sponsored the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit, alongside a delegation from Intersect MBO. The team effectively engaged with the broader open source community and sharing how Cardano operates as an open source project. Read more here. (impressions from, Adam Dean, Rick McCracken, Andamio, IntersectOSO)
Finally, in a recent episode of Let’s Talk Cardano, the Foundation spoke with Christian Rau, Senior Vice President at Mastercard, about how the company is integrating blockchain and stablecoin technology into its global payments network. The conversation covers settlement innovation, crypto card programs, Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network, and the emerging frontier of agentic commerce, and what all of this means for the future of digital payments at scale. The full episode can be re-watched on YouTube or on Spotify.
Update from Intersect MBO
According to Intersect MBO May 22, 2026 Upgrade Bulletin, Node v11.0.1 remains stable and continues to be the mandatory upgrade path for all infrastructure providers looking to successfully transition through the Protocol Version 11 hard fork boundary. As per the bulletin, recent discussions were mainly focused on the risk of schedule pressure around critical tooling dependencies. The update also briefly touched on a recently identified and resolved DB-Sync issue that was affecting synchronization stability. Read the full bulletin details here.
Following the latest Hard Fork Working Group discussions, the previously targeted Mainnet governance action submission timeline is expected to shift, with the group aligning on delaying progression rather than risking instability while dependencies such as Ogmios readiness and related integration confirmations remain unresolved. For anyone interested in joining an upcoming Hard Fork Working Group session, check out the calendar overview at the end of this Community Digest.
On the budget front, as per the latest update from Intersect, the Final Feedback and Review phase of the Cardano Budget 2026 process has now closed. The 69 submitted proposals are locked ahead of the Hydra Voting phase, which kicks off on May 26, 2026 at 12PM UTC.
DReps and ada holders with a stake address can still provide feedback to inform voting decisions, but proposers can no longer edit their proposals, ensuring the integrity of what is being voted on. As a helpful resource, proposal creators also submitted short two-minute video introductions to their proposals, collated into three separate videos.
Rounding things out, the Cardano Budget Committee recently shared a new resource for DReps. What is that? Well…it’s a Treasury History Archive designed to support discovery and research. The archive pulls from Catalyst records and on-chain sources, giving DReps a structured way to explore past treasury activity as context for current and future decisions. It is presented as a discovery tool including comprehensive summaries - all with the purpose to encourage further review. Explore the Treasury History Archive here.
Cardano Reddit Top 10 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Busy stand. In every corner of the photo, members of the Cardano delegation are engaged in conversations with event attendees. And this was only day 1 of The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit North America 2026
- Cardano and Restoring the Cuban Economy
- On Science - Charles Hoskinson
- Cardano and tokenized stocks
- Democracy: a government of the people, by the people, for the people, but the people are retarded.
- I am concerned about the closure of Cardano research laboratories
- New Cardano Academy case study live: Blockchain for Real-World Assets
- Built a 3-layer on-chain governance protocol in Aiken called Quorum
- Cattle Daddy Media’s Marketing & Content Creation Launch Close Out Video - cattle daddy media
- How many nodes have the complete cardano blockchain?
Cardano Forum Top 9 Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
- Cardano Project Showcase || May Edition
- The Community Wants To Know - S2 - EP 5 - Bifrost, Fluid token
- Ensuring Mithril continuity for Cardano — Intersect proposal submitted for Q3/Q4 2026
- Developer Office Hours #62 - ODATANO: Bringing Cardano to SAP Environments
- “Just Convert to Stablecoins” Is Not a Treasury Plan* DRC Community: Plus que 4 jours avant notre première session communautaire Cardano & Web3
- FAQs on Cardano Bounties
- Vietnam: Cardano Event - Networking Day 2026 — Blockchain Startups: Building in the AI Era
- USDCx上线表现与生态影响**
Upcoming Community Events
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05-26 Hard Fork Working Group: Intersect will host and facilitate the Hard Fork Working Group (HFWG) to coordinate and navigate ecosystem feedback and potential readiness, prior to formal Cardano governance actions being raised for wider consensus and approval by the community. In essence the working group follows much of the same processes and purpose as it did for the Chang and Plomin hardforks not so long ago - More Details Here
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05-26 Governance Hour #6 - Cardano Builder DAO & Initiative DAO Framework: This session takes a closer look at the Cardano Builder DAO and the Initiative DAO Framework, together with Logan Panchot, co-founder of Clarity and an elected board member of CBDAO - More Details Here
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05-30 Discover Cardano - UK (Meetup): Discover Cardano is holding a UK event in Loughborough on Saturday 30th May. The event is very much geared towards those that have an interest in getting further involved with the community, governance and learning more about what Cardano has to offer. Topics at the event include: • Intersect latest developments • How has governance evolved on chain from catalyst to treasury
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• Conversations with Budget proposers - More Details Here
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05-30 Cardano Indonesia Town Hall #7 – Edisi Mei 2026: What will we discuss? Latest Cardano Ecosystem Updates, in Indonesian from different perspectives. Topics include: an update on the Cardano Indonesian Town Hall timeline, Cardano ecosystem updates, Cardano Budget Live, and updates from MCC and CBC - More Details Here
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06-09 Venture Hub: Cardano Accelerator Program (CAP) Demo Day Spring '26 Cohort: - The Cardano Foundation’s Venture Hub is hosting Demo Day for the Spring '26 CAP cohort, with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Five ventures will present their work to an invited audience of investors and ecosystem partners. It’s a chance to see what’s been building on Cardano, meet the teams behind it, and have in-person conversations - More Details Here
For more weekly events, visit Cardano Events
Many thanks and greetings from the Community Team!