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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:
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Intersect Board Elections 2026: Applications are now open for two elected Intersect Board seats, with voting scheduled for September 14–25 and results expected on September 28.
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Constitutional Amendment Portal: The new alpha portal gives ada holders a more accessible way to propose, discuss, and follow potential amendments to the Cardano Constitution.
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Stake Pool Operator Scripts Update: New SPO scripts add support for upcoming LedgerApp v8, HW-CLI 1.20, and Cardano-Signer v1.35, alongside improved governance voting and Ledger operations.
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Daedalus 11.3.0: The latest Daedalus release introduces a DRep Directory, improved governance features, wallet support, reliability updates, and the new Ariadne support portal.
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Ambassador Stories – Ayomide Osemene: New Ambassador Ayomide shares how Project Catalyst sparked his journey into Cardano and his passion for education, collaboration, and helping others engage with the ecosystem.
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Cardano Improvement Proposals: This week’s CIP snapshot covers a new proposal for a Nested Transactions service layer, the ongoing CIP-113 audit, and three proposals that have completed the process.
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Ecosystem & Creator Highlights: Cardanians highlights progress with Ouroboros Leios and growing ecosystem activity, while creators cover Hydra, node infrastructure, and Cardano fundamentals.
All this and more in today’s Digest.
Intersect Board Elections 2026: Applications Now Opened
Intersect has opened applications for its 2026 Board Elections, with two member-elected Board seats available as the terms of Adam Rusch and Kavinda Kariyapperuma come to an end.
As per Intersect’s comms, applications opened on August 31 at 12:00 UTC and will remain open until September 11 at 12:00 UTC. Voting is scheduled for September 14–25, with the results expected on September 28.
To be eligible for election, candidates must have been an Intersect member for at least 180 days, be in good standing, have completed identity verification, and have previously served at least one term on an Intersect Committee or the Board.
But what does the Board actually do? Well… The Board plays an important role in setting Intersect MBO’s strategic priorities and overseeing the organisation, making the election an opportunity for eligible members to have a direct say in its future direction. Intersect is encouraging eligible members considering a candidacy to review the requirements and prepare their applications before the deadline. Sounds interesting? Check out the full story here.
The Constitutional Amendment Portal: A Real Process For Changing The Constitution
Any ada holder can propose an amendment to the Cardano Constitution. In practice, few do. You need 100,000 ada for the governance action deposit and you need to submit a valid governance action on-chain. Possible, but far from accessible for the average ada holder.
That is why the Intersect Civics Committee stood up the Constitutional Amendment Process Working Group in September 2025. The group pulled in IOG, the Cardano Foundation, Intersect, the Constitutional Committee, DReps, SPOs, constitutional delegates and community members. It defined the requirements such a process and tool would have to meet, then built it.
Since early August 2026, the Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAP) has been live in alpha. Connect a CIP-30 wallet, pick a username, and you are in. No email, no password. You can propose an amendment by highlighting the passage you want to change and explaining why, raise a Constitutional Issue Statement if you have spotted a problem but not the fix, or comment on what others have put forward and follow it through consultation, ready and done.
It is an alpha, released early on purpose, which means the feedback you give now shapes what it becomes. Try it: https://cap.intersectmbo.org
Stake Pool Operator Scripts Update
Martin Lang (ATADA Pool) has released a new update for the StakePool Operator Scripts (SPOS), bringing support for upcoming LedgerApp v8, HW-CLI 1.20, and Cardano-Signer v1.35.
Currently available in the testnet directory on GitHub ahead of the official LedgerApp v8 release, key updates include:
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Batch Governance Voting: Added “unrestricted” signing mode allowing Ledger hardware wallets to sign votes on multiple governance actions simultaneously using a DRep key (24b).
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DRep Key & Payment Flexibility: Enhanced flexibility for DRep registration and retirement operations (21b, 21d), allowing CLI-wallet funding for Ledger DRep operations and Ledger payment for CLI-Key DRep actions.
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Direct Pool Operations: SPOs can now register or update a stake pool directly using the pool key and payment key stored on a Ledger hardware wallet (05c).
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Detailed HW Error Reporting: Enhanced, detailed error messaging across 15+ transaction and certification scripts (including rewards claims, asset transfers, delegation, and minting/burning).
SPOs preparing for Ledger v8 testing can access the updated scripts directly in the project’s GitHub repository.
Daedalus 11.3.0 Released
Daedalus 11.3.0 was announced on September 1, bringing new governance tools, improved wallet support and reliability updates. According to SE7EN Labs, the release adds a DRep Directory to the Governance Center, allowing users to search, sort and filter DReps, review their details and delegate voting power directly from Daedalus. Users can also delegate to Abstain or No Confidence.
It also introduces Ariadne, SE7EN Labs’ new Daedalus support portal, while explorer links have been updated and outdated endpoints removed. Compatibility for some Byron-era wallets has been improved, addressing an issue affecting normal wallet use.
Daedalus 11.3.0 also adds a new process watchdog to improve process restarts, log rotation and shutdowns. Mithril fast-forward support and a Linux GPU recovery option complete the update. For the full run down, check out the X thread announcement here
Ambassador Stories, with Ayomide Osemene
Meet Ayomide, one of the newest Ambassadors to join the Cardano Ambassador Program. Her journey into Cardano began at university through Project Catalyst, which sparked her curiosity and led her to explore the ecosystem, connect with the community, and keep learning.
With a background in mathematics, product management, education, and event coordination, Ayomide is passionate about helping others understand complex ideas and creating opportunities for people to learn and participate. Cardano also introduced her to decentralization and, along the way, showed her that her voice and perspective could contribute to the conversation.
As an Ambassador, Ayomide wants to use her skills, voice, and passion to help more people understand and engage with Cardano. For her, that means education, collaboration, and consistent community participation, while also knowing when to point people toward the right resources and experienced voices.
Looking ahead, Ayomide’s vision is simple: mass adoption!
So… want to discover how a university student who first encountered Cardano through Project Catalyst became an Ambassador helping others find their way into the ecosystem? Catch Ayomide’s full story here.
Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIP) Updates
This week’s Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) snapshot from Robert Phair offers another look at the ideas and technical work moving through Cardano’s open proposal process. There’s a new proposal exploring a service layer for Nested Transactions, an ongoing audit of CIP-113, and three proposals that have now completed the process. It’s a good illustration of how ideas can enter the discussion, go through community review and technical scrutiny, and ultimately either move toward adoption or become useful reference points for future development.
New Proposals
- CIP-0198 candidate: Nested Transactions - Service Layer - an off-chain mechanism to publicise and assemble intent-based transactions (such as “babel fees” in token swaps): compatible with Nested Transactions (CIP-0118) in the Cardano Ledger, using network protocols such as the node’s Decentralized Message Queue (CIP-0137)
Active Review
- CIP-0113 candidate: Programmable token-like assets - audit in progress (no major findings)
Completed
- CIP-0178: Merkle Root of Transactions in Block Header
- CIP-0188: Token-Owned Addresses
- CPS-0030: Quantum-secure settlement layer
Cardanians: Weekly Ecosystem Updates
On 31 August, 2026, Cardanians (CRDN) published Newsletter #138, covering what they described as one of Cardano’s busiest weeks in months. The issue puts Ouroboros Leios front and center, highlighting the 500% throughput increase achieved during the Musashi Dojo Earth phase testnet, with four more phases to go and a year-end hard fork now broadly expected. The newsletter also looks at Cardano’s growing activity, with monthly active addresses rising 38% to 266,500 according to TokenTerminal, alongside the first Japanese exchange listing for midnight-3. For the full breakdown, check out the Cardanians X thread.
Cardano Newsletter: Weekly Cardano Digest #141
Lucas is back with another Weekly Cardano Newsletter, this time with #141.
This week’s edition shines a spotlight on three standout developments across the ecosystem. First up, Cardano Lightning has entered pre-production with a state channel architecture built on a fork of the Lightning Development Kit, marking an important step forward for Cardano’s payment infrastructure.
Second, Plutus 1.68.0.0 shipped during the week, bringing Plutus V4 ledger API types ahead of the Dijkstra hard fork, along with improvements to Data constructor casing and new builtins aimed at improving script performance.
And third, Midnight City has progressed to a visualization environment designed to scale to millions of participants, moving beyond earlier demo-scale deployments. Check out the full issue at Lucas’s newsletter site: Weekly Cardano Digest #141
Spotlight on Cardano Content Creators
Cardano’s ecosystem is full of people documenting it, explaining it, and building on it in public, and we want to take a moment to recognize their contributions. This week’s roundup brings together a mix of voices: creators breaking down technical upgrades and staking fundamentals for newcomers, and builders sharing firsthand updates on what they’re shipping. Here are a few Content Creators Spotlight from across the ecosystem:
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Cheeky Crypto Unfiltered recently dropped a set of two videos diving into several of Cardano’s infrastructure upgrades. The first, titled “Cardano Hydra Just Got a Lot Faster”, covers how Hydra switched the way it stores data behind the scenes (from JSON to a more compact format called CBOR). According to the video, this shrank a 3-node test database by more than half, from 27.4MB down to 10.5MB, with the switch happening automatically. He also notes that data sent between nodes is now smaller too, and everything reads and writes up to 21× faster.
The second video, titled “Cardano’s Node Problem Is Quietly Being Rebuilt,” zooms out from that Layer 2 upgrade to look at the core infrastructure. As he lays out, several pieces are in motion: a new version called Mithril 2630, “certified snapshots” that let new nodes verify they’re syncing the right data, an early-stage messaging system (DMQ), support for multiple independent verifiers instead of relying on one, and an experimental way to store node data using IPFS (a decentralized file-sharing system). He’s careful to note it’s all still in testing, not finished, but the way nodes get up and running is being reworked from the ground up.
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For a while now, MB (@Mb_you_know) has been running a daily ELI5 explainer series breaking down Cardano and blockchain concepts one topic at a time. His latest post, Day 16, covers what happens at the end of a Cardano epoch, but the series builds from the ground up, touching on how to choose a good stake pool, what delegation actually means, how staking rewards are calculated along the way, and much more. You can follow the thread from the start by working back through his previous posts: See Day 16 here
Community Learning & Developer Engagement
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During a recent Developer Office Hours, Zack “Cash” Soesbee (CEO) and Patrick “PB” (COO) of Anvil Development Agency gave a behind-the-scenes look at what the team has built on Cardano, from tools like Weld, the Anvil API, and their WayUp marketplace to newer efforts like Hodei, a seedless wallet, and Sellout.io, a ticketing platform, and more. According to Cash, their focus now is real-world adoption: building ordinary software for businesses first, earning their trust, then introducing blockchain later, as they did with Blom, an industrial paint company whose quoting process they cut from two hours to thirty minutes: Watch it here
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From one Cardano-native team to another, a separate Developer Office Hours session brought on Albina, Sandro, and Patrick from Masumi for an update on the Masumi ecosystem. They cover recent developments across the network and what’s coming next, touching on Masumi, Sokosumi, highlighted agents, the Dev Hub, and the business vision behind collaborations and x402. The session also digs into Masumi Smart Contract V2, Hydra integration, Veridian Agent Certification, and the latest roadmap: Watch it here.
Updates from the Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation has shared several recent updates, highlighting ecosystem progress across enterprise adoption, institutional outreach, global events, education, and governance.
On August 31, Blockforce’s traceability platform officially went live on Cardano as its public proof layer, with over 500,000 supply chain records already anchored on-chain. Here’s how it works: the commercial data stays private on a permissioned Hyperledger Fabric layer, while cryptographic proofs get published to Cardano so auditors, regulators, and end customers can independently verify record integrity without ever touching the underlying data. Joint engineering work between Blockforce and the Foundation managed to cut the per-record cost by 92%, and signed contracts now cover 6.5 million certification records through 2030 across fashion, automotive, agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics in Brazil.
On August 25, the Foundation kicked off “Cardano on the Road,” a new institutional outreach initiative for Latin America. First stop: Petrobras headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s largest company, sitting at roughly $90 billion in annual revenue. The idea here is to steadily grow Cardano’s footprint across Latin American enterprises and public institutions in the months ahead, so expect more stops on this road trip.
Cardano also confirmed its role as Platinum Sponsor at TOKEN2049 Singapore, taking place October 7–8, the ecosystem’s largest Asia Pacific presence yet. The booth at Marina Bay Sands will showcase 20 ecosystem projects, and the side events are worth circling on your calendar too: a Node Diversity Celebration Day on October 6, and a UTXO Pitch Night on October 7 where founders get the chance to pitch for up to $500K in funding. Full details plus the conference discount code (CARDANOSG279B) are up at token2049.cardano.org.
On the thought-leadership side, Foundation CEO Fredrik Gregaard published a piece in Forbes Tech Council digging into blockchain’s transformative potential for smallholder farmers in coffee, cassava, and honey value chains, exploring how verifiable on-chain provenance can improve market access and income stability at scale. And for the builders among us, the Foundation’s Java developer guide for Cardano via BloxBean, shared August 27, drew a lot of community engagement. The message: Java developers can build on Cardano without learning a new language or toolchain, using the same Maven-based workflows and testing infrastructure they already know. No excuses left, Java devs.
Lastly, the Foundation is hiring an Ecosystem Governance Coordinator focused on DRep relations and community outreach, a good sign of just how much institutional weight Cardano’s on-chain governance ecosystem is picking up, and how seriously the Foundation is leaning into it.
Update from Intersect MBO
According to Intersect MBO’s latest weekly update, preparations for the Dijkstra era continue, with work progressing across node development, release readiness and node diversity.
Intersect reports that Amaru has achieved its Q3 goal of delivering a relay node binary and is now working toward a block-producing pre-release on Mainnet in late September. The team is also continuing work on conformance, performance and robustness as it moves toward block production.
Alongside the development work, Intersect says that Node Diversity Workshops are planned for Singapore on October 6 and London on November 12–13. The workshops are aimed at bringing together node implementation teams, SPOs and other stakeholders involved in the upcoming upgrade. Be on the look out for more updated in the coming weeks.
And for those who missed Intersect’s Weekly Round Up X-Spacelive on September 1, don’t worry, as the space has been recorded. The Space covered the latest developments across the organisation and Cardano, with time for community questions and discussion. The recording is available on X. Listen to it here.
Read the Board Elections announcement
Beyond talks about hard forks, node diversity, and X-Spaces, Intersect MBO has also been making changes to how members interact with the organisation. In its latest update, Intersect highlighted improvements to the Member Area, including a new self-service voting area and an “All members” page where members and associates can connect, view participation badges and committee or Board roles, and maintain their public profiles.
Intersect also reports that it has simplified its member verification process by removing the previous address verification requirement. Check out the Intersect Weekly Update #126 for further details and more updates.
Cardano Forum Top 10 Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
- Meetup Recap & Recording: SecondFi Asset Migration & Safety Guide
- DR Congo Cardano & Web3 Community Call #4 — Recap
- 45B’s Cardano Design Centre, join the Q&A X space!
- Trying To Find Lost Cardano
- Rapport de la séance hebdomadaire: Lundi 24/08/2026
- Cardano for Beginners Workshop Recap: From Learning Cardano to Using It in Goma, DR Congo
- Developers Office Hours #75 - Masumi Updates: A packed session with fresh updates, new ideas, and plenty of innovation (28 August)
- Empowering Regional Communities: Why Local Language Content is Key to Cardano’s Growth
- Recap Cardano Indonesian Townhall 2026 - #7
- Ouroboros Peras Tracker
Upcoming Community Events
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09-04 Developers Office Hours #76: ​Join Santiago Carmuega, Founder & CEO of TxPipe, for a deep dive into Demeter.run: infrastructure designed to make building and scaling Cardano dApps easier. Explore how Demeter gives developers access to managed Cardano infrastructure, without having to provision and maintain the underlying stack. We’ll look at how it works, the developer experience, where Demeter is today, and what’s coming next. - More Details Here
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09-05 Cardano FutureTech Summit 2026: ​Cardano Build Yourself, Build Your Future is an in-person Tech Summit bringing together students, developers, innovators, and tech enthusiasts to explore the future of Blockchain, Web3, Plutus, Haskell, and decentralized technology. ​Come learn from experts, connect with like-minded builders, discover scholarships, certifications, internships, and career opportunities, and gain practical insights to help you build your future in the digital economy. - More Details Here
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09-07 Cardano First Steps in North-Kivu pour les francophones: Cardano First Steps in North-Kivu is a weekly introductory program designed for young people, students, entrepreneurs, developers, local organizations, and anyone interested in discovering the world of Cardano, blockchain, and Web3 in French. Through interactive sessions, participants will explore the history of Cardano, its governance model, decentralized finance (DeFi), digital wallets, NFTs, the opportunities offered by Project Catalyst, Intersect MBO, and Midnight, as well as practical blockchain applications for community development, NGOs, and innovation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - More Details Here
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09-08 Hard Fork Working Group - More Details Here
For more weekly events, visit Cardano Events
Many thanks and greetings from the Community Team!