What is Cardano Blockchain’s Project Catalyst?

About Cardano’s Project Catalyst

Project Catalyst is a decentralized funding platform for the Cardano blockchain.

It’s an extension of the Cardano treasury and a testing ground for Cardano community governance as funding proposals are voted on by registered community members.

To date, it has run nine Project Catalyst Fund rounds and is gearing up for Fund10.

Through nine fund rounds, the Cardano community has cast 1.74 million community votes; voted on more than 4,770 proposals; approved more than 1,265 proposals, and allocated $64 million in total funding (*including ADA conversion from Fund10 onwards). [1]

You can sign up to view proposals and submit Project Catalyst proposals at the Cardano Ideascale here.

Project Catalyst funds

The funds to finance each of the rounds come from the Cardano treasury.

Starting in Project Catalyst Fund 10, all proposals will have to request their budgets in ADA and have to take into account any possible price volatility when they do it. In the long run, this is a necessary step to ensure the growth of the overall Cardano ecosystem. 

Ways to contribute to Project Catalyst

There are several community roles in Cardano Project Catalyst:

Proposer: The individuals or teams that write and submit proposals for each Cardano Project Catalyst Fund. 

Implementer: Those that turn funded proposals into real projects 

LV0 – New Community Reviewers: LV0 Reviewers will be invited to review up to 30 proposals and will be allocated an initial set of proposals to review based on proposals across the entire fund (they won’t be able to choose specific proposals).

LV1 – Experienced Community Reviewers: After being a successful LV0 Reviewer, this means participating in at least 1 fund in this capacity. A person can become an LV1 Reviewer and be invited to review up to 80 proposals. These will be allocated from the initial set of proposals to review based on challenge preferences selected during the registration process.  

LV2 – Community Moderators: The final level for community reviewers. Community Moderators are asked to decide whether reviews that were flagged by the Catalyst scripts should be published or discarded altogether. People in this role do not score proposals. After successfully working as a LV1 Community Reviewer an invitation will be extended to become a Community Moderator.    

Voter: those who register and vote on proposals. 

How do Project Catalyst submissions work

Each fund on the Catalyst platform follows the same structure:

Proposal Submission

Submissions are open for three weeks, during which proposers can submit draft ideas to IdeaScale. The deadline for proposal submission is on July 13th at 11:00 UTC and it’s open now. 

After July 13th, proposers can take all the feedback given by the community and edit their ideas, this window lasts for four days until July 17th, after which, it’s no longer possible to make changes. The three categories used to score ideas are: 

• Impact
• Feasibility
• Value for Money

There is more information regarding the criteria here.

Community Review

Community Reviewers registration opens on June 29th. They must score all proposals based on the predetermined criteria shown above. Both LV0 and LV1 reviewers are active during this period, and they must complete their assigned workload to receive rewards. LV0 reviewers must score the 30 assigned proposals and LV1 reviewers must score 80 proposals. 

To be a successful reviewer, none of their reviews should be flagged by the Project Catalyst system. If a review by a Community Reviewer is flagged and later the Community Moderators strike it down, the rewards won’t be delivered. The possible offenses are listed here.  

The score goes from 1 to 5 stars for each of the three categories. The overall proposal score is the average of the three criteria. It’s important to remember that Community Reviewers will be assigned proposals to review, it’s no longer possible to choose which ones to score.      

Community Voting

Community voting is done via registration which is done using the official Project Catalyst app. To vote on Catalyst you need at least 500 ADA, excluding rewards. If you registered for any previous fund, the registration will carry to Fund 10, but you won’t be able to get rewards from voting. The recommendation is to register again and that way be eligible to receive rewards.

Project Onboarding

The results from votes are tallied and published on the Project Catalyst site. From there, the successful teams are contacted and given instructions on how they must report their progress. 

Project Catalyst Fund10 info and dates

• Voting registration begins: June 29, 2023, 11:00 UTC 
• Voting registration ends: August 18, 2023, 09:00 UTC (Wallet must have a minimum balance of 500 ADA for the snapshot.)
• Submissions: Opened on June 22, 2023
• Submissions deadline: July 13, 2023, 11:00 UTC
• How to submit proposals: https://cardano.ideascale.com/

*Times are subject to change so please monitor https://projectcatalyst.io/

Community members are eligible to register to vote for Project Catalyst rounds through Yoroi Wallet.

If you have a minimum of 500 ADA in your Yoroi Wallet at the time of the snapshot, you are eligible to register to vote for Project Catalyst proposals.

View instructions for registering to vote with Yoroi Wallet here.