Meet the 12 teams selected for the Catalyst Pilot 2026

• Twelve teams selected from 117 applications, Catalyst's first funding selections since October 2025.
• The community shaped the outcome: 52 active curators helped narrow the field, 116 people applied to join the decision panel, and 35 active panelists contributed 466 accepted reviews.
• Funding follows use: 40% is paid at grant start after onboarding, and the rest depends on adoption and sustained activity.
• Every team that reached the decision stage received a private scorecard and written feedback on the Catalyst platform.

To date, Project Catalyst has funded more than 2,000 proposals across Cardano. Catalyst has given builders access to funding, bringing community expertise into decisions and helping promising work become products people use. This approach is especially key both for teams getting started and for established projects ready to build something new.

The 2026 Pilot brought those elements together: curation to strengthen submissions, specialist assessment of the business and technical case, and funding with clear expectations for adoption. Feedback and delivery discussions will support teams as they work through the steps ahead.

This time we also focused on one key question: How can the use of a new integration have a direct, measurable on-chain footprint? Twelve teams have been selected to answer this question. Congratulations to each and all of them.

They'll bring stablecoins, oracles, programmable tokens, and verifiable identity into payments, lending, healthcare, and supply chains. Every team has also committed to a public measure of adoption. Six of the selected proposals included open source commitments, and three pledged a share of future platform or protocol fee revenue back to the Cardano treasury.

A special shout-out to every team that applied, including those that didn’t make the final selection. Putting your work forward takes effort and confidence, and we know some of you will be disappointed but we hope this was still a valuable experience. Thank you for the thought and time behind your submissions.

Listed alphabetically by proposal title.

• anyqr: spend USDCx at local QRs in 10 countries
  By SyncAI. Payments at local QR codes using USDCx from a Cardano wallet, while shops receive local currency.
• AnyToAny: bridge, swap, and route into any Cardano token
  By VIA Labs. Bridging and token swaps combined into simpler routes between Cardano and other networks, including from USDC held on exchanges.
• ATLAS: Stablecoin & Oracle Perpetuals Pilot
  By House of Titans. Perpetual trading with USDM and USDCx collateral and Pyth price feeds.
• CIP-0170 Identity Rails for Global Medical Travel
  By Aline Health. Verifiable credentials for medical travel, checked without putting patient records on-chain.
• Compliant Secondary Trading for Real-World Assets on Wayup
  By Anvil. Programmable asset transfers on its marketplace, with issuer rules such as buyer eligibility enforced at settlement.
• In-Place Collateral Swaps for Cardano Lending
  By Dano Finance. Changing a loan’s collateral in one transaction without repaying the debt, with liquidations opened to independent participants.
• L4VA: AI-Managed RWA Vaults with Pyth and USDCx on Cardano
  By L4VA Technologies. AI-assisted strategies for tokenized real-world asset vaults, using Pyth prices and USDCx within limits set by governance.
• Liqwid Pyth Oracle Integration
  By Liqwid Labs. Signed Pyth prices verified inside lending transactions, to strengthen the price information used for borrowing and liquidations.
• nuhuman: Robot DIDs on a $60M Shrimp Export Line
  By Nucast. Verifiable identities for processing robots and shrimp batches, with signed production records for export traceability.
• OriLife-Tokenised Produce, Owned by Growers and Consumers
  By GreenSun Tech. Produce-linked tokens with programmable rules for verified ownership transfers between growers and buyers.
• Pay: Stablecoin Checkout for Any Business
  By Cexplorer. USDM and USDCx invoicing and checkout links for businesses, connected to orders once payment confirms.
• Regulated BRL Settlement on Cardano
  By PagFinance. Conversion between ada or USDCx and Brazilian reais over Brazil’s PIX network, with tools for businesses.

Explore the proposals on the Pilot results page.

After community curation, 31 proposals reached the decision stage. Each was assessed by between 11 to 19 panelists.

There were 35 active panelists, of which 28 were from the community and seven from the Cardano Foundation. Business and technical assessment carried 70 and 30 points respectively, giving substantial weight to who would use each integration, why they would choose it, and how the team would reach them. This panel’s work determined the scoring base behind the selection. Learn more about the process on our GitBook.

The payout structure connects funding to delivery and adoption:

• 40% at grant start, after successful onboarding, to fund the build;
• up to 40% for adoption, based on qualifying usage against the team’s declared target;
• a final 20% for sustained activity, assessed around two months after the adoption window closes;
• up to 50% bonus for the three best-performing projects.

Adoption is measured through qualifying network fees from external users, with results published on a public dashboard under the Proof of Adoption & Standard. This will provide evidence of use.

Selection is conditional on completing onboarding before the first payment. The Catalyst team will meet each selected team to agree practical priorities from the panel's feedback. Teams have up to three months to launch on Cardano mainnet and demonstrate their integration at Demo Day, with adoption measured from delivery to the Pilot's end date.

Every team that reached the decision stage will receive a private scorecard and written feedback on its strengths, open questions and practical next steps, which we hope proves useful not just within Catalyst but also to help the project excel at their next steps.

We want to thank the 52 active curators, the 116 people who offered to join the panel, and the panelists for their careful reviews. What teams deliver, whether people keep using it, and how well we support them will help shape Catalyst's next phase.

Going forward, the Pilot learnings will also let us assess better how we select projects, support delivery, involve the community, and account for outcomes. We welcome collaboration with accelerators, investors, or other programs to help teams find the support they need at each stage.

Congratulations again to every team that completed this process. We look forward to seeing your work reach users, demonstrate its value, and contribute to Cardano’s continued growth.