Catalyst Fund Operations by IOG Catalyst Team

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Kriss Baird

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

catalyst@iohk.io

Additional applicants

None

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

12

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

Wallets: Catalyst depends on external wallets implementing necessary changes and publishing updated fund-related information for each Catalyst funding round

Proposal Submission and Review interface: Catalyst currently uses services from Ideascale to facilitate the Proposal Submission and Community Review stages.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source

[METADATA] Category of proposal

Incubation

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Providing transparent and responsive oversight and deploying new approaches to operating Catalyst to simplify access to Cardano funding, increase opportunities to participate in the Cardano ecosystem and enhance the likelihood of success for funded projects. Simply put, more can be achieved by fully unlocking the power of the Cardano community. Each Catalyst fund, when combined with state of art administrative tools and best practices, is an opportunity for the entire Cardano ecosystem to band together in delivering a more inclusive, equitable, and productive future.

Since the project’s inception, the Catalyst team at IOG (“Catalyst Team”) has viewed its purpose as more than just a platform developer; the team considers itself an accelerant for the Catalyst community, a steward for the community’s interests and an advocate for positive impact across Cardano and the broader blockchain industry. 

Along with developing a Cardano innovation community it is equally important to ensure carefully managed and consistent funding; the bedrock of both Catalyst and sustainable ecosystem growth.

This proposal is intended to create assurance that the next three Project Catalyst funding rounds (Fund11, Fund12, Fund13) will be delivered with appropriate oversight and administration focused on achieving these objectives for the entire community. The Catalyst team proposes to continue its involvement with Catalyst through its appointment as the Catalyst Fund Operations service provider for the Cardano community as described in this proposal.

 

The funding request is for three disbursements of 2,140,000 ada drawn on the launch of each respective fund to cover costs of operations, totalling approximately 6,420,000 ada. 

Combining the core driving principle, for the people, by the people, with a desire to achieve high degrees of trust and security, the technical stack and core operations processes have been refined and hardened over 10 iterations of Catalyst through gathering inputs from user feedback, applied research, and observed attempts at adversarial behavior. With our appointment as Catalyst Fund Operations service provider, we will continue these endeavors.

To date, more than 1.7 million votes have been cast, deciding how to allocate over $48m worth of ada from the Cardano Treasury. Throughout that time, Catalyst never once suffered any critical exploits that prevented voting from happening legitimately. The Catalyst Team is proud of this success.

Since Fund9 the Catalyst Team has already implemented changes to core processes and operations that address community concerns, such as remodeling the incentives structures to make them more equitable and less-costly, while also expanding the types of incentivised ‘work’ the community can benefit from; introducing milestone-based-funding so funding disbursements are based on achievements; as well as improved voting app UX which provides voters with more information to aid their decision-making. As Catalyst Fund Operations service provider, the Catalyst Team intends to continue implementing further improvements to Catalyst operations as outlined in our proposals.

Surveys have been conducted after each voting round and consistently reveal that ada holders perceive Catalyst outcomes as fair and impactful. 

The main goals of the Catalyst Team, as described in the proposal, are to:

1. Coordinate, launch, and fully execute the next three Catalyst funding round campaigns at a level of circa 50m ada per fund to produce circa 1200 new projects funded via Catalyst.
2. Maintain all existing Catalyst voting system infrastructure and tools so they are readily available for use during each funding round.
3. Coordinate and manage the milestone-based funding and proof-of-achievement accountability model to onboard newly approved projects and oversee the ongoing funding disbursement requirements for all pre-existing, active projects from Fund2-Fund9 and all newly approved projects (Fund10-Fund13).
4. Initiate an education programme to help onboard new participants and enable growth in community-led competencies to co-operate Catalyst.
5. Deliver mid-term and end-of-term evaluation of project outcomes to demonstrate the significance and impact that Catalyst has achieved during the scope of the project.
6. Create an arms-length relationship between the operation and administration of each Catalyst funding round (Catalyst Operator) and the custody of funds allocated from the Cardano Treasury for each such round (Catalyst Funding Vehicle).  

The project primarily engages all stakeholders interested in Catalyst, namely: 

Ada Holders: Many of which are voters participating in Catalyst Voting stage decision-making and regular attendees to Catalyst events, or keeping abreast of outcomes via the ProjectCatalyst.io website.

Proposers: Submitting requests for funding and, once approved, delivering projects for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem.

Catalyst community contributors: Including Community Reviewers, Challenge Teams, Cardano Ambassadors, Catalyst Circle. Each constituent group provides demonstrable broad-based participation in key operational and governance processes in Catalyst. 

Pioneering entities: Including Cardano Foundation, IOG, and Emurgo who provide support to Catalyst. 

The Catalyst Team (ourselves!): We wake up every morning inspired by Cardano builders. Some say we’re turbo-charged! We love what we do and would like your permission to expand participation in Catalyst, deploy state of the art oversight and administration processes, and further enhance Catalyst’s capabilities with other builders in the community. All of our proposed development efforts are to collectively turn this open source vision into reality.  

This proposal outlines the Catalyst team’s committed plans to continue to maintain operations as the Catalyst Fund Operator and to deliver services to the Cardano community described further in this proposal classified under two main categories of services: 

1. Catalyst Fund Administration services
2. Catalyst Core services

[A] Catalyst Fund Administration services

In its role as Catalyst ‘Fund Operator’, the Catalyst team is responsible for the administrative day-to-day functions and maintenance of Project Catalyst to set up, service, and promote the funding round campaigns as well as servicing active funding commitments through disbursements to community-approved projects and providing oversight and accountability of how funds are used once disbursed. This role also includes coordination and facilitation of events, training, and workshops, working groups, onboarding activities, community and incubation support, communications, human-centered research and design, promotion and marketing.   

[B] Catalyst Core services

The Catalyst team has deployed and will continue to introduce and deploy the core features described below (“Catalyst Core”). 

Catalyst Core offers a battle-tested mechanism for the Cardano community to make collective decisions on innovation proposals submitted to Project Catalyst in ways that can be trusted. Today, Catalyst Core services provide: 

• Single, verifiable source of truth for registration and voting power, proposals and reviews, ballots and voting results, and funded project outcomes
• End-to-end auditability with persistent data storage, open-source tooling, and robust community documentation
• Encrypted blockchain voting to preserve privacy of individuals while remaining cryptographically provable

Catalyst Core system services include:

• Voting Sidechain - Catalyst’s blockchain voting ledger
• Enhanced Security and Privacy - Stringent measures implemented to ensure secure and private voting, including robust encryption, access controls, auditing systems, and other security features implemented throughout the Catalyst ecosystem
• Front-End Applications - iOS and Android voting application interfaces to interact with the Catalyst voting system
• Mainnet Bridge - Tooling to get voter registration data from Cardano mainnet
• Catalyst Data Services - Back-end storage and orchestration
• Public Archives - Auditable records of previous voting events
• Open APIs - Interface to read / write data from / into Catalyst
• Traffic Rerouting - Transaction routing for optimal performance
• Load Balancing - Spreading transaction load across nodes to avoid overload
• Denial of Service Protection - Preventing denial of service attacks with voting transactions

The Catalyst Team deploys this system to three different types of environments in support of Catalyst:

• Production - Short-lived deployment in support of active funding rounds
• Stable Testnet - Continuous deployment for integration and usability testing
• Dev-Testnet - Continuous deployment for experimentation and feature testing

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

This proposal will produce circa 300-400 new Cardano community-approved grassroots innovation projects per fund, with continuity and no disruption to providing grant-making services over the next 12 months, addressing the scope of the Catalyst Fund Operations category. 

For almost three years, Catalyst has helped bring to life projects aimed at solving real-world challenges. Catalyst’s impact to date throughout Fund1-Fund9:

• More than 1.7 million votes cast
• $48m in ada awarded
• 60,000 community members on the Catalyst mailing list
• 6,000+ proposals submitted
• 1,155 projects approved, classified as
• 305 Cardano developer ecosystem projects.
• 349 Cardano community events, marketing, and expansion projects
• 384 Cardano products, services, and Integration projects
• 117 classified as ‘Other’ including research projects that explored Catalyst admin and/or Catalyst infrastructure goals  
• At the time of writing, nearly 600 projects have been completed, providing proof-of-project completion assets.

The Catalyst Team is proud of its role to date in helping the community to achieve all of these milestones. To maintain Catalyst and achieve the highest potential for impact for Cardano by providing necessary resources to further grow the Cardano ecosystem, the proposed project enables the Catalyst Team to help facilitate: 

• Technical development projects getting to market faster and allowing product-market fit to be validated delivering value back to the Cardano ecosystem quicker than if these resources and processes were not available.
• Easier and faster onboarding of new users to the Cardano ecosystem through deployment of more dApps, products, and services to make use of and community-led events and marketing activations to engage with.
• A growing pool of Catalyst contributors that gain experience in supporting key aspects of project accountability and Catalyst network health; and helping to demonstrate decentralization in practice, whereby the community not only propose and decide on which projects receive funding, but are predominantly responsible for holding the approved-projects receiving funding to account through the proof of achievement accountability model described elsewhere in this proposal.   

The Catalyst Team’s Catalyst Fund Operations service proposal facilitates both maintaining and further enhancing Catalyst’s mission-critical operations and infrastructure, by helping the Cardano community to continue to:

• Make high-integrity, collective decisions that use Cardano Treasury funds that are allocated to Project Catalyst .
• Extend the community-operated accountability for those decisions.
• Receive consistent funding disbursements to foster grassroots ecosystem development based on collective wisdom and distributed decision making.
• Audit the decision-making processes and technologies so as to be able to verify the integrity of voting and technical capabilities that the Catalyst voting system offers
• Experiment with alternative Catalyst decision-making parameters by using the Catalyst Continuous Testnet to demonstrate novel governance models in order to develop new understandings for potential future improvements. 

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Catalyst Core technical infrastructure and Fund Administration services will continue to process an increasing volume of proposals submitted and votes cast. We estimate an additional 1,200 community-approved projects to receive funding over the next 12 months under the scope of proposed services. 

Based on services provided by Catalyst Team to date, the outcomes of this proposal are projected to yield: 

• 500-600 new technical development projects 
• 300-400 community marketing activation projects, including education, expansion, and new Cardano user onboarding efforts 
• 100-200 small-scale ‘Catalyst Open’ projects, where goals are centered on short-term, foundational R&D, and open-source development objectives 
• 800+ newly completed projects based on the existing catalog of active projects and those funded between Fund10 and Fund13 
• A minimum of five workshops per funding campaign held in collaboration with the community to review and refine key processes, such as:
• Catalyst Standards: Defining minimum benchmarks for developers wishing to experiment on the Catalyst Continuous TestNET with solutions considered for wider implementation into the Catalyst voting system. 
• Catalyst Training: Proof-of-achievement reviews, Catalyst Continuous Testnet
• Retrospective on F10 Community Review improvements: How recent changes have impacted workflows or results and any adjustments needed to be considered for Fund11 and beyond.
• Scoping requirements for Catalyst ‘Categories’: Defining processes for scoping priorities for funding, budget allocations, and governance processes to decide on future directions for Catalyst community-led challenges or Categories.

To build a fund-by-fund picture of network health and growth, the Catalyst Team will measure impact against both performance and usage metrics to understand the vibrance of the ecosystem. The Catalyst Team has built and will continue to build and deploy various tools to aggregate, measure and analyze a number of data points in various categories. The Catalyst Team intends to continue to use such data to make improvements to its own processes and to continue to suggest improvements and enhancements for the Catalyst Program to the Cardano community. The categories of data captured and analyzed include the following:

Pre-Voting / Registration Phase (updated before voting starts):

• Mainnet Bridge and Snapshot:
• Total voter registrations / staked ada
• Voter registrations valid in active fund / staked ada
• Voter registrations eligible to receive rewards in active fund / staked ada

These metrics help determine the trend of voter participation in Catalyst compared to previous funds: How many voters registered to participate; which of these registrations performed voting actions; and which performed enough votes to be eligible for a share of voter rewards. 

• Voting Application:
• Wallets connected
• Support tickets submitted
• Voting App specific feedback from end of fund user-survey

These metrics help determine if any bugs have been uncovered in production and the number of wallets interacting with the voting app. 

• Idea submission and Community Review
• New community reviewer registrations
• Fund-on-fund recurring community reviewer participation
• Number of proposals submitted at draft deadline
• Number of proposals withdrawn
• Number of proposals to be voted on
• Avg number of reviews carried out
• LV0, LV1
• Number of flagged reviews
• By segmented classification of Catalyst scripts
• That are included by LV2
• That are discarded LV2
• Avg number checked by LV2

These metrics help identify and understand the trends associated with the Community Review stage which in turn helps to forecast the relative costs to the treasury in future funding rounds.  

• Voting Phase (updated when voting ends):
• Wallets eligible to cast votes
• Wallets casting at least one vote
• Total votes cast
• Max / avg votes per second
• Avg votes cast per voter
• Total active voters / stake
• Avg voting stake per proposal
• Avg voting stake per funded proposal
• Avg voting stake per completed* proposal

These metrics help illustrate the growth trends in Catalyst network participation and related factors that affect overall decision-making and outcomes.    

• Fund Campaign promotion:
• External link clicks
• Proposals opened in ideascale in app browser
• Gitbook pages opened
• Help / support links
• New mailing list signups
• New accounts created

• Catalyst Execution
• Milestone proof-of-achievements verified
• Ratio of funded-projects reporting on time each month
• Ratio of projects reporting monthly project is ‘On Track/Not on Track’
• Ratio of Projects completed versus:
• Withdrawn / canceled projects
• Active projects that have not met delivery schedule  

These metrics illustrate the progress being made by funded projects and affect the health of outcomes achieved by the overall Catalyst funding programme. 

All system health, performance, and usage metrics will be published at regular intervals at the end of each fund alongside the results of each voting stage. The data will also be used in the interim and end-of-year evaluation reports outlined in Milestone 5.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

As part of the Catalyst Fund Operations service proposal, the Catalyst Team is committed to providing continuous, accessible updates to the Cardano community. Updates and outputs will be published on the Catalyst website and public Gitbook. 

In addition to monthly progress reports and completed milestone proof-of-achievement ceremonies, the Catalyst team promotes and will continue to promote outcomes, outputs, and general progress in the following ways:   

Weekly newsletters:

Reach: 60,000 mailing list members

Weekly email updates sent to all mailing list members to provide a run down on progress and highlight key achievements amounting to approximately 40 weekly newsletters over a 12 month period.  

Fortnightly technical development updates:

Reach: Averaging per week: 3,000 report readers; 60,000 Twitter views; 100 retweets   

The Catalyst Team intends to provide technical development updates every two weeks as part of the overall Cardano technical development update communications. This will amount to at least 24 updates over the next 12 months, accounting for the seasonal winter holiday period. 

Weekly Town Halls:

Reach: At least 1,000 viewers, up to 10,000 periodically 

The Catalyst Team intends to continue to host the weekly ‘global’ Catalyst Town Hall on Wednesdays at 5PM UTC, and publish it on YouTube for on-demand availability. Town Hall is a mainstay platform for communicating key progress and achievements, and provides an opportunity to gather insights from attendees about new features or potential changes to Catalyst operations. Catalyst funded projects that have achieved project-completion status will be highlighted weekly. Furthermore, the Catalyst Team also intends to continue to host after-town hall breakout sessions on an ad-hoc basis whereby a deeper discussion can be held around key topics of interest. A summary of updates regarding the Catalyst program and technical achievements will be featured monthly.   

This will amount to at least 40 Town Halls over the next 12 months, accounting for the seasonal winter holiday period and any periods of ‘cooldown’ between each fund.   

Catalyst Blogs: 

Reach: Averaging 5,000 readers per blog based on the last 12 months

Regular blogs published via ProjectCatalyst.io help to amplify progress and updates to outputs that have been achieved. The Catalyst Team expects to produce at least six blogs over the 12 month period.

Project Catalyst Annual Impact and Evaluation Report

The Catalyst Team will publish an annual Project Catalyst report that highlights the achievements of Catalyst funded projects funded and produces a summarized analysis of outputs and success metrics that the Catalyst programme has delivered over the period, serving as a 'State of the Nation' artefact for the Cardano Community and wider blockchain industry.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Catalyst has taken enormous strides towards becoming a platform built on trust and transparency. These foundational truths guide all of the development, decision making, and actions that have previously been performed by the Catalyst Team. 

To maintain and build upon this momentum, it’s critical that ada holders understand how much work has gone into building Catalyst and how much more work it will take to maintain and improve upon the current infrastructure moving forward. The Catalyst Team has stood in this role since Fund1 and is passionately eager to continue operating and facilitating this open, collaborative environment for its fellow community members. 

Establishing legal clarity:

As the Fund Operator, we will drive legal clarity, transparency and sound governance by creating an independent entity (Catalyst Funding Vehicle) solely for the benefit of Catalyst whose sole purpose will be to hold all funds allocated to each Catalyst fund. This Catalyst Funding Vehicle will not be owned by the Catalyst Team. As Fund Operator, the Catalyst Team will provide the required administration services to Catalyst Funding Vehicle pursuant to an arms-length administration agreement to be entered into between the Catalyst Funding Vehicle and the Catalyst Team. This agreement will be published online for the Cardano community to see. The Catalyst Funding Vehicle will also be subject to audit oversight, allowing the community to transparently scrutinize all transactions and disbursements carried out by the vehicle. 

Catalyst accountability model: Milestone-based proof-of-achievement

Under this proposal, disbursements to eligible ecosystem participants, such as funded-proposers or community reviewers, will be made by the Catalyst Funding Vehicle based on clearly articulated terms and conditions and procedures that govern the Catalyst Funding Vehicle and the duties of the Catalyst Team as Fund Operator, that are spelled out in the administration agreement taking into account the following guidelines that are currently in place, and anticipated to be updated for each fund, including: 

• Catalyst Fund rules 

• Milestone-based funding guidelines

The Catalyst innovation program’s funding campaigns and grant-making activities will require the Catalyst Team as Fund Operator to manage and maintain the technical infrastructure to set up and deliver community-governance, uphold established and robust treasury management and auditing procedures, and operate a community-led accountability model so funded projects deliver meaningful outcomes in a way that all stakeholders in the Cardano community can trust.

Catalyst Seed Account transfers (outbound to eligible recipients) 

As Catalyst activities result in millions of ada being transacted and disbursed regularly to approved project teams and Cardano community members around the world, financial processes must be professionally and properly administered and be delivered consistently with the highest degrees of confidence that due diligence is followed. The Catalyst Team maintains and will continue to maintain an internal record of accounts for all transactions being made.

As Fund Operator, and in accordance with the administration agreement, the Catalyst Team will execute a robust, well-established process each time a transfer of funds needs to be made from the Catalyst Funding Vehicle. This process is intended to ensure that all transactions executed by the Catalyst Funding Vehicle are carried out in a transparent way that can be trusted by Cardano stakeholders, and not dependent on any single individual.

Each month, the Catalyst Team may submit multiple requests to the Catalyst Funding Vehicle depending on its operational objectives and in accordance with the processes set out in the administration agreement . The Catalyst Team will produce reports that summarize activities of the Catalyst Funding Vehicle on a regular basis. .

Our commitment to providing the expected service levels are further supported by establishing:  

• Administration agreement between the Catalyst Team and the Catalyst Funding Vehicle: Going forward, the Catalyst team will provide its services under a formal administration agreement. Whereby if the Catalyst team fails to deliver on expected and agreed service levels, the community has recourse to effectively fire the Catalyst Team as Fund Operator.

• Milestones & Key Activities (Roadmap): These milestones will be captured in the Statement of Milestones and will include a description of all deliverables, outputs, and outcomes of each milestone.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

The primary goals of the Catalyst Team will be to:

GOAL 1: Coordinate, launch, and fully execute the next three Catalyst funding round campaigns at a level of circa 50m ada per fund or comparable equivalents, to produce 300-400 new Cardano community-approved grassroots innovation projects per fund, administering the following stages: 

1. Community Communications & Events
2. Fund Campaign Setup 
3. Proposal Submission / Innovation Stage
4. Community Review Stage
5. Catalyst Voting Administration / Tally / Results

GOAL 2: Maintain all existing Catalyst voting system infrastructure and tools so they are readily available for use during each funding round, providing:

1. Backend:

• Deployment environments - Operation and maintenance (prod, pre-prod, testnet, QA, dev)
• Production fund deployments (pre-planned - three month interval)
• Continuous pre-prod / testnet deployment (two week cycles)
• Fund parameter setting (community coordinated)
• Ideascale data management
• Community review data management
• Execution data management

1. Voting application interface:

• One year of maintenance
• Compatibility with back-end changes, such as when migration to cat-data-service backend takes place.
• Operational and published application on iOS + Android
• Support iOS 16.2+ and Android 10+ today
• Will continue to support latest versions with minimum supported version subject to change
• Release notes and support documentation
• Fixes for discovered bugs
• Access to Catalyst’s production, pre-prod and testnet environments

GOAL 3: Coordinate and manage the milestone-based funding and proof-of-achievement processes to welcome and onboard newly approved projects, implementing transition plans if necessary, to assure their continuity, administering the following stages:

1. Proof-of-life onboarding of funded projects 
2. Project accountability management
3. Catalyst Treasury actions / management

GOAL 4: Initiate an education programme to help onboard new participants and enable growth in community-led competencies to co-operate Catalyst, supporting important Catalyst stages covering:

1. How to experiment and integrate with Catalyst Continuous Testnet
2. Proof-of-life onboarding supporting the participation of new LV2 Community Reviewers for each fund
3. Proof-of-achievement verifications supporting at least 100 LV2 Community Reviewers participating regularly by end of Fund13
4. Community audit of Treasury actions and management 

GOAL 5: Deliver interim and annual evaluation reports of project outcomes to demonstrate the significance and impact that Catalyst has achieved during the scope of the project.    

GOAL 6: Create additional transparency and good governance around Project Catalyst by introducing an arms-length relationship between the operation and administration of each Catalyst funding round (Catalyst Operator) and the custody of funds allocated from the Cardano Treasury for each funding round (Catalyst Funding Vehicle).  

Goals [1], [2], [3] and [4] stated above are broadly feasible as they have been demonstrated over the past nine iterations of the Catalyst fund cycles. In particular, goals [3] and [6] allows for funding to be managed carefully, minimizing risks that funding resources are misappropriated and only discovered such as when the project has supposedly completed, only to find that the funded project’s deliverables were not met and little to no value has been delivered. 

Additionally, goals [3] and [4] enable the Cardano community to play an important and ongoing role of actively cooperating and auditing Catalyst outcomes.    

A retrospective period will be held after each fund, starting from the end of Fund10 to reflect on what went well, what could be improved, and any considerations to changes to operational processes that may need to be made.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Please reference Appendix A [Deliverables] and Appendix B [Project Plan timelines] for more information about the Fund11 delivery schedule. 

Appendix A: Fund 11 Deliverables

Appendix A provides an account of the deliverables per fund so the deliverables and outputs for Fund12 and Fund13 are broadly the same as Fund11.

Appendix B: Fund11 Timeline 

Fund12 and then Fund13 will follow a similar pattern of indicative timings following the conclusion of Fund11 as set out in Appendix B. 

The below milestones represent approaches and processes previously implemented by the Catalyst Team that it expects to carry forward, with ongoing improvements as necessary, under this project.

Milestone 1 - Project Accountability and Cohort Management

Estimated delivery: October 2023 through to October 2024 

Milestone 1 cost: ₳355,141

Main tasks and services:

1. Project Accountability and Cohort management for rewards and funding distribution
2. Preparation of funding files based on submissions of monthly reports and proof of achievement 
3. Disbursement of funding to eligible community-approved projects on a monthly basis

Acceptance criteria:

1. Project Accountability and Cohort Management for rewards and funding
2. Funded projects cohort receives timely monthly disbursements within timeframes set out in the latest guidelines, subject to eligibility and satisfaction of reporting requirements.
3. Monthly reports are reviewed by the Catalyst Team within the timeframe set out in the latest guidelines.
4. Milestones are reviewed by Community Reviewers within timeframes set out in the latest guidelines.
5. Project completion reports and videos are reviewed by Community Reviewers and Catalyst Team within the timeframe set out in the latest guidelines.
6. Incentivised ecosystem roles are rewarded within the timeframe set out in the latest guidelines.
7. Funding data is published monthly and accessible to and auditable by public or third parties independent of Catalyst Fund Operator.
8. Project change requests are reviewed within the timeframe set out in the latest guidelines with changes reflected in the project funding schema accordingly.
9. New funded projects cohorts are successfully integrated into the payment distribution and cohort management system.
10. Funding ledger is maintained continually and appropriate forecasting on quarterly basis is produced to outline expected disbursement schedules.
11. Project outcomes are publicly available on projectcatalyst.io and refreshed each month.
12. Ongoing cohort is supported with communications laid out by the MarComms plan.
13. Projects of concern or at risk are identified, and due process is followed to define the nature of risk and requirements escalated for action.
14. Funded Projects have an ongoing office hours session via Coordinator network meetings to interact with the Catalyst team and fellow funded projects.

Milestone 2 - Execute Fund11 and onboard F11 approved projects

Estimated delivery: October 2023 through February 2024 

Milestone 2 cost: ₳1,558,399

Main stages of tasks and services:

1. Fund11 parameter preparations
2. Fund launch campaign  
3. Proposal submission stage 
4. Community review 
5. Catalyst voting
6. Voting tally and auditable results 
7. Onboarding funded-proposal cohort
8. Cooldown & Retrospective

Acceptance criteria:  

1. Fund11 Parameters
2. Fund rules are finalized & published
3. Fund categories/challenges are finalized & published
4. Fund parameters are finalized & published
5. Fund Launch campaign
6. Fund launch guide is published and distributed throughout the ecosystem.
7. Fund launch blog posts are published and distributed throughout the ecosystem.
8. MarComms plan spanning the entire campaign that outlines key deliverables to support F11 is ready for execution.
9. projectcatalyst.io is ready for Fund11 with clear UX pathways published.
10. docs.projectcatalyst.io is updated with relevant documentation for Fund11 launch.
11. Submissions guide
12. Community Review guide
13. Fund Launch Town Hall is aired and its content is available to be repurposed through social media and community channels.
14. Launch marcomms materials are available to be published and propagated through all social media and community channels.
15. Proposal submission stage
16. Proposal submission form is launched and the community is able to submit proposals.
17. Relevant guidance for the submissions stage is documented and published on GitBook.
18. Submissions are moderated according to Fund Rules & Guidelines.
19. Stage is supported throughout with communication based on the marcomms plan.
20. Community Review Stage 
21. Proposals are transitioned from submissions stage to Community Review stage allowing the community to perform reviews.
22. Community Reviewers are onboarded and have carried out their duties as per guidelines.
23. Moderation Module is developed and successfully deployed in production to produce an effective moderation stage in Fund11.
24. Community Moderators are onboarded and have carried out their duties as per guidelines.
25. The Community Review data set is verified by the Catalyst Team and is publicly available and auditable.
26. Community Review data is available for the voting app.
27. Stage is supported throughout with communications based on the marcomms plan.
28. Voter Registration and Snapshot
29. Snapshot service accurately captures blockchain data required to inform the vote.
30. Voting app consumes Innovation data inputs correctly and without issues.
31. Voting app is successfully used in production to carry out the live vote in the governance stage for Fund11.
32. Voters are able to check their registration status and voting power before snapshot.
33. At least three community wallets support full registration format that enable voter rewards.
34. Voters have guidance available to understand how to participate in registration and voting for proposals .
35. GitBook documentation is published housing all documentation for this stage.
36. Daily voting monitoring is deployed and monitored by the Catalyst team
37. Voting outcome is reproducible for the purposes of the next stage - audit / tally
38. Feedback loop is initiated post voting to enable insights gathering via fund exit survey.
39. Stage is supported throughout with communications based on the MarComms plan.
40. Voting tally and auditable results
41. Tally is confirmed internally by the Catalyst Team as legitimate without outstanding issues following due process.
42. Encrypted tally can be independently validated by the public.
43. Any interested third party has the ability to independently run a snapshot on their own trusted nodes to validate Catalyst snapshot.
44. Explorer tools allow independent validation of the voting record.
45. Hourly archives of the voting blockchain are automatically published during the fund to public Github repo. 
46. Community is able to independently verify and audit the vote outcome in order to validate results.
47. GitBook documentation is published housing all documentation for this stage.
48. Snapshot can be used to independently prove only registered voters were counted.
49. Stage is supported throughout with communication based on the marcomms plan.
50. Onboarding Funded-proposal cohort
51. Documentation for the onboarding stage is prepared and published in the GitBook.
52. Cohort are onboarded, meaning
53. Proof-of-life conducted
54. Test Tx confirmed
55. Onboarding form completed by all new funded-proposal cohort members
56. Each funded proposer has submitted a Statement of Milestones (SoM) and each SoM is approved by at least two reviewers.
57. Documentation for the Milestone Module is published in the GitBook.
58. SoM / proof-of-achievement (PoA) Community Reviewers are onboarded.
59. Stage is supported throughout with communication based on the Marcomms plan.
60. Cooldown & Retrospective
61. Fund data is adequately archived and secured for the purpose of future audits
62. Community-led retrospectives (if available) are compiled and aggregated into a single public location
63. Fund exit survey results are analyzed and compiled.
64. Fund exit survey outcomes are anonymized and published

Milestone 3 - Execute Fund12 and onboard F12 approved projects

Estimated delivery: February 2024 through to July 2024

Milestone 3 cost: ₳1,558,399

Main stages of tasks and services:

1. Fund12 parameter preparations
2. Fund launch campaign  
3. Proposal submission stage 
4. Community Review 
5. Catalyst voting
6. Voting tally and auditable results 
7. Onboarding funded-proposal cohort
8. Cooldown & Retrospective

Acceptance criteria: The acceptance criteria for this Milestone are the same as Milestone 1 and will be adjusted for the Fund12 campaign and includes requirements for Project Accountability Management for Fund12 Cohort as part of the deliverables in Milestones 4 and 5. 

Milestone 4 - Execute Fund13 and onboard Fund13 approved projects

Estimated delivery: July 2024 through to October 2024  

Milestone 4 cost: ₳1,558,399

Main stages of tasks and services:

1. Fund13 parameter preparations
2. Fund launch campaign  
3. Proposal submission stage 
4. Community Review 
5. Catalyst voting
6. Voting tally and auditable results 
7. Onboarding funded-proposal cohort
8. Cooldown & Retrospective

Acceptance Criteria: The acceptance criteria for this Milestone are the same as Milestone 1, and will be adjusted for the Fund13 campaign and includes requirements for Project Accountability Management for Fund13 Cohort as part of the deliverables in Milestone 4 and 5. 

 

Milestone 5 - Project Impact Report and evaluation of Outcomes

Estimated delivery: By end of October 2024

Milestone 5 cost: ₳20,696

Main stages of tasks and services: 

1. Interim impact and evaluation report 
2. Data gathering and discovery 
3. Analysis of data
4. Design and production of mid-term reporting format
5. Annual Catalyst impact and evaluation report 
6. Data gathering and discovery 
7. Analysis of data
8. Design and Production of annual report 

Acceptance criteria:

1. Interim Project Impact evaluation of Outcomes  
2. Catalyst data is publicly available to be summarized into a PDF report.
3. Summaries of community-workshops held during the period are publicly available.
4. Changes made to Catalyst over the period are documented and publicly available.
5. The mid-term project impact report is published and publicly available for Cardano stakeholders.
6. Annual Project Impact Report and evaluation of Outcomes
7. Any changes to Catalyst processes are documented with updated workflows and high level rationales
8. Reference source data is publicly available 
9. Annual Catalyst Impact report is published and publicly available to all Cardano stakeholders   

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Catalyst Fund operations are cyclical in nature. The following deliverable described for Milestone 1 continue throughout the lifetime of the project. Milestone 2 deliverables will be broadly the same for Milestones 3 and 4, and updated for each new fund campaign.

Milestone 1 - Project Accountability and Cohort Management

Intended outcomes: The outcomes of this ongoing process is that eligible, active projects from Fund1 to Fund10 plus newly onboarded projects from Fund11 to Fund13 (otherwise referred to as the ‘cohort’ of funded projects) receive monthly disbursements and produce the deliverables they are committed to delivering. Ongoing funded-project cohort management is maintained with no disruptions to regular monthly primary and secondary funding disbursements, resulting in hundreds of completed projects contributing value to the Cardano ecosystem. 

Deliverables: 

A. Project Accountability and Cohort Management

• Catalyst public reporting tracker
• Proof-of-Achievement verifications for each milestone
• Two funding distributions each month covering:
• Regular primary and secondary funding distribution to funded-projects
• Final milestone and project completion payments
• Catalyst rewards for Community roles
• Compatible databases that account for changes to parameters, data design, and funding schema rules
• Training materials to support onboarding community members for Proof of Achievement verifications 
• Catalyst Funding Ledger quarterly forecast
• Monthly Cohort ‘Coordinator support / office hours” meetings 
• Public list of projects canceled by the proposer or terminated by Catalyst, each with supporting reasons
• Funded projects communications

Milestone 2 - Execute Fund11 and onboard Fund11 approved projects

Intended outcomes: Fund11 has produced a cohort of proposals that have been approved by the Cardano community to receive funding; the Fund11 tally and voting results are verifiable, and a retrospective has been conducted to identify opportunities to refine and improve the program and processes. 

Deliverables:

A. Fund11 Parameters

• Fund11 Rules Documentation
• Fund11 Parameters Documentation
• Fund11 Categories briefs

B. Fund11 Launch Campaign  

• Fund11 Fund Launch Guide
• Updated ProjectCatalyst.io website for Fund11
• Fund Launch Blogs (at least 2 per fund campaign) 
• Fund11 MarComms & Social plans
• Fund Launch Town Hall events
• Stage communications

C. Fund11 Proposal Submission stage 

• Proposal submission guidelines published to Gitbook
• Fund11 proposal submission form
• Stage communications

D. Fund11 Community Review 

• Community Review guidelines published to Gitbook
• Training materials for Community Reviewers and using tools
• Registration form for Community Reviewers
• Review allocation for Level0 and Level1 reviewers
• Review allocation for Level2 moderators
• Fund11 Moderation Module
• Stage communications

E. Fund11 Catalyst Voting

• Fund11 infrastructure environments (Catalyst pre-production, production, testnet)
• Fund11 Voting App is available to download
• Voter Guidelines published to GitBook
• GitHub updated with Fund11 documentation
• Supported wallets updated for use in Fund11
• Live vote monitoring tooling
• Snapshot tool
• Check my registration tool
• Fund11 voting data 
• Fund11 user survey 
• Internal and public dry runs before deployment of production-ready Fund11 voting
• Stage communications

F. Fund11 Voting Tally and Auditable Results 

• Fund11 internally audited results
• Public repository with encrypted tally
• Fund11 Results Document
• GitBook/Hub documentation to support independent auditing
• Stage communications

G. Fund11 Onboarding funded-proposal cohort

• Onboarding and Milestone funding guidelines are published to Gitbook 
• Challenge Teams have onboarded Fund11 approved projects 
• New Proof of Achievement reviewers are onboarded
• All F11 funded-projects have produced a Statement of Milestones
• F11 Cohort Contact address book is complete
• F11 Seed Account ledger and transactions tracker has been updated
• F11 Approved-projects are updated on ProjectCatalyst.io with access to each project’s Statement of Milestones
• Stage communications

H. Fund11 Cooldown & Retrospective

• Fund data, tooling, and documentation housekeeping
• Compiled Fund exit survey results
• Fund11 Retrospective community-workshop and summary of outputs
• Stage communications

Milestone 3 - Execute Fund12 and onboard F12 approved projects

Intended outcomes: Fund12 has produced a cohort of proposals that have been approved by the Cardano community to receive funding; the Fund12 tally and voting results are verifiable, lessons learnt from the previous fund retrospective have been implemented where viable to do so and a retrospective has been conducted to identify opportunities to refine and improve the program and processes. 

Deliverables: The same list of outputs as Milestone 2, produced for the Fund12 campaign, are the stated deliverables for this milestone, covering: 

1. Fund12 Parameter preparations
2. Fund12 Launch campaign  
3. Fund12 Proposal Submission stage 
4. Fund12 Community Review 
5. Fund12 Catalyst Voting
6. Fund12 Voting Tally and Auditable Results 
7. Fund12 Onboarding Funded-proposal cohort
8. Fund12 Cooldown & Retrospective

Milestone 4 - Execute Fund13 and onboard Fund13 approved projects 

Intended outcomes: Fund13 has produced a cohort of Cardano community-approved proposals; Fund13 tally and voting results are verifiable, lessons learnt from the previous fund retrospective have been implemented where viable to do so and a retrospective has been conducted to identify opportunities to refine and improve the program and processes. 

Deliverables: The same list of outputs as Milestone 2, produced for the Fund13 campaign, are the stated deliverables for this milestone, covering: 

1. Fund13 Parameter preparations
2. Fund13 Launch campaign  
3. Fund13 Proposal Submission stage 
4. Fund13 Community Review 
5. Fund13 Catalyst Voting
6. Fund13 Voting Tally and Auditable Results 
7. Fund13 Onboarding Funded-proposal cohort
8. Fund13 Cooldown & Retrospective

Milestone 5 - Project Impact Report and evaluation of outcomes at interim and annual periods

Intended outcomes: An interim project impact report and annual project Impact report, providing analyses of outputs of the Catalyst programme that can be demonstrated to the Cardano community and wider blockchain industry, demonstrates the achievements and outputs of the Catalyst programme over the past 12 months. 

Deliverables: : 

A. Interim Project Impact Report and evaluation of Outcomes

• Interim Project Impact evaluation of outcomes, including:  
• An analysis of Catalyst data since October 2023 summarized into a PDF report 
• A documented summary of outputs from community-workshops held in the first six months of the the project
• Documented rationale for any changes that have been made to the Fund Operations processes as a result of workshops and retrospectives

B. Annual Project Impact Report and evaluation of Outcomes

An evaluation of the past 12 months covering

• Changes to Catalyst processes
• Lessons learnt over each iteration
• Analysis of trends and outcomes from completed projects over the period 
• A summary of the success metrics and fund-related data over the period
• Success stories and spotlight of funded projects

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

The requested budget to deliver the proposed outcomes and maintain fund operations for the next three fund cycles over the following 12 months is ₳2,140,000 for each fund.   

Cost per Fund Period is based on the 4 month period delivering the Fund stages set out in Milestone 2, for more details on the tentative timings for F11 please see Appendix B 

Milestone 1 Project cohort management-price

Milestone 1 cost: ₳355,141

• Project Milestone Review service              
• Cost: ₳118,380
• Project Fund Distributions (Administration)       
• Cost ₳118,380
• Catalyst Community Services (Support etc)    
• Cost: ₳118,380

Milestone 2 or 3 or 4 Preparation & Launch of Fund                        

Milestone 2 or 3 or 4 cost: ₳1,558,399 (per milestone)

(For illustrative purposes only Milestone 2 Fund11 stages are listed below, though these are the same for Milestone 3 Fund12 and Milestone 4 Fund13 stages) 

• Fund11 Parameters 
• Cost: ₳24,385
• Fund11 Launch Campaign 
• Cost: ₳136,593
• F11 Submissions Stage 
• Cost: ₳78,644
• F11 Community Review Stage                  
• Cost: ₳198,680
• F11 Voter Registration / Snapshot / Voting  
• Cost: ₳622,946
• F11 Tally / Auditability / Results                
• Cost: ₳202,819 
• F11 Onboarding Stage
• Cost ₳260,768 
• Fund11 Cooldown & Retrospective
• Cost ₳33,113 

Milestone 5 Preparation of Interim and Annual Evaluation Report                                 

Milestone 5 cost: ₳20,696

• Interim Evaluation Report 
• Cost: ₳10,348
• Annual Evaluation Report
• Cost: ₳10,348

Technical Infrastructure costs ₳205,764

AWS Services, Ideascale, Jira, Google Workspace, 

Slack, Zoom, Miro, Github, Pushwoosh, Docker, Github,

Grafana Cloud, Supabase, Figma, Bit.ly, Hubspot

Total Cost per Fund Period of 4 months:     ₳2,140,000 

To deliver the requirements set out in the milestones and activities described above the Catalyst Team will work in an interdisciplinary way, where multiple team members contribute to the delivery of each stage of the fund cycle covering fund parameters; fund campaign launches; proposal submissions; community review; voting stages and registration vote tally, results and auditing; project onboarding; project accountability; impact evaluation; and general fund management and operative services.  

To address all of the above services, the Catalyst Team deploys as necessary;

• Group Leads
• Product Managers
• Architecture Leads
• Engineers
• Fund Administration Product Operators
• Catalyst Core Product Owners
• Community Managers
• Communications and Product Marketers
• UX Product Designers
• QA Testers

 

Catalyst Fund Operations Total Budget 12 MONTH Period: ₳6,420,000.00

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Over the next three fund cycles spanning over 12 months, Catalyst Team proposes to use ₳2,140,000 per Fund Period of 4 months towards the team salaries, operating costs, and overheads of the Project Catalyst innovation funding program. 

Based on the deliverables described and the outcomes that this project will produce, the spend that the Cardano treasury will make generates a compelling return on investment with strong potential of exceeding the estimations of around 1,200 new Cardano innovation and community projects that will be produced in the next 12 months if the community supports this proposal. 

Based on feedback and learnings from nine iterations of Project Catalyst, the Catalyst Team understands what it takes to provide a platform for managing innovation at scale, distributing project funding for many hundreds of projects simultaneously, coordinating between large numbers of community members with differing needs across a variety of interactions and stages of the Catalyst decentralized innovation fund program. We have incorporated feedback from clear community signals, following good user-centered design principles, and will continue to iterate as required. 

The clear value for money and benefit this provides to the community is that the operating processes and combined experience are already well established to make the program run smoothly while enabling further innovation to present itself and flourish. The Catalyst Team has a comprehensive, technical understanding of the necessary mechanics to deliver decentralized, Web3 grant-making operations at scale, which have been tried and tested many times. We are committed to being a highly collaborative member of the Cardano community. Our mantra is simply, we are better if we’re building together.  

Technical maintenance of the Catalyst Voting System (upkeeping infrastructure and mobile voting applications) account for the majority of costs for engineering, the remainder of these available resources are accounted for and budgeted as part of the other proposals submitted by the Catalyst team. This proposal provides the community a secure and trusted ledger plus voting applications and requires no further development to be used in Fund11. Furthermore, the Catalyst Continuous Testnet is a capability that will empower others to experiment and build alongside us. We are committed to producing a training program initiative, which will enable interested parties to learn how to integrate with and run experiments and reference implementations.     

Fund administration staffing accounts for the next largest portion of costs, including the community, marketing and communications functions to support the fund cycle campaign promotions. By being closely linked to IOG, one of the largest influential organizations in the blockchain industry, we can count on the amplification of shared successes to reach the wider Cardano ecosystem and beyond, lowering the overall cost for marketing and promotions. 

In addition to core fund administration, the team is committed to being open and transparent about how we deliver our services so that, in time, more Catalyst contributors can learn how to cooperate with Catalyst. The result will be an education initiative as an additional value-add and a considerable expertise exchange that the wider ecosystem can benefit from.   

The remainder of costs, including overhead, are predominantly attributed to having sufficient coverage on software licenses and hardware required for maintaining the technical stack. We are a lean team so maintaining tight controls of staffing and licensing costs are imperative to our cash flow. 

 

The core team have been working together for a long time which demonstrates their effectiveness of collaboration. They understand each other’s strengths and have built strong bonds with one another, which makes all the difference and helps drive high productivity.  

All together, these factors greatly mitigates the potential of disruption and instability that an alternate provider would reasonably introduce at this stage. 

Supporting the Catalyst team’s proposal provides certainty that the last three years of operating knowledge (working at the pace and scale we currently do) and the advancements made to date can be leveraged in collaboration with the community and maximized fully for the benefit of Cardano. 

The team is dedicated and passionate about making a difference in Cardano and the world at large with an undivided commitment and mission for enabling a transfer of knowledge to the Cardano community, while bringing to life thousands more success stories that the entire ecosystem can share.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept