Cardano Use Cases: Concept

₳5,000,000 available

Proposals up to ₳150k 

Use cases deliver adoption and real world utility of Cardano to a global base of users and customers. Use cases can be in the nature of applications, products, and new services that lay the foundations for innovative business ideas to flourish on Cardano.

The Cardano Use Cases: Concept category is aimed towards projects seeking to develop early stage ideas that will deliver proof of concept, design research and basic prototyping through to a minimum viable product (MVP) for innovative Cardano-based products, services, and business models. 

It will help support proposers, especially new Catalyst entrants, get their idea off the ground and gain experience of working with product design processes. 

Your project must generate and test new ideas that bring utility and on-chain transactions to Cardano.

In all cases, projects must be prototyping the lowest level of fidelity or functionality necessary for research and design for first prototypes or implementing basic features for a first product release before making investments into expensive and time consuming development activities. 

Your project must explore opportunities and ideas that first focus on making discoveries early in the product design process and produce specifications and a pathway that requires more significant technical development and feasibility testing. 

Who should apply?

Submissions are encouraged from proposers of products or services that have not been previously funded by Catalyst. The expected outcome is validation of the initial concept or a working first prototype by the end of the project.

For example, if you have a brand new idea for a novel feature that is part of an existing product or service previously funded by Catalyst, please consider submitting into another category such as Cardano Use Cases: Product, or Cardano Open.

Funding Guidance:

Applicants can submit a proposal for funding of up to ₳150k in Cardano Use Cases: Concept category. Proposals requesting larger amounts will be automatically archived.

Projects in this category do not need to be open source and may be proprietary, however in all cases the proposed technology concept must be for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem. 

Proposals for brand new products must not have already been developed. New features to extend an existing prototype product or service associated with the proposer(s) or their enterprise must provide evidence, such as a URL, to the existing prototypes.

Proposals from mature projects or those with established products and communities, please submit in the Cardano Use Cases: Products, or Cardano Open categories.

Areas of Interest:

• Disruptive ideas for industrial innovation using Cardano blockchain and smart contracts
• DeFi solutions that learn from and improve on projects in other ecosystems 
• Projects and ventures porting from or bridging other ecosystems to Cardano (eg wallet adding ADA or Cardano Native Token CNT support) 
• Web3 identity, privacy, oracles, wand zero knowledge applications and implementations
• Projects which make use of Cardano-based scaling solutions such as Hydra or alternatives  
• Technical blockchain research converging with other exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine, next-generation distributed compute

Eligibility : 

The following are examples of proposals that will not be funded under the Cardano Use Cases: Concept category: 

• Proposals that focus on the final, finished project or product specification where the design and development is already advanced. For example, where the user or customer research focus of the proposed project will have little influence on the design
• Proposals to develop content to information-only websites and blogs