Cardano Use Cases: Concepts

Budget Available

Total Budget: ₳4,000,000 available

Proposal Range: from ₳15K to ₳100K

Overview

Cardano Use Cases: Concepts category fuels disruptive, untested Cardano-based use cases to experiment with novel utility and on-chain transactions.

The funding category supports early-stage ideas - spanning proof of concept, design research, basic prototyping, and minimum viable products (MVPs) - to lay the foundation for innovative products, services, or business models.

Unlike Cardano Use Cases: Partners & Products, which funds mature, deployed products or enterprise collaborations with proven adoption, this category is for newer Catalyst entrants or innovators validating novel concepts and product market fit with no prior development or funding.

Category Requirements

Do

• Propose fresh ideas that haven’t been funded before

• Produce a working on-chain prototype or MVP

• Provide realistic blockchain usage projections

Don’t

• No existing Cardano products

• No info-only websites and content

• No moon metrics!

Who should apply?

This category is for entrepreneurs, designers, and innovators with original, untested Cardano-based concepts, such as a DeFi startup researching a novel lending protocol, a Web3 developer prototyping a zero-knowledge identity solution, or a researcher exploring AI-blockchain integration. If your project involves a mature product, enterprise collaboration, or incremental feature enhancements, apply to Cardano Use Cases: Partners & Products instead.

Areas of Interest

• Disruptive industrial innovations using Cardano’s blockchain and smart contracts

• DeFi solutions with unique approaches e.g. a peer-to-peer yield and novel bond curve protocol MVP.

• Privacy, oracles, or zero-knowledge proof applications.

• Projects porting or bridging from other ecosystems e.g. a wallet prototyping Cardano Native Token support.

• Prototyping on Cardano scaling solutions like Hydra e.g. a high-throughput payment prototype.

• Technical blockchain research with exponential technologies e.g. a feasibility study for AI-driven oracles.

Proposal Guidance

• Proposals adding features to existing early-stage prototypes must provide evidence of the prototype’s novelty and early status e.g. URL, demo, developer repository

• Proposals must describe the concept’s novelty, explaining how it differs from existing solutions and confirming no prior Catalyst funding or development.

• Demonstrate how the project could drive Cardano adoption through increased on-chain transactions and you intend to validate potential.

• Projects may be proprietary or open source but must clearly benefit the Cardano ecosystem.

• New concepts must be original and not previously developed.

• Mature products with enterprise partnerships, and enhancements for deployed solutions should apply to Cardano Use Cases: Partners & Products.

• Proposals must have a delivery timeline of no more than 12 months.

Eligibility Criteria

The following will not be funded:

• Proposals for mature products, incremental improvements, or enterprise partnerships e.g. scaling an existing DeFi app or adding features to a deployed wallet belong in Cardano Use Cases: Partners & Products.

• Proposals focused on informational content only, websites, or blogs e.g. a Cardano education site belong instead in Cardano Open: Ecosystem.

• Infrastructure or tooling projects not tied to specific Cardano use cases belong in either Cardano Open: Developers or requesting funds from another Cardano funding stream e.g. members organization or DAO.

• Proposals lacking a clear link to Cardano or potential to generate transactions on chain.