Cardano Use Cases: Partners & Products

Budget Available

Total Budget: ₳8,500,000 available

Proposal Range: From ₳250k to ₳1M

Overview

Cardano Partners & Products accelerates Cardano’s mainstream adoption by supporting mature, mainnet-deployed products and strategic enterprise collaborations that deliver real-world utility and high-value transactions.

Unlike Cardano Use Cases: Concepts, which funds novel, early-stage ideas like prototypes or MVPs, this funding category is for established teams or enterprises with proven products or collaborations driving measurable adoption.

Category Requirements

Do

• Provide proof of established collaborations

• Provide proof of key performance metrics

• Clarify funding commitments
  
  

Don’t

• No prototype R&D

• No Cardano infrastructure

• No way to prove your impact

Who should apply

Cardano Partners & Products funds enterprise R&D collaborations between Cardano-based businesses and teams with Tier-1 industry leaders to integrate Cardano solutions into real world use cases.

This category is for established enterprises or startups with mainnet-deployed Cardano-based products or industry leading collaborations.

If your project is an early-stage concept, prototype, or lacks mainnet deployment, apply to Cardano Use Cases: Concepts instead.

Areas of Interest

Proposals should focus on mature R&D for products with Tier-1 collaborations, such as:

• Enterprise integrations and demonstrator pilots with Tier-1 industry leaders e.g. embedding Cardano wallets in automotive systems.

• Stablecoin use-cases: Partner-led pilots that show Cardano stablecoins in action supporting real transactions, liquidity, utility, or payments on Cardano.

• Maturing use cases using Cardano scaling solutions like Hydra e.g. a high-throughput payment system into household-name ecommerce marketplace providers

• Applications leveraging exponential technologies like AI e.g. an AI-enhanced supply chain solution with a large manufacturer

• All projects should have measurable adoption outcomes e.g. a tokenized asset platform with validated transaction growth.

Proposal Guidance

• Proposals must demonstrate measurable adoption outcomes and a clear link to Cardano’s blockchain e.g. transaction volume, user growth, liquidity metrics

• Projects must be led by or partnered with industry leading businesses that have 2+ years business track record

• Projects must provide evidence of a working product

• Projects should be prepared to demonstrate an established business collaboration as well as relevant experience in the area to at least the Catalyst Team as the Fund Operator, if commercial details cannot be made public

• Clearly state funding commitments to show their commitment to the project

• Projects may be proprietary or open source but must drive high-volume/value transactions and co-marketing opportunities.

• Co-marketing plans and community engagement to amplify Cardano’s partnership visibility.

• Early-stage concepts or prototypes should apply to Cardano Use Cases: Concepts.

• Projects that aren’t primarily focused on R&D and demonstrating the utility of enabling applications

Eligibility Criteria

The following will not be funded:

• Early-stage concepts or prototypes e.g. a new DeFi protocol MVP proposal belongs in Cardano Use Cases: Concepts.

• Foundational R&D or maintenance for critical infrastructure. These belong to other Cardano funding streams such as via a members organization or direct governance action for treasury withdrawal and administrations e.g. Cardano protocol, Layer 2 solutions

• Proposals lacking evidence of a mainnet-deployed product or collaboration with a Tier-1 industry leader.

• Developer tools, middleware, APIs, or integrated development environments belong in Cardano Open: Developers.

• Projects lacking measurable adoption outcomes or Cardano relevance.

• Proposals to use funds primarily for liquidity, loans, NFTs, or buying token-based products without technical integration.

Informational content, websites, or blogs e.g. a Cardano education site.