Last updated 6 months ago
No reliable way to bring liquidity from other chains into Cardano safely. Transfers are slow, money can get stuck in bridges, and users can’t trust that everything will finish as planned.
Turn Cardano into an easy destination (atomically) for funds from many chains: Pelagos moves assets in one secure flow, checks each step, retries if needed, and proves assets really arrived.
Please provide your proposal title
Enabling Atomic Interoperability on Cardano via Pelagos
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
45000
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
2
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
What is the problem you want to solve?
No reliable way to bring liquidity from other chains into Cardano safely. Transfers are slow, money can get stuck in bridges, and users can’t trust that everything will finish as planned.
Supporting links
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
No
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
No dependencies
Will your project's outputs be fully open source?
Yes
Please provide details on the intellectual property (IP) status of your project outputs, including whether they will be released as open source or retained under another licence.
We will let you know
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal
Cross-chain
Describe what makes your idea innovative compared to what has been previously launched in the market (whether by you or others).
Pelagos makes it simple and safe to bring funds from other chains into Cardano. A user signs once on the origin chain, Pelagos checks that every leg can succeed, and only then sends real ADA / CIP-26 transactions on Cardano. If any part cannot complete, the whole thing is cancelled before money leaves the source chain. No wrapped tokens, no “half-finished” moves.
Bridges – deBridge etc.
They lock assets on one chain and mint wrapped tokens on another. Liquidity is fragmented across wrappers and users take bridge-contract risk on top of chain risk. For Cardano this means assets on some other chain instead ofnative assets on Cardano.
Messaging layers – LayerZero, Chainlink CCIP, Hyperlane and similar.
They send messages, not full cross-chain operations. Each team has to build its own settlement logic, retries, monitoring and safety checks. Reliability depends on every individual integration, and there’s no single, standard way Cardano can say “this whole cross-chain deposit is done”.
Bridge / swap aggregators – LI.FI, Socket, Rango, XY Finance, Squid, Rhino.fi etc.
They pick a route across the same bridges and DEXs. They can improve UX, but they can’t change the fact that the underlying bridges are still lock-and-mint and that different legs can fail at different times. They don’t give Cardano a single, native, all-or-nothing flow.
Intent / solver networks – UniswapX, CoW Swap, Anoma, Flashbots SUAVE, Skip, Essential, Enso, Across+intents and similar.
They let a user describe what they want (e.g., “swap asset A for B as cheaply as possible”) and then solvers/bots compete to fill that order using existing venues and bridges. They are good at price discovery and MEV reduction, but:
they still settle through the same bridges and DEXs as everyone else;
they don’t keep a live cross-chain view of state or guarantee that all legs of a multi-chain move finish together;
they don’t give Cardano a standard, native deposit path that wallets, dApps and institutions can all rely on.
Pelagos sits underneath all of these. It treats a move into Cardano as one atomic operation. Bridges, aggregators and intent networks can still exist on top, but Cardano gets something they don’t provide today: a single, reliable, native way for inbound liquidity that does not depend on wrapped tokens or per-app custom logic.
More about our competitors: https://www.notion.so/Competitor-Overview-2611160659e780e5bc1bc9a6d39cbc83
Describe what your prototype or MVP will demonstrate, and where it can be accessed.
Build and submit Cardano transactions for ADA and native assets. Handle UTxO selection and change, minimum-ADA, validity windows, fee calculation, collateral inputs, reference scripts, multi-endpoint submission, inclusion and confirmation tracking.
Follow finalized ledgers and relevant script events with rollback handling.
SDK: to submit a plan and retrieve the receipt.
JSON schema with operation ID, per-leg data, timestamps, and Cardano tx hash, also embedded in Cardano tx metadata.
The MVP proves Cardano can be the final landing zone for multchain flows without bridges in the critical path: native ADA/native-asset writes, clean aborts, and one receipt ops/finance can trust. This removes stuck balances and manual reconciliation and gives wallets, DEXes, lenders, and treasuries a simple integration path to settle on Cardano.
You can check the following SDK out: https://github.com/0xAtelerix/sdk and https://github.com/0xAtelerix/example
In addition, some demos here could be interesting: https://www.notion.so/Documents-Useful-Links-2ad1160659e780e6b500e171fc59696b
Describe realistic measures of success, ideally with on-chain metrics.
What we will measure and how
TVL (Cardanoliquidity). We count ADA and Cardano native assets held in published settlement addresses and contracts that are dedicated to Pelagos-settled flows (wallet float, payroll buffers, RFQ settlement, treasury escrow). Balances are reported both in units and USD equivalent using a public price feed snapshot at day-end. Internal treasury wallets that are not used for settlement are excluded. We will publish an address map, policy IDs for native assets, and a simple query so anyone can reproduce the number.
Transactions (Cardano-ending ops). Every cross-chain operation that finishes on Cardano writes an op_id and chain=cardano into transaction metadata and emits a Receipt(op_id, tx_hash, asset, amount) event in our registry contract. We count one transaction per successful Cardano leg and expose a daily total. Failed/aborted attempts are not counted. We also publish a breakdown by flow (wallet top-ups, payroll/vendor payouts, remittance batches, RFQ finishes, treasury moves). Anyone can verify counts by scanning the registry and matching the tx metadata.
MAU (monthly active users). We count unique Cardano addresses that appear as sender or recipient in a successful Cardano receipt during a rolling 30-day window. To avoid noise from internal transfers, we exclude addresses on our published “infra list” (house wallets, fee collectors, settlement sweepers). Partners who map multiple addresses to a single KYC’d account can provide a salted hash—if supplied, we dedupe by hash; if not, we dedupe by address. We publish the exact SQL used for counting.
Targets and timeline
TVL targets (USD equivalent).
• Day 1: ≥ $40k via partner funding of wallet float ($20k), payroll buffer ($15k), and a small RFQ/settlement buffer ($5k).
• 30 days: $75k–$120k as rolling balances form and partners raise their floors based on throughput.
• 90 days: $200k–$300k driven by payroll cycles, standing remittance liquidity, and RFQ settlement growth.
• 180 days: $400k–$600k assuming two additional partners and higher settlement frequency.
• 12 months: $1.0–1.5m if the three rails mature and two more enterprise flows join (custody off-ramp, marketplace payouts).
Transaction targets (successful Cardano legs).
• Month 1: 12k–18k (wallet top-ups 6–8k; payroll/vendor payouts 3–5k; remittance batches 3–5k).
• Month 2: 25k–35k (more cohorts on top-ups; weekly remittance cadence; first RFQ finishes).
• Month 3: 40k–55k (steady weekly batches + auto-replenish budgets for partners).
• Month 6: 50k–70k sustained.
We will report p50/p95 “commit→Cardano receipt” times alongside counts. SLO: median ≤10s at the chosen confirmation depth; p95 ≤20s.
MAU targets (distinct active addresses).
• Month 1: 400–700 (wallet users + first payroll payees).
• Month 3: 1,200–2,000 as wallet cohorts and remittance recipients grow.
• Month 6: 2,000–3,500 with additional partners.
Retention targets: 30-day returning user rate ≥55% for wallet cohorts and ≥70% for payroll payees.
Levers that drive the numbers
Wallet top-ups. Users fund balances from any chain; settlement lands on Cardano. This produces frequent, small transfers and a wide MAU base. We remove friction by waiving Pelagos execution fees on the first 10k operations and offering a small gas stipend during pilots. We’ll work with two wallets at launch to seed the cohort.
Payroll and vendor disbursements. Recurring payouts produce predictable monthly spikes and a stable TVL floor (pre-funded buffers). We onboard 2–3 DAOs/SMEs with fixed cycles and publish their Cardano settlement addresses so anyone can track balances and payouts.
Remittance/off-ramp batches. Weekly batches raise transaction counts and MAU (recipients) without one-off promos. We structure them as all-or-nothing operations to avoid stranded legs; each payout includes metadata for transparent counting.
RFQ finishes and treasury moves. Smaller in MAU impact but meaningful for TVL and high-value transactions. We treat them as confirmable, auditable operations with receipts and public tags.
Reporting and verification
We will maintain a Metrics Manifest repo with: (a) the list of Cardano settlement addresses and contracts; (b) policy IDs of native assets used; (c) the registry ABI and event schema; (d) the exact SQL for TVL, transaction, and MAU queries; (e) a dashboard link that reads from public endpoints. A daily JSON snapshot (TVL in units and USD, tx counts by flow, MAU) will be published to IPFS and pinned, so numbers are immutable and comparable over time.
Quality bars that protect these metrics
• No partials: If any leg of a multi-chain plan cannot clear, the operation aborts before funds move. That keeps transaction counts honest and stops fake TVL.
• Idempotent submission: Re-tries will not create duplicates; the registry enforces one success per op_id at the Cardano leg.
• Exclusion of infra churn: We publish a blocklist for sweeps and internal rebalancing so transaction counts reflect user actions, not backend noise.
• Transparent FX: USD equivalents for TVL use a documented price source and timestamp; we publish both raw units and USD to avoid disputes.
Rationale for these levels
The levels are set to be aggressive but reachable using existing partner flows, wallet users who already top up monthly, DAOs that run payroll, and remittance partners with weekly runs. These are recurring behaviors, not giveaways. They convert cleanly to Cardano because Pelagos removes the bridge step and returns a receipt ops can trust. As a result, we can scale counts and balances without adding UX friction or manual reconciliation.
Risks and mitigations
Partner ramp slower than expecte:We keep a backup wallet cohort and a second payroll lane ready; if a partner delays, we switch the cohort to maintain counts.
Price volatility: TVL reported in both units and USD; we note the price source used each day.
Sybil activity: MAU counts exclude house wallets and obvious sweep patterns
Commitments
• Publish addresses, policies, and queries on day one.
• Update dashboards daily; lock snapshots weekly.
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
Cardano needs a simple, safe way to send / receive fu ds, move liquidity from other blockchains. Pelagos lets a user start one cross-chain transfer, checks that every step will succeed, and then completes everything in one go so real assets land on Cardano or nothing moves. Cardano sees normal on-chain transactions that wallets and services can track easily, which cuts failed transfers, support work, and makes it more attractive for users to send liquidity in. (all native assets, atomically)
Write path. Build and submit ADA/CIP-26 transfers and scripted actions with correct UTxO selection and change, min-ADA calculation from protocol parameters, validity interval (slot range), fee calculation, collateral inputs, reference scripts, and inline datums/redeemers when required. Multi-endpoint submission, inclusion polling, and a configurable confirmation dept.
Read path. Follow finalized ledgers, handle rollbacks, and capture relevant script events. Expose balances, UTxO sets, and confirmation status to the simulator.
record with op_id, per-leg chain_id, tx_hash, asset IDs, amounts, timestamps, and status.
Cardano tx writes its own op_id and a compact receipt digest into tx metadata.
Mirror the Cardano leg in a small on-chain ReceiptRegistry for easy querying.
One receipt per operation; auditors can reconstruct the full path from chain data only.
HTTP/gRPC endpoints for server-side integrations.
Clear failure semantics: abort-before-send if any leg cannot clear.
Single commit authorizes the whole operation for a short window after successful simulation.
Transactions are posted to all chains only after commit; otherwise no funds move.
No custody: assets stay in user/partner addresses or target contracts; Pelagos only coordinates and proves.
Inbound liquidity lands in one step: A market maker or wallet promises delivery on Cardano; in the same operation Pelagos pays them on the source chain. If the Cardano leg cannot post (balance, fee, TTL, script budget), nothing moves. Users and partners avoid bridges and manual fixes.
No partial state: Aborts happen before any submission, no stranded balances on Cardano.
One record everyone trusts: The receipt ties off-chain routing to a native Cardano tx hash and an op_id embedded in metadata. Finance books it; explorers display it; indexers query it.
Developer time drops: One SDK instead of a stack of bridges and chain-specific adapters. Wallets, exchanges, DEXes, lenders, treasuries ship Cardano settlement in hours, not weeks.
Core flows that move the needle
Wallet top-ups to Cardano: Users fund in from any chain, delivery is ADA or a native asset on Cardano within the same operation. Revenue shares can be encoded on Cardano and are visible in the receipt.
Payroll and vendor payouts: Weekly or monthly runs deliver to many Cardano addresses.
RFQ/solver finishes. Close the user leg on the source chain; the follow-up action (deposit, repay, stake, record) is written on Cardano in the same operation.
Treasury migration. Sell elsewhere, acquire the Cardano asset, settle to the Cardano treasury address in one shot with a receipt that binds every chain’s hash.
Rollout
Phase A — Testnet (preprod). Ship adapter, SDK, registry, and receipt format. Prove ADA + one native asset.
Phase B — Pilot. Onboard wallet/payout/treasury partners; set SLOs; measure success rate, latency, and zero-partial enforcement.
Phase C — Mainnet. Enable production routes after thresholds are met; keep configuration and metrics public.
With this in place, money that lives elsewhere can land on Cardano cleanly. Partners can finish payouts, repayments, RFQ orders, and treasury moves on Cardano without adding a bridge hop or a reconciliation project. Users see fewer failures, indexers and explorers gain a simple way to show the whole cross-chain operation, tied to a real Cardano transaction. That is how transactions, MAUs, and TVL grow by making Cardano the network where multichain work actually completes.
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
Cardano needs more than bridges as it needs a reliable way for money and state from other chains to finish on Cardano as native transactions. That is the role Pelagos will play. By making Cardano a first-class settlement target in our execution layer, flows that start on Ethereum/L2s/Solana (or anywhere else) can land in ADA or Cardano native assets in one operation. This has a direct, measurable impact on the wider community: more real activity on Cardano, fewer stuck transfers, simpler integrations for teams, and a clear audit trail for users, builders, and enterprises.
Liquidity and volume that actually arrive on Cardano.
Wallet top-ups, payroll/vendor disbursements, RFQ/solver finishes, and treasury rebalances become standard routes. Market makers and integrators can commit to deliver ADA/native assets on Cardano while being paid on their source chain in the same operation, removing the usual bridge hop and its failure modes. The immediate effect is higher TVL on Cardano settlement addresses, and sustained monthly transfer volume that does not rely on incentives or one-off campaigns. It also gives existing Cardano projects a clean way to pull liquidity in without redeploying on multiple chains or writing custom adapters.
Fewer failures and cleaner support.
Because Pelagos runs pre-execution checks (UTxOs, fees, validity windows, script budgets) and aborts before submission if anything is off, the community sees fewer ncidents and fewer tickets about half-completed transfers. It improves trust: when a transaction shows up on Cardano, it is already final at the chosen confirmation depth.
A single record everyone can verify.
Each completed operation emits a receipt that includes the Cardano transaction hash and an operation ID, also written to transaction metadata. Users can click from an app to a block explorer and see the exact on-chain result; accountants and auditors can tie off-chain steps to a native Cardano write without spreadsheets; researchers can query a public registry to study cross-chain behavior. This standard, once adopted, becomes shared plumbing for wallets, exchanges, dApps, analytics providers, and compliance tools.
Better developer economics and faster launches.
Teams integrating Cardano today often wire several bridges, RPC providers, and chain-specific adapters. With Pelagos, they install a small SDK and call submit plan and await receipt. That removes weeks of integration work, cuts ongoing maintenance, and lets smaller teams ship Cardano settlement without specialized staff. The outcome for the ecosystem is more projects adding Cardano endpoints like wallets, payment rails, marketplaces, perps/hedge tools, and treasury systems that previously avoided Cardano because of integration cost.
DEXes and RFQ desks: settle user leg elsewhere and write the follow-up (deposit, repay, stake, record) as a native Cardano transaction in the same operation; if state is stale, nothing moves.
Lending and risk engines: repay, liquidate, or re-collateralize on Cardano while sourcing liquidity on another chain; no orphaned legs.
Payments, payroll, remittance: weekly batches to thousands of Cardano addresses with zero partial state; TVL buffers are visible and auditable.
Treasury and DAO ops: sell/rotate externally and settle to Cardano with a single receipt for books; fewer reconciliation errors.
Healthier data layer for explorers and indexers.
The receipt (op_id + Cardano tx hash + amounts + asset IDs) gives explorers and data providers a universal join key for multi-chain actions. They can render the entire operation on a single page, show end-to-end latency, and filter by outcome without heuristic stitching. That means better wallets, better analytics, and simpler integration paths for partners who today avoid multi-chain because the data is messy.
Measurable community growth (TVL, tx, MAU).
Because all receipts and settlement addresses are public, the community can watch adoption without trusting our dashboards. We will publish the address set, policy IDs, and queries used to compute TVL, transaction counts, and monthly active users (unique Cardano addresses seen in successful receipts over 30 days, excluding house wallets). This transparency lets community reviewers and funders judge impact directly from chain data.
Lower risk for users.
No wrapped assets in the critical path, either the entire plan clears or it doesn’t start. That cuts the most common failure mode that frustrates users: one leg succeeds, another fails, and funds sit in a limbo that support has to unwind.
Education and enablement, not just code.
Alongside the release, we will provide focused documentation: how to add a Cardano leg in a day; how to read the receipt in explorers; how to query receipts for accounting; how to design payout/treasury flows that avoid partial state. We’ll run office hours for ecosystem teams so they can integrate quickly and independently, reducing reliance on one vendor.
Long-term ecosystem effects.
When it becomes easy and safe to end flows on Cardano, partners start treating Cardano as the final stop, not an optional tail. Wallets and payment apps can offer pay from anywhere, settle on Cardano as a standard feature. RFQ desks, market makers, and custody providers can route activity to Cardano without adding bespoke plumbing. Community projects can run grants and bounties with clear on-chain completion criteria. The end result is durable: steady transaction throughput, increasing MAUs from real users (not faucet bots), and TVL that reflects live operational buffers (wallet floats, payroll pools, settlement escrows) rather than temporary incentives.
Accountability to the community.
We will publish monthly notes with: (a) on-chain TVL at named addresses, (b) transaction counts by flow, (c) MAU. All figures are derived from public chain data anyone can reproduce them.
Pelagos turns Cardano into the place where multichain plans actually complete. That delivers more native ADA and CIP-26 transfers, steadier monthly activity, and real user growth. It gives builders a direct way to add Cardano without wrestling with bridges, and it gives users and businesses a record they can trust. The impact is practical and measurable: higher TVL in settlement pools, higher transaction counts from recurring rails, and more monthly active addresses across the network backed by receipts anyone can verify on chain.
What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?
Pelagos already runs the core needed settlement: an layer that sequences, simulates, and pushes native transactions to multiple domains. We operate a private Kubernetes testnet that links EVM/SVM networks and external chains, with median block time 170 ms and 400 ms median external-block processing latency. On top of that, teams are testing real flows (aggregated swaps, resolution writes, insurance issuance). The Cardano adapter is a contained piece of work: read finalized ledger, build ADA/CIP-26 transactions with proper UTxO selection and min-ADA, handle validity windows and fees, submit across endpoints, and wait for confirmations.
Who is doing the work.
Small senior team used to shipping infra: core protocol/consensus, cross-chain read/write paths, indexer plumbing, and SDKs.
Trust and accountability model.
Non-custodial by design. If any leg of a plan cannot clear, we abort before submission. When a Cardano leg does post, it’s a native transaction at a published confirmation depth; we record a single receipt with the Cardano tx hash and the operation ID and also write the op-id into Cardano tx metadata. That receipt is the ground truth for users, partners, and auditors. We publish the address set, policy IDs for native assets, and the exact queries we use for TVL, transaction counts, and MAU. Anyone can reproduce numbers from the chain.
Quality gates before mainnet.
Spec discipline - Short, testable specs for: UTxO selection and change, min-ADA calculation, fee and validity-window policy, inclusion and confirmation policy, abort reasons and error codes, receipt fields and metadata layout.
Property tests - UTxO selection invariants (no negative change, no dust, min-ADA respected), validity windows, corner cases around nearly full blocks and tight TTL.
Fuzzing - Randomized UTxO sets, asset mixes, and fee spikes; ensure selection + fee + min-ADA converge; ensure abort occurs before any submit on failure.
Soak tests - Long-running testnet runs (100k+ operations touching Cardano) with endpoint flaps and latency injection; measure success rate, duplicates (should be ~0), and time to receipt.
Chaos tests - Kill submitters, degrade endpoints, force rollbacks; verify idempotent re-submits and clean aborts; confirm no partial state lands on Cardano.
Security review - External review of adapter and SDK critical paths; fixes merged; notes public.
The UTxO model demands careful selection and min-ADA handling, but it is deterministic and testable, fees and validity windows are predictable, reference scripts and inline datums/redeemers are well understood. With a sensible confirmation policy and multi-endpoint submission, inclusion is reliable. Nothing in the adapter requires protocol changes.
How we maintain trust after launch.
Versioning and change control.
Public incidents log: If we hit a failure, we write it up with cause, scope, and fix.
Monthly reports
From the community’s point of view: Cardano becomes the place where multichain plans actually finish, TVL builds, monthly transfers climb from real use, MAU grows from users who receive or initiate Cardano-ending operations, and support noise drops because there are no partials to unwind.
We are not proposing another bridge, we are wiring Cardano into an execution layer that already runs cross-chain.
Milestone Title
Core adapter and SDK
Milestone Outputs
Timeline 2 weeks, ~2 FTE, Budget 8,000 USD)
Cardano write path for ADA and native assets, including UTxO and minimum-ADA logic, validity windows, fees, collateral, reference scripts, multi-endpoint submission, confirmation policy.
SDK and receipt schema with Cardano tx hash and metadata
End-to-end read/write proven on testnet for ADA and one native asset, receipt includes Cardano tx hash, confirmation policy applied.
Acceptance Criteria
End-to-end Cardano write / read proven on testnet for ADA and a native assets; records include Cardano tx hash; safe confirmations respected.
Tests: unit + integration on Cardano testnet; Receipt schema with op-id, Cardano tx hash, amounts, asset IDs, timestamps; tx-metadata
Evidence of Completion
We will ship the SDK and enable the team and the projects on Cardano to test the SDK. We will also ship a demo
Delivery Month
1
Cost
18000
Progress
40 %
Milestone Title
Atomicity and reliability
Milestone Outputs
Pre-execution checks for balances, fees, timing.
Idempotent submission, safe retries, rate limiting, inclusion and finality monitor with rollback resilience.
Property and fuzz tests for UTxO selection, minimum-ADA, tight validity windows, near-full blocks.
Acceptance Criteria
Abort path leaves no partial state on Cardano; repeated submits are idempotent; tests on testnet reach 99.5% success within the set confirmation policy. uccess %, end-to-end receipt issuance time, confirmation policy.
Evidence of Completion
Documentation and we will ship the SDK and enable the team and the projects on Cardano to test the SDK. We will also ship a demo
Delivery Month
1
Cost
15000
Progress
30 %
Milestone Title
Hardening and mainnet readiness
Milestone Outputs
Light security review of adapter and SDK; fixes merged and notes published.
Fee caps, endpoint failover, chaos tests for outages and delayed slots.
Structured logs, metrics, and an HTTP/gRPC receipt stream exposing Cardano hashes; integration and ops runbooks.
“Integrate with Cardano in a day” guide
Acceptance Criteria
Mainnet config packaged; health/metrics live; external engineer validates the guide; SLOs published.
Fee caps, fallback submitters, RPC failover; chaos tests (endpoint flap, delayed slots), notes published
Evidence of Completion
Documentation and we will ship the SDK and enable the team and the projects on Cardano to test the SDK. We will also ship a demo with all the numbers and reports.
Delivery Month
2
Cost
12000
Progress
30 %
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
Milestone 1 — Core adapter and SDK (Timeline 2 weeks, ~2 FTE, Budget 18,000 ADA)
Milestone 2 — Atomicity and reliability (Timeline 2 weeks ~2–2.5 FTE, Budget 15,000 ADA)
Milestone 3 — Hardening and mainnet readiness (Timeline 2 weeks ~1.5–2 FTE, Budget 12,000 ADA)
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
Direct impact on the three numbers that matter.
Transactions: target 40–55k/month by month 3 from wallet top-ups, payroll/vendor runs, RFQ finishes, and treasury moves. These are recurring rails, not promos.
TVL: partner floats and buffers on Cardano settlement addresses cross $75k–$120k by day 30 and $200k–$300k by day 90 as cohorts grow.
MAU: 1.2–2.0k unique Cardano addresses in 90 days from real flows (users topping up, recipients paid on Cardano).
$20k to unlock those rails is inexpensive, especially because the outputs are reusable by any project that wants Cardano to be the endpoint where value lands.
With 100k+ successful Cardano legs in the first quarter, the one-off grant equates to less than $0.20 per settled transaction and drops every month afterwards. Counting the three initial partners, cost per integrator lands at $6.7k vs. t
Without this adapter and receipt standard, each wallet/DEX/treasury team repeats the same work: UTxO selection, min-ADA, TTL/fees, inclusion tracking, retries. Multiply that by 5–10 teams and you’ve burned $100k–$300k of duplicated engineering just to reach the same place
often with worse reliability and no common receipt format. Funding one robust path avoids that waste.
Abort-before-send eliminates the half-moved funds.
What the $20k actually brings
Adapter engineering (UTxO, min-ADA, TTL/fees, scripts, submit/confirm): done once, reusable everywhere.
Read path + rollbacks: stable inclusion and confirmation tracking; no hand-rolled polling in every dApp.
Receipt standard + registry: the simple, auditable record everyone can use
Docs, SDK, runbooks: so teams integrate in hours, not weeks.
The ecosystem captures the upside with more flows finishing on Cardano & more settlement fees paid on Cardano. Even with low per-tx fees, 40–70k monthly transactions add up and are continuous.
Shorter integration cycles for new partners as one SDK, clear receipts. Lower time-to-Cardano means more teams include Cardano by default instead of pushing it to “phase two.”
Lower failure rates improve user retention. If the Cardano leg can’t post, nothing starts.
Bridges and messaging alone haven’t delivered dependable cross-chain settlement to Cardano. Teams still glue bespoke adapters, and users still get stuck funds. The proposed work flips that script: native Cardano settlement in one operation with receipts anyone can verify. It’s a small, targeted grant that unlocks durable rails for TVL, transactions, and MAU growth.
I confirm that evidence of prior research, whitepaper, design, or proof-of-concept is provided.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal includes ecosystem research and uses the findings to either (a) justify its uniqueness over existing solutions or (b) demonstrate the value of its novel approach.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal demonstrates technical capability via verifiable in-house talent or a confirmed development partner (GitHub, LinkedIn, portfolio, etc.)
Yes
I confirm that the proposer and all team members are in good standing with prior Catalyst projects.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal clearly defines the problem and the value of the on-chain utility.
Yes
I confirm that the primary goal of the proposal is a working prototype deployed on at least a Cardano testnet.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal outlines a credible and clear technical plan and architecture.
Yes
I confirm that the budget and timeline (≤ 12 months) are realistic for the proposed work.
Yes
I confirm that the proposal includes a community engagement and feedback plan to amplify prototype adoption with the Cardano ecosystem.
Yes
I confirm that the budget is for future development only; excludes retroactive funding, incentives, giveaways, re-granting, or sub-treasuries.
Yes
I Agree
Yes
Core contributors for this proposal
Evgenii Danilenko (CEO) https://www.linkedin.com/in/evgenii-danilenko-90895524/
Ex Ethereum Foundation, Polygon, Erigon, Fantom
Boris Petrov (CTO) https://www.linkedin.com/in/b00ris/
Ex Ethereum Foundation, Polygon, Erigon, Fantom
Nicky Chalabi (CBO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-ch-316749147/
Ex NEAR, NEON, Taiko, Telos
Nebojsa Jovic (CMO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jovicn/
Ex Dash, Crypto.com, Dash
Krishna Upadhyaya (Founding Engineer): https://www.linkedin.com/in/0xkrishnau/
Ex Polygon