🧭 What’s This All About?
Catalyst Fund 14 has kicked off – Cardano’s community innovation fund where great ideas can win support.
Our squad focused on the “Cardano Open: Developers” category: a 3.1M ADA budget, but 324 proposals with an average ask of 79k ADA. That means space for roughly 40 winners → about 88% will sadly be cut. 💔
⚔️ Champions & Contrarians
Instead of blindly slogging through 324 submissions, the team built a clever two-tier system:
- Champions – the cheerleaders for promising ideas, quickly spotting what looks worth a closer look.
- Contrarians – the skeptics who later double-check whether Champions fell in love or missed something.
To avoid bias, every proposal gets two Champions + two Contrarians — four pairs of eyes. 👀👀
⏱️ Screening Speedrun
Step one: Champions scan all proposals for 1–2 minutes each, tagging them as promising, rejected, or potential.
Results: 90 “Promising”, 199 “Rejected”, 35 “Potential”.
🔄 Recovery & Star Rating
Contrarians pulled samples from “Rejected” & “Potential” to catch mistakes → none came back.
Then came a star rating on three criteria — Strategic Fit, Feasibility, Impact (Impact slightly outweighs the rest). Anything under 2.5 stars was dropped.
🥊 Condorcet Battle
Still too many proposals? Champions compared them head-to-head (Condorcet method). They trimmed until the list fit the budget, with a small fairness rule: max two wins per author.
🔍 Final Review
Contrarians did a deeper dive (~35 min each) on the remaining projects. Only two didn’t survive this last round.
Outcome: 46 projects, totaling 3.35M ADA — a little over budget, but better to keep strong contenders than cut too harshly.
🎯 Key Takeaways
- Catalyst reviews are tough: only a few get funded, even if many are solid.
- Fast passes plus safety nets (Contrarians) help minimize mistakes.
- Maintenance for open-source tools doesn’t fit Catalyst perfectly — it needs its own support line.
💬 Your Move
Which proposal from the final list would you champion — and why? Drop your thoughts or X handle below! 🗯️
🗳️ Catalyst Fund 14 – Shortlist, Degens’ Voting Guide
Quick hits: who’s building what, how much they’re asking, and why it slaps for the Cardano community.
| # | Proposal | Proposer | Ask (₳) | Why Vote / Community Alpha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .Net Identus SDK | Björn Sandmann | 100,000 | Cardano login/identity for .NET land — opens enterprise floodgates. |
| 2 | API Layer via Tx3 | Tx Pipe | 97,917 | One slick API, fewer raw RPC headaches, faster dApp shipping. |
| 3 | Adder: Gov + Mempool Tracker | Blink Labs | 28,400 | Live alpha on votes & pending txs — governance pulse for all. |
| 4 | C Lib for Ledger HW | Angel Castillo | 100,000 | Embedded/C apps get secure Ledger signing — safer gadgets. |
| 5 | BTC Lightning on Cardano | Poly Crypt | 100,000 | Zap sats inside ADA dApps — real cross-chain payments. |
| 6 | Dendrite v2 Oracles | Robert Hever / CHARLI3 | 100,000 | Cleaner price feeds for swaps & lending — fewer degen liquidations. |
| 7 | Cardano Bar (VSCode) | SIDAN Labs | 100,000 | Aiken blueprint tools in VSCode — fewer dev hangovers. |
| 8 | Cardano DeFi SDK | 3rd Eye Labs | 100,000 | Plug-and-play swaps/pools — DeFi speedrun kit. |
| 9 | Cardanoscan API (Python) | Ashish Prajapati | 64,000 | Easy chain analytics for bots & dashboards — instant data juice. |
| 10 | Cexplorer: Mini Explorer | Vellum Labs | 98,000 | Lightweight explorer for labs/sidechains — low bloat, high signal. |
| 11 | Cexplorer: Addon System | Vellum Labs | 40,000 | Plugin system for metadata/scripts — customize your stack. |
| 12 | Chrysalis.Network | SAIB Inc. | 100,000 | .NET apps talk Cardano nodes — enterprise on-ramp. |
| 13 | Chrysalis.Plutus.SDK | SAIB Inc. | 100,000 | Write/test Plutus in Microsoft stacks — ship solid contracts. |
| 14 | Cometa.lua | Angel Castillo | 60,000 | Lua SDK for scripting/automation — bots to the moon. |
| 15 | Connect The Dots (Drupal) | Robert Castelo | 100,000 | ADA login/payments for Drupal — mainstream sites onboard. |
| 16 | Cross-Chain Wallet SDK | Mesh.js | 100,000 | Multichain wallet glue incl. Cardano — smoother UX. |
| 17 | Elixir SDK for Cardano | Tx Body | 90,800 | Cardano hooks for Phoenix apps — web servers go on-chain. |
| 18 | Elixir client for Ouroboros | Carlos Souza | 100,000 | Elixir apps sync directly with nodes — no middle layers. |
| 19 | Firehose & Substreams | No Witness Labs | 81,000 | High-perf chain data pipelines — dashboards & alpha feeds. |
| 20 | Ghost Codec | No Witness Labs | 97,600 | “Hardhat” vibes for Cardano — package/test contracts fast. |
| 21 | High-Perf DEX Indexer (Rust) | dzcodes Wizard | 76,500 | Blazing trade indexing — better trader UX. |
| 22 | Hydra Hexcore | Vtechcom Labs | 95,000 | Spin up multi-party Hydra heads without headaches. |
| 23 | Hydra SDK (WASM) | Vtechcom Labs | 85,000 | Plug Hydra speed right into apps — off-chain turbo. |
| 24 | Hydrozoa L2: Interfaces | George Flerovsky | 100,000 | Polished UIs for Hydrozoa — pretty buttons > scary CLI. |
| 25 | Hydrozoa L2: Reliability | George Flerovsky | 100,000 | Backend armor — fewer downtimes, happier users. |
| 26 | Implement PLONK in Aiken (ZK) | Eryx | 100,000 | Privacy contracts unlocked — zk for Cardano devs. |
| 27 | Reown AppKit + WalletConnect | Michal Petro | 81,000 | ADA wallets slide into multichain flows — smoother UX. |
| 28 | Monitoring Dashboards | Tx Pipe | 97,083 | Keep dApps healthy — see errors/uptime/events fast. |
| 29 | OgmiosDotnet: Tx Submission | Dave Ada | 50,000 | .NET lib to send transactions — mainstream devs onboard. |
| 30 | OgmiosDotnet: Events & Viz | Dave Ada | 100,000 | Watch chain events & visualize — better ops & insights. |
| 31 | OpenMM: Market Making Toolkit | 3rd Eye Labs | 85,000 | LPs keep pools deep — healthier DeFi liquidity. |
| 32 | Plutus Blueprint Testing | Tx Body | 42,000 | Test/integrate contracts — catch bugs before mainnet. |
| 33 | SAP–Cardano OData API + SDK | Max Weber | 85,000 | Bridge SAP ERPs to Cardano — enterprise adoption path. |
| 34 | Scale the Chain: Merkle Bridge POC | Zachary Soesbee | 95,000 | Safer L2 bridging — less bridge-hack PTSD. |
| 35 | Transaction V2 Serialization (Pallas) | Mesh.js | 100,000 | Cleaner tx serializer — fewer failures across dApps. |
| 36 | TxCheck: Aiken Tx Testing | Agustin Salinas | 35,000 | Simulate flows so you don’t YOLO and cry. |
| 37 | Vodka: Aiken Dev Utils | SIDAN Labs | 100,000 | All-in-one utilities for Aiken — dev fuel, hold the chaser. |
| 38 | WalletConnect Flutter + VESPR | VESPR Wallet | 75,000 | ADA in Flutter + VESPR — mobile dApps that don’t feel mid. |
| 39 | Weld: Seamless Cardano for dApps | Zachary Soesbee / Anvil | 79,000 | Wallets + tx + events glued tight — buttery dApp UX. |
| 40 | Yubikey Cardano Wallet | Arkadiusz Konior | 15,000 | YubiKey 2FA for ADA bags — security flex. |
🔥 TL;DR: Scaling toys, zk privacy, mobile UX, enterprise bridges, safer DeFi — vote the stack that powers builders and spoils users.
Second Chance List:
CSL-Lite – Modular Cardano Serialization Toolkit
Imagine Cardano data like LEGO bricks — this toolkit only loads the pieces you actually need, making apps lighter and faster. Bottom line: less bloat, more speed for wallets and tools.
CardanoWeb3js – Better TypeScript Library
Makes Cardano as easy for web developers as “Web3” is on Ethereum. Anyone building websites or dApps can send transactions or connect wallets with far less friction.
Chrysalis.CBOR – .NET Building Block for Data
Helps programs in the Microsoft world correctly pack and unpack Cardano data. Without it, companies can’t build clean, reliable integrations.
Chrysalis.Network – Cardano Networking for .NET
Brings the Cardano node protocol straight into .NET apps. Enterprises can talk to the blockchain without complicated translators.
Chrysalis.Plutus.Core – Parser & Engine
A tool that can read and test “Plutus” (Cardano’s smart-contract language), aimed at Microsoft devs. Makes auditing and debugging contracts much easier.
Chrysalis.Tx – Easier Transactions
Helps apps assemble complex Cardano payments safely. Cuts down on manual coding and lowers the chance of errors.
Common Vulnerabilities Patterns
A checklist + scanner for common security flaws in smart contracts and dApps. Goal: fewer hacks, more trust for users.
Exura Transaction Intelligence API
An interface that analyzes transactions and gives wallet hints (e.g., when something might fail). Makes it simpler for dApps to keep track of what’s happening.
MACS – New Coin-Selection Algorithm
Helps choose the “right coins” inside your wallet when sending ADA, keeping fees low and balances tidy. Think of it as a smart shopping cart for ADA.
Smart Contract Design Patterns Conway+
A library of proven blueprints for Cardano smart contracts. Devs don’t need to reinvent the wheel and can ship safer contracts faster.
Weld – Turbo Layer for dApps
“Weld” neatly links wallets, transactions, and network events so dApps become more stable and responsive. For users, that means fewer bugs and smoother flows.
Whisky V2 – Rust SDK for Cardano
A slick toolkit for programmers who use Rust. It makes writing super-fast Cardano apps or indexers a breeze.
Final Takeaway
Some tools (Weld, CSL-Lite, CardanoWeb3js) make apps lighter and easier to build. Others (Smart Contract Patterns, Common Vulnerabilities) boost security and best practices. And others (Whisky V2, the Chrysalis suite) open Cardano to new languages and enterprise stacks.
Together, they make Cardano apps more user-friendly, stable, and secure — whether for startups, enterprises, or end users.
