Cardano Foundation Launches 2023 Financial Insights Report
Supporting Cardano's growth: operational resilience, education, & adoption
[Zug, Switzerland, November 13, 2024] – Cardano Foundation, an independent, Swiss-based not-for-profit organization tasked with advancing the public digital infrastructure Cardano, launched its first Financial Insights Report today. The report is an important milestone in its ongoing commitment to uphold the principles of openness, integrity, and community engagement. Complementing the Activity Report published earlier this year, the Financial Insights Report details how the Foundation directed its funds and the tangible impact it made across its three core focus areas: operational resilience, education, and adoption.
Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, said, "This report represents a natural evolution of our open-source philosophy, where transparency is not merely a concept but a core principle we wholeheartedly embrace. This report highlights the importance of accountability, disclosing the allocation of our resources, and how they help advance Cardano as a public digital utility across a wide range of industries. We have 100+ employees working with institutions, businesses, regulators, and policymakers to solve societal and enterprise challenges in new ways across 25 countries."
In 2023, the Cardano Foundation allocated $19.22M across the Foundation’s three mutually reinforcing focus areas of operational resilience, education, and adoption. Additionally, $4.55M was dedicated to central operational costs as the Cardano Foundation expanded its capacity to support and drive forward key initiatives. Each investment reflects its commitment to building a robust and sustainable ecosystem.
In keeping with its central mission of bridging Cardano and the world by working to progress Cardano as a public digital utility, the Cardano Foundation has focused intensively on scaling the diversity, quality, and quantity of activities on Cardano. To achieve economic escape velocity for Cardano, on-chain activities must include a balanced mix of legacy and blockchain-native use cases. Scaling the diversity, quality, and quantity of activities on Cardano is core to the Foundation’s mission. This goal faces several hurdles, from the cost and complexity of implementation and ownership to a lack of comfort with blockchain. The Cardano Foundation addresses such gaps with targeted initiatives on operational resilience, education, and adoption. Highlights from the 2023 Transparency Report include:
Financial Summary
As of 31st December 2023, the Cardano Foundation’s assets amounted to $478.24M, of which 82.5% was held in ADA, 10.1% in BTC, and the remainder as USD liquidity. The Cardano Foundation was funded by the aforementioned initial endowment in ADA and a proportion of the proceeds from the distribution of ADA vouchers. The Foundation has and continues to utilize these assets to fund activities aligned with its statutory purpose and mission. Constituted as a Swiss foundation, the Cardano Foundation’s efforts are driven by a long-term view, prioritizing the resilience, adoption, and longevity of the Cardano blockchain and its ecosystem without the pressure of short-term financial goals or shareholder value interests.
Operational Resilience
Operational Resilience, which encompasses all efforts to improve Cardano’s suitability and recognition as an infrastructure component of institutional-grade use cases, received $2.12M for its share of expenses. The Foundation bolsters the Cardano infrastructure's resilience, reliability, and durability and works towards a broader understanding of blockchain and its associated opportunities and risks. Highlights include:
- •Ran network without interruption for more than 2,000 days
- •Tested decentralized governance mechanism with an SPO and the University of Zurich
- •Supported the Valentine hard fork that brought improved interoperability
- •Launched own block producer, refined stake pool delegation, and implemented continuous network monitoring
Education
Education, which contributes to information on and legal certainty for third-generation blockchains, received $4.18M for its share of expenses, promoting discussion and debate, supporting research, and explaining blockchain concepts to diverse stakeholders. During 2023, the Cardano Foundation continued its work to provide reliable information to support regulatory clarity, contribute to blockchain research, and encourage enterprise adoption, as well as the diversity of the developer community. Highlights include:
- •Launched the Cardano Academy, Cardano Explorer, and ‘Let’s Talk Cardano’ webinar
- •Hosted the Cardano Summit 2023 in Dubai
Adoption
Adoption, which drives use of Cardano by businesses, organizations, and other institutions by creating the conditions for increased utility while also reducing the adoption and running costs through improved tooling, received $12.92M for its share of expenses, contributing to the longevity of the Cardano development ecosystem, including by fostering open source. During the year, the funds were directed to the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to drive adoption of Cardano by supporting the development of use cases to demonstrate its wide-ranging utility and tools for the community to leverage Cardano in different ways. Highlights include:
- •Developed Identify Wallet and Ledger Sync to support enterprise-grade Cardano applications
- •Launched open-source programming language Aiken to simplify smart contract development
- •Optimized SPO rewards, upgraded Kupo and Ogmios, and improved Cardano Ballot to enable a customizable
- •Collaborated with the Global Impact Challenge with Switzerland for UNHCR and the Georgian wine industry.
The Cardano Foundation will publish its next Activity Report 2024 in Q1 of 2025, providing detailed insights into the initiatives and accomplishments of 2024.