Cardano Foundation's Project Catalyst F14 Review Process Results

As promised in our previous blog post, we are happy to share the Cardano Foundation’s Fund 14 review outcomes before voting closes on 6 October 2025. It includes our review of the Partners & Products proposals, on which the Foundation will actually vote, as well as the outcomes of our Representative Pilot, where we only provide recommendations on other proposals.

We encourage everyone to use these insights alongside community expert reviews to help inform your voting decisions.

Promise to practice: our review process

The Foundation established a three-step evaluation process encompassing business feasibility, technical and critical assessment, and a final general assessment done by the Executive Committee. We will be voting with one wallet of approximately ₳20 million.

As announced in the previous Project Catalyst blog published on 9 September 2025, we considered all 158 proposals in the Partners & Products track, totalling ₳53.6 million in requested funding. This list was extensively reviewed and narrowed down to a shortlist of 23 proposals based on our review criteria, on which we will vote.

The maturity of proposals growing fund on fund is impressive, with sophisticated enterprise partnerships and mainnet-ready solutions standing out. Nonetheless, some Catalyst funding requirements could still be optimised, particularly:

1. the amount allocated to each category’s budget;
2. the volume and scope of the tracks;
3. the challenge to make comparable evaluations between vastly different proposals.

Additionally, given the new funding avenues available through on-chain governance on Cardano, certain proposals seemed out of place for Project Catalyst, which is intended for innovation grant funding.

Further details of our methodology and evaluation criteria are available here.

Technical expertise: our new pilot in action

The Foundation’s Project Catalyst Representative Pilot reinforced an often overlooked truth: specialized technical reviews are far more insightful than generalist approaches.

In this pilot, domain experts identified nuanced feasibility issues and opportunities that broad assessments missed, and gave recommendations on that basis. This emphasized the need to contribute to a culture of community subject-matter expertise as a public good.

All expert recommendations are now publicly available on the Cardano Forum under the "catalyst-rep-pilot" tag. They span various expertise areas including enterprise/Web2, Web3, developer tooling and infrastructure, sustainability/blockchain for good, governance/distributed decision-making, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

You can also see the experts discussing these insights in two Community Roundtable Talks:

We hope this feedback provides valuable support in helping your decision making process.

Cardano Foundation's Catalyst selection

After the review process, we’ve created a detailed document containing the Foundation’s shortlist (23 proposals, ₳10.6 million), complete with specific rationale for each decision, covering business viability, technical feasibility, and strategic alignment.

This focused approach in Fund 14 reinforces that contributing as one of many players adds value to the ecosystem. The insights from both our concentrated review of the Partners & Products track and the recommendations produced in the Representative pilot will inform not just our future Catalyst participation but also our ongoing work with the Catalyst team and the Cardano community to improve the proposing, reviewing, voting, and accountability processes.

The voting window closes on 6 October 2025 at 11am UTC. Please feel free to engage with the specialized expert reviews on the Cardano Forum, watch the roundtable recordings, and participate in ongoing conversations with representatives.