The Cardano Foundation promotes impactful action of the community

Cardano Foundation appointed Cardano Ambassador Bullish Dumpling as our new representative in the Catalyst Circle, a group participating in Catalyst governance

Project Catalyst, an experiment in community innovation on Cardano, has entered its next funding round, with the voting for Fund 8 happening between 21 April and 5 May. All proposals are available for the community’s viewing and the Cardano Foundation will soon announce which Fund 9 Challenges it has decided to vote on. 

Meanwhile, as the Project stepped into this new phase, the Cardano Foundation strengthened its commitment to support the active participation of the community. We are delighted that Cardano Ambassador Bullish Dumpling accepted the appointment as our new representative in the Catalyst Circle, a position that started last March.

A member of the Ambassadors Guild and a true blockchain citizen, Dumpling brings a robust experience within the ecosystem. She considerably built the Chinese speaking community by helping Chinese speakers from places like Singapore, Taiwan, or Malaysia in understanding and joining Cardano. She has also been conducting a series of initiatives intent on promoting better connections between projects and the Cardano community. The Twitter spaces she regularly hosts welcomes anyone who wants to join the conversation. She has certainly proven to be a value-adding member to the Cardano ecosystem in advancing communication, collaboration, and positive adoption of Cardano – all traits in-line with the mission of the Cardano Foundation to sustain the positive development of the community. This standing within the community itself and awareness of its interests, concerns, and needs, made her the ideal appointee. 

Dumpling will undoubtedly continue to play a pivotal role in bridging the communication between ourselves, the general Cardano community, and the Ambassadors Guild. Those in the Guild already play a relevant role in aiding the community by lending it their substantial understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies technology. Dumpling will continue to extend this service to the Catalyst Circle.

When the Circle first began holding meetings, we chose an appointee from within our own team to sit as the Cardano Foundation’s representative. However, we later saw an opportunity to align with the community to a greater extent while also further empowering it. In fact, it seemed to us important that our intervention in the Circle would remain as supportive as possible so as to endorse ample community engagement within Catalyst.

Project Catalyst – the community-owned platform anticipating the future

A prelude to on-chain voting, Project Catalyst works under some chief characteristics:

• •an experimental step and a key in bringing on-chain governance to the Cardano blockchain;
• •a center of community participation that allows discussion and consensus at an off-chain level;
• •an off-chain training space, preparing the eventual future of Voltaire’s fully on-chain reality.

As Catalyst grows, so do its active, functional groups, making the effective communication between all involved parties more complex. The Catalyst Circle emerged to facilitate it. Here’s how it works:

• •An arena for dialogue – it gives voice to the several groups through their representative leadership.
• •Representatives – five elected members representing the community advisors, the funded proposers, the general ada holders, the stake pool operators, and the toolmakers and maintainers; two appointed representatives, one by the Cardano Foundation and another by IOHK.
• •Representatives’ role – the seven representatives express the concerns, objections, and possibilities of their respective stakeholder groups, allowing the various issues relevant to the Catalyst ecosystem to be not only detected but also debated and acted upon by the community.
• •Constructing the future – the Circle presents a unique opportunity to structure community representation while also affording the chance to build expert classes of collaborators as well as decision-making agents; in this way, it fosters advisory governance and helps to bring about the reality of an inclusive, accountable community.

However, despite the project’s impressive development as well as its clear maturation, when compared to other blockchains, Catalyst still has not reached the desired volume or variety of participation.

The Cardano Foundation, along with those invested in cultivating constructive discussions within the ecosystem, understands the numbers need to increase and also come from the several stakeholder groups existing in the community. Only by having such a broad participation from the different spheres of the community can Project Catalyst create a sustainable, successful off-chain experiment. For this reason, instead of appointing a representative for the Circle chosen from within the Cardano Foundation itself, we preferred to work towards providing a community member with the tools to become more impactful.

The Cardano Foundation in the Catalyst Circle – a community representative for a community platform

We have long aimed at community strengthening. Indeed we consider it our duty to support decentralization by also equipping the community with the essential resources and opportunities. It is actually one of the core pillars and goals in our North Star and priority principles for 2022. So, with the Cardano nation blossoming, we elected to nurture a closer working relationship with the Ambassadors, thus enabling our community members to grow into eventual experts in Voltaire Governance.

Matthias Sieber from the Ambassadors Guild acted as our second appointed representative in the Catalyst Circle. Dumpling has now taken up the mantle and the Cardano Foundation looks forward to her contributions and insights.

We have an open dialogue with our representatives, upholding their own informed opinions and statements. We will therefore hold regular meetings with Dumpling to gather her educated viewpoints and articulate our common intentions. Going forth, and if the Circle so wishes it, the Cardano Foundation would also be willing to aid in collecting community insights with higher levels of inclusivity and stakeholder representation so that more members from the entire community spectrum may feel inspired and encouraged to get involved. Such wide-ranging participation will be fundamental to guarantee the future community receives the maximum benefit when joining the Cardano ecosystem, while simultaneously assisting the design of the future community governance in Voltaire. To this end, we will also ensure Dumpling engages with the senior Catalyst specialist and receives any necessary guidance and information from us.

It is the Cardano Foundation’s hope that this symbiotic relationship with Dumpling will champion the alignment of communities in Catalyst, leading to a rich class of experts, able to fulfill the role of community-based governance.