2023 was going to be the year we were going to be branching out and bringing in some different uh people from different ecosystems and we We are following through on that so this will be one of the many that we’ve had so far this year from cardano so obviously if There’s anybody in the cardano community who is watching uh be sure to hit that like button share it get more people in here obviously we we want to out we want to Branch out and learn about what these other communities are doing and what they’re building in their ecosystems Because you know this whole Space is growing so fast that it’s hard to keep up and so it’s good to have you know people from these projects come and just show us you know what everybody’s up to and and how this space is evolving so Glad to be here and glad that Chris has joined the show yeah glad to be here with you guys it’s a pleasure pleasure’s all mine so yeah and y’all make sure you hit some retweets hit some read likes continue to leave those uh comments and if you have Any questions for project Catalyst and Chris make sure that you write them below so okay let’s begin Chris you want to start with an introduction of who you are and uh what are you building yeah sure happy to and so my name’s Chris Baird I’ve been with input output uh the Main software one of the main software development um organizations building out the cardano protocol um I’ve been with IO for the last two and a bit years and I’m the the product lead uh project Catalyst and uh project catalyst is something that’s um pretty remarkable and I think it’s easy for me To say that as uh the product lead and be sort of Shilling my own project but um you know maybe maybe you guys in the audience will leave it to you to decide whether it’s uh um yeah tremendous and and very remarkable or not so what is catalyst well project catalyst is cardano’s Innovation engine um it’s I guess it could be most traditionally likened to a grant program but rather than being a traditional grant program where you know you put your proposal in and then ultimately at some point in the future some crusty old dudes uh decide whether Or not your uh your proposal lives or dies and those across the old dudes normally amount to like three or four people in a room um happy out you know uh whether they like your proposal or not or even if they don’t really come from a position Of expertise rather than that being the way that uh cardano’s Innovation engine operates and we flipped it almost entirely on its head and we’ve been doing this for two years really trailblazing um and Paving the way for how decentralized governance and distributed decision making can be done at scale in the future So I mean that probably doesn’t really give too much of an an understanding as to what we actually do but what Catalyst really is all about it’s a Community Driven um Innovation Endeavor meaning that the community and you know you you you’re by becoming part of catalyst and submitting A proposal or you know coming to join any of the events you’re beginning to become part of the community so when I say the community I’m not just talking about people that have been in cardano um but people that are you know from other ecosystems and spaces that are Looking for resources to build their web 3 Vision or you know projects that are there to support the growth of you know cardano’s ecosystem whether that’s for marketing purposes or otherwise um but essentially you guys in the community come to Catalyst with your great ideas you submit proposals Within a given funding round and a funding round is normally about three or four months long um your proposal gets submitted community members quite often hundreds of community members then participate in a review stage where they’re giving their opinions and their feedback and scoring each proposal against you know criteria How impactful is it going to be how feasible is the approach whether it’s a good uh representation of value for money um these are the sorts of criteria that the the community is scoring and reviewing the proposals against and then all of those reviews and these scores Then get um loaded into our voting application and this becomes information that voters are primed with so then voters not only read the proposals but they also take the inputs and the signals that have been given by the community reviewers and ultimately make decisions on which proposals should be Funded from the treasury and so this is why why it’s a really interesting Dynamic right because you’ve got as I said you guys in the community submitting proposals you guys are you know reviewing them and giving opinions as to whether or not you think they’re good or not and then ultimately casting Your votes to decide which ones should receive funding so that is turning the traditional grants model on its head my yeah Hub is normally if you’re uh if you could play more of an active role in deciding how resources are spent on causes you care about do You want to play or not and I think I think that’s huge like right now that’s whatever that’s what everybody in algorand is kind of you know up in arms about I mean you have the first uh well I guess it would be the second AVM chain that’s planned to launch called voy Which is uh some developers in the AL Grant Community who are you know it’s not a hard fork or anything they’re starting from you know Ground Zero and but they’re going to be using the AVM and it’s mainly built around creating a more decentralized governance structure So that funds and the revenue from the chain is more decentralized in how you know people the community gets to choose this money because right now you know being someone who holds algo being someone who holds some of these other tokens you know these proposals they Kind of just come up out of nowhere and you’re like who who who is the one who said hey this is what we should vote on and you know for algorance you know spot we’ve seen it has has become more decentralized but it’s still I would say In my in my opinion fairly centralized so hearing what you guys are kind of building it does sound more decentralized and I know that cardano um just you know from what I’ve seen on Twitter tokenomics wise seems to be one of the most decentralized tokens among retail large whales stuff like that so It seems like uh that is one thing where cardano is very good at which is decentralization how decentralized is this project Catalyst though so like how many people are actually able to propose things and then how many you know with you said it takes about a three month or So process for a funding round how many people in this ecosystem are voting yeah yeah all really good questions so um let me talk you through essentially how um the the makeup of catalysts and our impact to date looks like so and we’ve got about 60 000 community Members signed up to our mailing list so I think that’s one good Benchmark of you know how many people are participating um we have you know tens of thousands of registered wallets for voting and and then we have thousands and thousands of people that that actually participate in Voting it changes from from fun to fund we’ve kind of grown um steadily over the past nine iterations we’re at current we’re currently at fun 10 we just launched a couple of weeks ago fun10 so the proposal submission window is still open and you’re able to submit proposals Up until the 13th of July so if you’ve got a great idea then that’s that’s uh your your opportunity to submit um ideas and see see whether or not you can get funding for it but to come back to your questions how decentralized is it you know we’ve in nine iterations of Catalyst we’ve seen over 1.7 million votes cast we’ve funded projects like people as in someone submitted a proposal it’s gone through the whole process and then it’s been funded we’ve funded projects from over 100 countries around the world today and these are all Builders right these are all people that are building dapps Or products and services or tooling for developers or you know launching um local community centers in Nairobi or in in Johannesburg or Cape Town um or you know doing translation of Haskell programming books in Vietnamese right um and then yeah as I said we have thousands and thousands of people voting Um the barrier to entry to actually submit proposals is non-existent anyone could submit a proposal you know you could put in a proposal around your great idea so long as there’s obviously leveraging cardano or has some sort of cross-chain capabilities and it’s squarely in the pocket for like one of the the Categories or challenges that um that are that are in a given fund then it’s in scope anybody can submit a proposal in terms of voting you need to hold 500 Ada to participate in boating which again you know it’s affordable it’s pretty affordable right yeah Um yeah and then as I said there’s been yeah I’ve well over a million votes uh well there was 350 000 votes cast in fund nine and um from fund one onwards it’s basically been exponential we’ve been doubling in size every single round both in terms of like you know how many Proposals submitted how many get funded um how many votes uh uh take place it’s um yeah it’s it’s pretty phenomenal I think and yeah I’ve just seen this morning yeah holy macaroni is one of the the Catalyst funded projects he’s um he’s he’s one of 1155 projects funded in the last two Years and I think it’s interesting something that you said before the show kind of started when you were giving me the high level is with the funds where does the funds come from to actually fund project Catalyst because I think that is pretty cool and I think it’s Important especially when you look at why is ethereum successful and it’s because it has a revenue you know there is revenue coming in to keep the engine going I think what you’re seeing in this bear market and reason why there’s so much angst is because is a lot of these Blockchains don’t have any revenue and the money’s drying up and everybody’s fighting for scraps so tell us how project Catalyst funds itself yeah it’s a really really great questions and you know I am I have to to tip my cap to uh you know input outputs uh founder and The you know their scientific team and um this is Charles Hoskins and I’m talking about obviously and then um yeah my colleague agalos who’s the chief scientific officer because you know it all comes down to protocol design and at the heart of uh cardano’s protocol design is an understanding that the Treasury and the transactions that take place on the blockchain to feed the treasury are really not just like super important they’re critical to the self-sustainability and self-sufficiency of a decentralized ecosystem so what I mean by that well very simply the way that Catalyst works is that every single time there’s a Transaction that takes place on the cardano blockchain there’s a transaction fee like that’s something that we’re all used to um there the fees on cardano are much smaller than um you know other blockchains what’s the average price of a fee about 0.17 ADA okay and about that So it’s tiny right and then um I mean that’s a typical transaction fee and then um of that 0.17 ADA typically there’s a a slice at well not typically there’s a slice of a 20 of that fee that goes directly into the treasury so the treasury today Every Epoch which is every six days it has about five and a half million Ada added to it in transactions and that’s basically at the bottom of a bear market right yeah wow so you know if you can imagine when things are absolutely flying and you Know I don’t care about price and this is not what the discussion is but obviously higher volume of transactions higher number of transaction fees more going into the the treasury right today the treasury stands out and forgive me if I’m a little bit off but it’s it’s probably somewhere in the order of Around about 1.4 to 1.5 billion Ada and that treasury is there to be used exclusively to fund the growth of the ecosystem and ultimately to be able to you know develop the governance structures and practices that allow afford self-sustainability and self-sufficiency so that you know um If any of the big players uh and you know the main contributors to the Cardinal protocol somehow disappear off the face of the planet there’s still an active and working and operating model that was can allow it to continue to to to to operate right so that’s part of the beauty of it And then catalyst is a part of this it’s not certainly the only um the the only uh entity or organization or kind of group that is able to benefit from the the Carolina treasury we actually you know operate a really really tiny sliver of um of the the total capacity that could Be realized from making use of the treasury um so we we effectively invite the communities to submit um proposals on what are the priorities and the sort of themes and the the issues in the space those are then the sort of challenge categories that get set through through the vote and through Um the the the funding cycle that I mentioned and then in the next fund those challenges that got decided upon in say the previous fund are the challenges that are then receiving uh applications and proposals to solve them in the next fund so if you To have a look at our fun 10 launch guide and I’m going to drop into the the chat right now we can screen share it too if that will work better screen share yeah okay why don’t we do that so if someone wants to screen share that link Um I’d always recommend people go to project catalyst.io at the very least and this is our website where you’ll get all the the tldr on all the good things happening in Catalyst but you’ll also be able to dive into any of the funded projects and learn a bit more about them But what you’re seeing on the screen here is what I like to think of our business card this is the uh the fun 10 launch guide so if you scroll down this will give everybody that’s new to Catalyst a really good starting point on what catalyst is all about Um how it operates what are the sorts of things that you need to do or or what are the roles that you can play um yeah and you can learn learn about how to get involved importantly but I must know I think I think one of the Other things just to mention is that it’s not all just about submitting proposals and trying to win uh funding for your project right you know how there’s so many more people in in the the community that are actually not intending to build a product or you know Running an event or something like that um but there’s still ways that you can get involved and this is another really tremendous thing and fascinating thing about Catalyst and what we’ve built um so there are different stages of the fund and I mentioned one of them that you know after you’ve submitted your Proposal the community then reviews those proposals and scores them against criteria so anybody in the community and when I say the community I mean the broader crypto Community um but hopefully those you know that are interested in cardano you guys can get involved in this community review stage And you’re actually rewarded Ada for contributing and participating in this stage so all you have to do is sign up to become a community reviewer choose which of the challenges or categories that you’re interested in participating in and then when is the community review stage you’ll be allocated you know up to 30 proposals to review you’ll review them as a new level zero Community reviewer and then so long as obviously you’ve been you know reasonably fair and I hope you know you’ll forgive my friends you’ve not been a dick so long as you’ve not you’re not been offensive in your review that review is Going to be part of the information that’s served to voters and you’ll then share in rewards a pot of rewards for contributing your time and your opinion and your feedback and to helping you know uh give a review um about a proposal real quick because when I think about Al Green you know we have the X govs for the ALCO people that know this is the type of show that they need to watch this show right here and get a great understanding of how to run a grants program and I kind of told you that Privately but I just wanted to say that on the show this is amazing and you said that each one starts like if if someone were to you know obviously I’m sure you have to hold a certain amount of ADA to participate in do you have to hold up Any amount of ADA to participate in the reviewing process or can you just earn it no yeah you don’t have to there’s no right now there’s no minimum amounts of Holdings that you need um it might be something that we change in in the future right like if all of a Sudden as a result of fun 10 there’s like 50 000 new community reviewers right and maybe we need to put some checks and balances in place but um yeah right now the the the the important point is is that everybody’s opinions are welcome we really like uh the the The uh the concept of you know Collective uh crowdsourced with system and you know ultimately your opinions can help voters to inform the decisions that they make right I mean you know in a given round like in fun nine for example there were 1600 proposals submitted right that’s an awful lot of proposals For voters to be able to wait through that’s without any signals from the community as to whether or not they think the thing’s going to fly so we’re going to share their website too real quick yeah please please um project catalyst.io is also a really really good place to dive into and this Is that fun nine you were talking about yeah so so for example if you go to fund line if you scroll down the page see well and then you can see the different types of challenges now let’s let’s just pick a challenge for example if you pick daps Products and Integrations the one just underneath there where you are click that one so if you then this is gives you a little bit of information about the challenge that was you know a fun nine challenge the previous fun the last iteration gives you the the tldr about That challenge and if you keep on scrolling down you’ll then also see these are all the proposals that were funded in fund nine under this Challenge and the one that’s got the thumbnail video so here’s the other thing when you complete a project so once you’ve you’ve received all your Funding you’ve delivered your thing whatever that thing is in order to complete the project you’re required to submit a project close report and a project close video so we call this proof of achievement right so we’re making sure that not only is funding going out the door Um but we’re making sure that funded projects bring the receipts that they actually did what they say they were going to do yeah and then over the last six months we’ve actually changed this process slightly so now we’re introducing milestone-based funding so let’s say you you win the funding for your your idea You then at the start of the project set out say for example four Milestones that’s going to get you from the start to the end now Milestone is like a a point in time that’s sort of demonstrating significant progress in the project right yeah now with milestone-based funding this is another Real interesting novel thing to demonstrate decentralization once you’ve delivered your Milestone you’re required to do proof of achievement to show that you’ve achieved that Milestone so we’re not saying oh prove it to the Catalyst team you’ve done this we’re saying prove it to the community so we’ve got community members They’re then verifying that those Milestones were achieved and then signing off of them and only once they’ve been signed off does the team receive the next batch of funding to reach the next Milestone so this is this stops rug pools this stops uh although the grant harvesting Yeah because there’s a lot of projects on like algorithm for example we’re gonna keep going back and forth comparing our grand Ada but there’s a lot of projects that got funded exactly what you said and then six eight nine months later there’s no Twitter for them their website and they have completely Ghost and we see them in like near protocol or somewhere doing the same process yeah so and that’s uh you know that’s just part of this that’s part of this entire ecosystem like that’s gonna happen because where there’s money and money being given out you’re gonna have good people who actually have good Intentions to build something and you’re obviously gonna have bad people in every ecosystem but one thing I I I was kind of interested in you said obviously if anybody joined this the ability to review these uh you know these catalysts and these uh projects um you said they start out at level zero Uh how many levels are there I guess and and how many I guess what is the rewards do they you know go higher and higher as the levels you go yeah yeah really good questions so um there’s three levels currently level zero level one level two level zero is really for noobs right Yeah um as as you’d expect you know you’re at the ground floor um we we don’t know who you are you’ve got no reputation you’ve got no track record yeah so you know and also you’ve got we’ve got to think about how do we design for adversity if someone creates A a Nifty bit of script just to spin up a thousand new community reviewer IDs yeah and then just Spam the system then we need ways to sort of combat that so we we’ve we’ve got um process in place to combat that so level zeros you’ll get automatically allocated Um 30 reviews you can choose to do 10 you could use to do five you just choose to do just one whatever um and then but if you do the 30 um that’s fine but you’ll also you however many you’ll do you’ll share a pot of Rewards and those rewards are a Maximum of 17 Ada per review if you think about it like this I mean it’s it’s not a great deal but then we need to account for um per review but we need to account for the fact that you know you could be coming from a position of Expertise just as much as you could be coming from I I don’t know you know the difference between a hash or a uh you know um a different part a different type of hash right yeah um let me put it that way um and so you know we’ve got to account For this so the point is with level zeros it’s a it’s you know no barrier to entry everybody can participate and you’ll share in a pot of rewards the more reviews there are the lower the per rate per review becomes right yeah but once you’ve done you know a certain Number and um we’ll we’ll probably be changing this uh this threshold after fund 10 because this this process we’ve just re refreshed and we’ve just brought it in uh brand new for fun Tim so we’ll get some data at the end of this fund and then we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll level Set everything again but the idea is that after you’ve hit say a certain amount of reviews you’ll then go into level one for the next fund and in level one in front 10 terms is you’ve already done 10 reviews in a previous fund they were of a decent quality and they were Passed to voters to to inform their decisions so that that’s like the first thing that’s um to take you off the box to get you into level one and then level ones will again be automatically allocated 80 reviews you can choose to do five you can do ten you can do all 80 And you’ll get a guaranteed um 33 Ada per review and then Ada comes out of the um the overall fund treasury right oh the overall fund budget yeah so there’s 50 million Ada available for the whole of the fund of which about seven percent of that uh 50 million is Available for uh Community rewards incentives right yeah that’s a great way for the community to get involved then yeah to feel more participation in the projects that are getting through yeah the voice matters and then the level two is very much there’s this sort of a dual Role for level twos level twos again they’ve been around the block a bit bit longer they’ve got a bit more reputation a bit more of a track record they’re going to pay two roles first of all they’re going to perform a sort of a moderation function And what I mean by that is once all the community reviews have been done we run our Catalyst scripts and these scripts will be checking every review for is it long enough like is it like under 150 characters in which case it’s probably you know not very meaningful Has it got any offensive language or profanities used in it has it been flagged by our AI script I.E has the review probably been spun up by chat GPT um and if if the flags are raised then the the moderators these level twos will just do a sanity check they they Ultimately are just asking themselves is this information something that we should provide to voters yeah right and so like any Community moderator you’re not going to kick everybody out just for you know making a misstep um you’re going to be fair you’re going to use your best judgment is this Something that we think the voters should see so that’s the first role and then second of all is what I said earlier on we’re getting the community to verify proof of achievement so the point is is once you’ve been done a level zero you’ve been to level one You’ve now got to level two you should have some trust and some reputation within the system therefore you should be able to um we should be confident as a community that there are people that can be trusted to verify that someone’s Milestone was delivered or not and then you know for that that Milestone uh proof of achievement there’s a fair amount more Ada at stake it’s about 200 to 300 Ada per Milestone review right and um ultimately this is this is about empowering people to understand what it takes to have really strong governance and community-led governance at the Heart of it right and um you know if we want to be autonomous and we want to be self-sustaining and we want to be in an environment that Embraces inclusivity and diversity and values people’s opinions and contributions but first of all it can’t be voluntary and it can’t Be based on volunteerism only because you know meaningful work deserves some sort of meaningful compensation right you know you know what let me do another side tangent it makes me think about in the U.S having this type of system because most uh voters don’t even know What’s in a bill they just vote on faces and what they heard on TV but if we did have a system where you have moderators that are putting in that work but also piece of the tax money does go to them exactly what y’all doing that would make things more clear The one part that they’re not ever going to give up is that that sliver of tax to everyone to anything except they’re by their pockets but go ahead Chris I just having a vision oh man Hey listen I I I Echo the same thoughts right Switzerland’s a really interesting Um the government governance structure to sort of draw reference from they have direct democracy there so me I actually vote on you know uh bills and causes and policies that I care about and um yeah that certainly helped to frame some of our thinking and um uh our approach Within Catalyst But ultimately like you know we’ve got to take control of these things ourselves you know we we’ve got to be enabled with the tooling and um the user experience that makes it um you know inviting to come and step I was about to ask that like what does the User experience and these reviews that these people are doing like how how intensive is the you know quote-unquote work that they’re actually having to do like is it just reviewing it and giving it thumbs up thumbs down or is it actually like creating like a written Piece in a actual review about the thing that’s being and you mentioned 150 characters so there’s links and limits then yes it’s it’s it’s was trying to strike a a reasonable balance between you know people doing this um on top of their day-to-day lives yeah um but also making it meaningful right And um you know historically um there’s been there have been people that have really contributed a whole lot of time um into doing this role like people that are taking taking their work holidays to spend doing reviews of catalyst proposals um we did we’ll caveat that you know There were some um Unbound earning limits in previous rounds and so that was uh that was probably gamification about it yeah people turn it into a job basically that’s this that’s the point of web 3 right now right sure in the world be surprised like there’s we did a We did a community survey about a year or so ago a bit longer than that 18 months and something like 800 people responded and of that three percent had quit their full-time jobs to work full-time on Catalyst yeah which is pretty nice but you know to answer your question though um Yeah there’s a little bit of written work to be done as I said there’s the three key criteria impact feasibility value for money so you’re expected to essentially scribe a paragraph or two about you know how you feel that proposal has responded to that criteria and then um and then these three Um pieces of written feedback and your scores then go into the voting application which is on um IOS and Android you can download it now project Catalyst uh voting out and there’s an app that’s what you’re saying yeah there’s an app yeah right now I’m like whoa yeah yeah and I’ll say this obviously to I know there’s obviously you know this is not a you know we’re not trying to bash algorithm algorithm has not been around as long as cardano and cardano has definitely um like with the fee structure right it’s benefited from there algorithm does Not have that type of uh system in place right now at least not to my knowledge you know um you know but Cosmos they have that that same thing you you stake your atom token and then the fees go back to the stakers which keeps things going and Makes you want to secure the network and I will say two algorithms benefit John Allen Woods which is someone who’s come from uh cardano he’s a part of algorithm and I’ve spoken you know we’ve had him on our show many times we’ve so spoken to him many times about how he is Pushing for algorithm to start incentivizing and start creating better you know ways to generate revenue for the chain because I guess if you don’t do it it’s not going to last and projects like what you’re building on cardano wouldn’t be able to last and there wouldn’t be this you know Community Drive driven support behind it because like you guys said you know it’s even for the level zero I mean you know that’s still you say like 15 or 13 Ada and then for the next level is 30 and then for the top levels two three hundred I mean bear Market lows right Those values might not be high but we know where the world’s going right we know that everything is going to be tokenized these blockchains are going to be increasing in popularity and so you don’t know what that value could become and that’s where it’s even more you know Kind of lucrative but also uh you know just interesting to hear how everything is kind of being built together and trying to keep decentralization uh you know which I know is on a spectrum of what is true truly decentralized but it seems like you guys are going in the right path Um and and one thing I did want to ask and this is just kind of a question for for your mind I don’t know how much you think of this but um what are your thoughts on how AI might attack or even replace a lot of this you Know because I know this past bull run you know Dows and decentralized you know that whole idea was just really blowing up and growing and everybody was trying to build a dow what is your thoughts with like how AI might either combat or help that Dao you know model grow yeah Yeah it’s really interesting right um I mean it’s it’s a fascinating subject that I I don’t think I’m gonna do a Justice thing I can unpack really but I mean what we will say is that Predictive Analytics is only going to be coming you know something that we’re all Going to start leveraging so you know being able to use machine learning to sort of Look At Large data sets and then be able to infer or generate insights that we just wouldn’t have had the time to to Wade through right and then that giving us sort of signals as to what’s Coming on uh down the line so you know I certainly see that to a benefit of AI for this uh Predictive Analytics um estimations of where Trends are going for sure where we could use that I think from ideas of sort of Dow space or Dow tooling is maybe trying to crowdsource Sentiment and help to give better data to those that are ultimately voting on on on things um you know it’s it’s very you know and we’ve experienced this in Catalyst like as I said 1600 proposals in fund nine is a is a hella lot of uh proposals to Wade Through to make sense so to determine well actually I think these 10 are the ones that I really want to vote for or not yeah you know where where I would imagine um it going you know certainly from our context is using AI to you know understand what an Individual’s preferences are and then being able to serve them back relevant data and information to help them inform their decision based on their sort of Personality or their Tendencies or their their subject matter expertise or just interests right yeah that’s that’s all pretty low level stuff as to what you Can do pretty easily today um you know through sort of you know user preferences and and whatnot but um I think you know where there’s uh where there’s opportunities to sort of expand upon that is for those AIS and agents to kind of s uh uh scan and then scrape the Rest of the internet or relevant domains and then come back and like you know get get some really interesting interesting insights for example like okay well I want to know before I vote on this proposal for a widget yeah I know I want to know what are the other sorts of similar widgets That have been built yeah okay I’m going to ask Bard or chat can you go out and like scrape the web and find out how many similar widgets towards this end uh have been built okay well all of a sudden it’s served back to me okay there’s 20 examples these are all the Examples I looked through a couple of them which one’s the most like the closest to this proposal yeah you know you can sort of see how um it will help to advance our understanding of the sort of state of things a lot quicker than what we can currently do today with just search Engineering you’re right which takes a long time yes yeah even even though Google can populate millions and millions and millions in you know point something seconds so um you know I had something I don’t know what did Chris some reason my um Christians here yes what’s what’s good Christian uh so we know Christian he has a question right here what’s excited uh maybe if we want to answer this question if you know Christian we’re mostly talking about Catalyst project the grant fundings program that cardano’s doing so if you have any questions about grants or whatnot please ask them But if you want to try to answer this Chris absolutely I mean I think the the most exciting thing that’s coming down um the cardano road map are a couple of different things um first of all it’s the the the the age of Voltaire so we’re on the tip of Governance we’re talking about governance and decentralized uh governance distributed decision making that’s essentially what the age of Voltaire is all about uh Voltaire will be this next era of cat of cardano where effectively the governance of the entire cardonic protocol is turned over to uh the community right and that that’s Where you know we’ve got this idea of um or this this not an idea it’s pretty well established though I should call it an idea but we’ve got um like you have in in ethereum and in Bitcoin you have uh eips VIPs yeah we have CIP sips so 1694 is Um The Proposal that lays out the uh the the Improvement change to cardano to essentially realize decentralized governance to manage the the ongoing development of the protocol and what that also then means is that the community will have opportunities and a clear pathway to being able to make Decisions on other things as well such as you know if someone wants to set up ultimately an alternative funding mechanism uh to compete with or to replace Catalyst then it could be done they could do that right yeah that that’s absolutely fine and that that’s that’s super exciting yeah um the the Other thing I think is really exciting is um what’s called Babel fees I don’t know whether you guys have come across Babel fees yeah I have not so bubble fees really simply means that you can pay transaction fees in whatever tokens you want so rather than costing you 0.17 Ada maybe I’m going to pay with one million snack or what it’s funny you mentioned a meme coin I was looking back in my head I’m thinking Al Green’s big meme coin we’ve been talking about it like you know let’s just get rid of algo and just everything be paid in Coop Cooped open up tokenomics are way better well that that’s exactly it so you know the idea and then you as a um as a fee receiver could even choose okay well I’m only going to receive fees in in these particular tokens yeah right kind of freeze everything up a lot you Know it just allows um the the spo’s the state pool operators the ones that are generating fees from the transactions that are taking place on the blockchain them to have a bit more freedom to be able to set their own um you know conditions um which again is healthy for this Decentralized distributed Network um and again it also then means that you as a as someone that’s using the protocol are able to choose whether or not you want to use Ada to pay for your transaction fees or your your coupon amazing that is pretty cool one thing before and I know We have some other questions here we’re going to get to those in the chat um it kind of puts you on the spot and I know obviously you think highly of project Catalyst as being you know the lead person behind it um but in you know in the spectrum of Decentralization among chains and governance because I know that is a big thing that has to grow for I think a chain to truly survive is there has to be some model of true decentralized governance what chains do you think are are putting this together the fastest And the best that are out there out of the big ones and you know what’s name all maybe top your top three and obviously you could you know if project if you think project house is number one then you know do say so but if you think there’s anything else that’s out there Doing a great job let us know that as well I mean listen there there are a whole and I know I think we were talking about this offline like unfortunately um you become a little bit uh outside of your own backyard um you know Catalyst has done and is Continuing to do amazing things to demonstrate the art of the possible when it comes to sort of decentralized decision making and and Innovation um ecosystem growth like all laid out there catalyst is the world’s largest decentralized Innovation fund um and and you know it’s it it’s it’s Community Driven there’s so many Different sort of roles that people can play that helps to then demonstrate that decentralization so you know I don’t think many people would argue with me when I say that um and I don’t say it lightly right yeah and if I couldn’t defend it I wouldn’t say it’s the point yeah Um with it certainly within our ecosystem within cardano um Clarity protocol doing some really interesting cool stuff with regards to centralized governance adao um who have you know a number of different eight hours more like a collective yeah and they have a whole different from a whole bunch of Different projects one of them being summon platform um there’s a really cool um tool called consensus that um it’s like consents with the Zed and that that that’s they’re doing uh great stuff to be able to surface insights and kind of generate Community contributions and inputs that then help to maybe change And ratify um documentation and processes all of my colleagues work within the Voltaire team to actually bring legitimacy and governance at a decentralized level to um to cardano to then decide the future of the protocol um I mean those are those are just a few Off the top of my head I mean outside of of cardano um you know I’ve got to give some I’ve got to give some Credence to what polka dot have done you know I’ve I’ve looked at their uh their gut governance documentation and um you know I don’t fully understand all of It and there there’s like forgive me if I say this this it almost seems like there’s a masonic um you know uh like structure where you’ve got to get offended by someone to kind of join the club and then you can create at different levels a level nine Sea Dragon Um yeah but that’s interesting why don’t you ask Christian Christians in the comments he’s uh he’s been doing a lot of he’s been delving into uh into polka dot and Moonbeam so maybe he can maybe he can let us know if he’s been into any underground meetings yet probably all Right I say that you know with the utmost respect right like yeah yeah right I hold some dot I like what polka dots doing um after this conversation I’m gonna be adding to my uh Ada pool I think and also taking a a bigger look into what Project catalyst is doing because it is is very interesting we got a couple more let’s let’s see if we can get this one where would you suggest someone new to starting cardano the X lending favorites a little off topic but curious yeah really good start and really good question so I would say Um to start with cardano the first thing that you should do is there’s a really good Guide to the ecosystem which I’ll I’ll ship you in the chat okay um and then you can then you can repost it um so that’s one I would also say check Out khalano 360 which is a YouTube um playlist that’s on the iohk YouTube iohk is the company that I work for um input output and um and Colorado 360 gives you a bit of a tldr on all of the good things that have happened in a month Um going on in cardano and then you know more broadly with for Catalyst we run Town Halls every single Wednesday at 5 PM UTC so you can come and join us in the live Zoom room and then come and meet and just chat to people in in in Catalyst Community but also you know we obviously then published that on on io’s YouTube channel as well so again you know and and I would also say if you go to projectcastlist.io and you navigate through the funds uh section and then start looking at some of those Proposals that you know like we we showed earlier on um you’ll get yourself um a a good baptism of fire about all the great Innovative stuff that’s going on yeah I have a lot of research to do on cardano I’m hyped one more question yeah everyday agonaut Ludo is that voting Mechanism yeah yeah you got it it’s a voting mechanism on cardano going to support for GitHub pull request management so every day I’ll go not shout out to you always popping in with great questions great question um So within Catalyst it doesn’t uh I mean that’s that’s not how we operate catalyst how Um it will operate within the context of Voltaire and you know governance of cardano um again I don’t have the the full scope on that um I’m I don’t think it will uh mean that you know once someone pushes a pull request there’s a governance um voting mechanism as to whether to Accept the book risk or not it’s a pretty cool idea though I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done either like maybe that’s something that you want to put forward as part of the uh the contributions to comments for Sip 1694.and there’s a whole bunch of of Workshops that are taking place all around the world over you know the the last couple of weeks in the next couple of weeks um check out cardano.org and that will take you to the Forum cardano Forum um and I’m sure there’ll be information on that and again that’s a great great Question to pose within that Forum as well another question I had um you know in thinking of like algorithm and a lot of the projects that are being built or that are maybe Partnerships that are being made um anyone obviously can submit a you know something to project Catalyst to be Reviewed and to possibly be voted on to get funding uh is is there a part of project cattle so that actually goes out and searches for you know web 2 or other companies to actually build and try to fund you know more I guess you could say Web 2 to web 3 type stuff or is that just a whole other you know entity within cardano no I mean it’s again you know these are tremendous questions guys um so this is the beauty right if you think that you’re you’re a local town or city or your industry would really Benefit from understanding about Catalyst and that there’s this novel funding alternative Finance mechanism to help to bring web2 over to web3 then you can put in a proposal to have that project funded to come and onboard a whole bunch of other people um Let me Give an example you guys have Probably come across Wolfram Wolfram Alpha and like maybe some of the uh if you haven’t they’re they’re part of the infrastructure that’s helped to build out Siri and probably does you know a whole bunch of uh really interesting um machine learning stuff that’s that’s building out a lot of the AI Capabilities anyway Wolfram for example where they’re super super well known within uh really techy circles um they’ve been being funded by Catalyst for about the last year in in multiple funds and one of the projects that they’ve um recently completed is called the Wolfram um Enterprise private cloud and another Project called the digital assets decentralization framework so these two projects alone their entire mandate and remit and proposal was let’s create the infrastructure and onboarding system that is going to help web2 companies and corporates for example to be able to dip their toe into blockchain without having To make millions of dollars worth of investment right yeah and that’s what we what we’ve seen for the last four or five years you’ve seen people coming playing around dipping their toe in the water being burnt because it’s too costly or not scalable or you know the Thing didn’t work or the next day the smart contract was found to have some major vulnerability and all of a sudden 100 million dollars has gone out of the ecosystem for whatever reason right so Wolfram have sort of taken it from the approach of well we know cardano is secure and we Know that it’s drastic just worthy we know it has the highest rigor around engineering and academic peer-reviewed um process to be able to get to the the the design of the protocol so we know that’s solid but how do we create the right tooling that’s going to allow web 2 companies to come on board so they got funded to build some capabilities um and also create like the framework to be able to then start engaging with corporates and now part of their this is a product that they’re trying to sell right so they’re now going out and Having their conversations with probably industry leaders in all manners of different domains and saying oh you want to do web 3 you want to do more decentralized or oracle-led you know whatever your use case might be use of data or peer-to-peer transactions and and distributed um peer-to-peer interaction should I say Um we’ve created tooling for you to be able to do that um similarly you you could have a project which is I want to go out and I want to just evangelize about cardano and you know there’s no one in you know my uh um my local city or my state or my Country that’s doing this and we’ve already seen we’ve seen entire challenge categories being like being called like grow East Asia grow cardano grow cardano grow latam grow cardano and then we need the project grow grow the next Black cardano that’s what I’m thinking sorry go ahead Chris no no I was Probably rambling by that point but it’s like if you’ve got a uh if you’ve got an area that you think that there’s a gap and you think that you know there needs to be a gap plugged by a web three yeah about onboarding people or um or uh or Building out a product or a service or a solution then catalyst is potentially a really good Avenue for you to explore yeah it definitely seems like it and it seems like it’s got a you know especially being you know from what you’ve described it seems very Community-led that it that it would be a space that anybody really could come because I mean I just know this in in the governance model that I’ve seen that algorithm has you know implemented so far is most of the things are it’s it’s almost like a a directed Governance like you know like yes you’re participating and yes it is you know on chain governance and you do get a vote and one algo could you know you could vote with one algo which obviously if you think of many you know places you know you just wouldn’t be able to you Know come be able to do it you know with such a low value dollar value amount but the things you’re actually voting on are more I guess you could say scripted and it seems like from coming out it goes basically catalyst is is if you have an Idea it could come through and and could be voted on and you could receive your funding um you know to you know if you see value in it and you can convince enough other people that you know that there’s value there yeah algoran’s like do we give the Nft community 300 000 Algos or six hundred thousand choose one and then they’ll come out we’ll vote on one and they’ll say all right 450.and you know this kind of gets me to an interesting question uh you know just because I’m interested I know that being In you know Twitter is a great tool but also uh I think Elon Musk and the algorithms do a really good job at making sure you don’t really see anything outside of you know kind of your bubble right um how is the bear Market really Affected uh and and I know you may not know cardano as a whole or they’re you know I don’t know how engaged you are with their Twitter Community but I know uh you know Al Gran’s Twitter communities in you know flames and throwing you know food fighting everybody it seems everything every day Um how has the bear Market affected cardano project Catalyst and stuff like that yeah it’s it’s yeah I mean listen everybody’s felt it I don’t think there’s there’s a community in this industry that hasn’t uh felt the pressures of the last 18 months um yeah I mean just thinking that 18 months It’s been that long I literally since November of 20 was 20 20.I think or 2021 I remember because at Thanksgiving I was like I was high-fiving everybody I was like we did it to the moon yeah and then ever since then it’s been nothing but well especially if you’re an Algo down to the right it would just say all-time low but it’s a whole nother conversation right yeah I mean the way it’s really hard right like I I appreciate it and I understand like where everybody’s perspective is coming from around this and it’s really easy to Become emotional and when things are bad what I would say is that you know and I wouldn’t say it’s purely because of catalyst that would be wrong for me to say so but because we’ve had um project Catalyst um despite the bear market and because the treasury and the design of the Carolina Protocol is the way that it is it’s meant that even when VC money is dried up there has been Avenues to explore and for you know for startups trying to build in the ecosystem to receive funding right now and this is where you know these ideas of a decentralized Treasure would become even more important right it’s got to be able to to it’s going to be able to thrive in the good times and be able to survive in the bad times right and that’s exactly to throw throw another question on top of that um I forgot to ask it earlier But how does the I guess that does the fee structure change to fund project Catalyst as the price of uh Ada fluctuates like you know like say you know say it is by the year 2030 right I know everybody’s got that year for some reason marked on their calendars that That’s when crypto is going to be in Valhalla but let’s just say that ADA is 50 right is it still 20 of every single transaction or is that something I guess that would also be voted on within the community on how that fee structure should change based on you know the Needed requirements yeah I think you just answer the question right but this is the beauty of Voltaire and then but is that is that active or is that in part of the Sip uh you know 1664 thing that you were talking about it it’ll be all part of that right like yeah Essentially the governance of the protocol means all of the parameters of the protocol and one of those parameters will be 20 of each transaction fee goes into the treasury yeah um so you know there will come a time I’m sure when the discussion will turn to shall we change the the fee Structures now the the fee structure and how much goes into the treasury is impacted by a whole bunch of different things um not least like you know when you set up a stake pool or a validator right and then you’re um you’re canvassing for people to pledge their uh their their Their uh their Aida with you to stake their Ada with you to secure the network um there’s a minimum fee that’s required right so each of those stake pool operators will draw a minimum fee from each of their uh stakers and then that’s what helps to keep them you know afloat And you know then they get to share in the benefits of the uh of the the stake rewards that come down every six days now there’s been hot that this this minimum fee has been hotly debated for a long long time we’re still not there yet in terms of resolution that’s fine Um the way that I tend to think about things and I’m glad you sort of called out 2030 it’s um you know everybody’s in this uh not everybody a lot of people in this in this space are really sort of fixated on the short-term time frames yeah five minutes into 15 minutes like I’ll come from a background of like genuine Innovation takes not even months to years it takes years to decades yeah right and then when you think about something like decentralized governance and trying to get hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of strangers from all places around the planet trying To coalesce and converge to make good decisions that’s a messy process like why would we think that Innovation is genuinely going to transform and disrupt in in any less than years to decades that’s the one answer Tick Tock and and all this like 15.AI you know all this Stuff we’re being programmed to think Instagram I mean you know that’s our generation instant gratification so that’s definitely the reasons why but I agree you know it should take much longer and good things you know do come to those things who wait and the things That really take the time to build so I agree with that and I think too with time when we look at uh Bitcoin Bitcoin you know hit us roughly 15-year Mark but not the rest of the industry it’s just Bitcoin I did that and we see the you Know issues that Bitcoin is having as well um but yeah definitely time even the internet what we’re what 23 years in you know exactly that I like to say an overnight success was 10 years in the making yes green yes so okay we’re gonna slowly start to close out is there anything Else you would like to share or any like pointers if someone let’s say uh nif chin was like hey we want to create a video platform for cardano Community how do we get our proposal traction absolutely so there’s there’s a whole bunch of things I want to just sort of Wrap up with okay first of all if you’ve got a great idea go to Project catalyst.io look out for the information about fun 10 and then you’ll be pointed directly towards where you can then submit your proposals there’s obviously the launch guide that you guys I’m sure will help Me to retweet out to your audience for sure and again that will have the tldr on you know what’s your your next First Steps um if you’ve got a great idea and you’re Keen to submit a proposal two things to do come along or at least watch a town Hall uh as I said we hold these on Wednesdays if you go to the iohk YouTube channel and you’ll be able to find a playlist there called project Catalyst Town Halls um we’ve run 132 Town Halls every single week since so well not every 132 every Week but we’re at Town Hall number 132 in the last two and a half years so there’s plenty for you to see um but the point is either come along to a town hall or watch a town hall and then um you’ve got to get your proposal Submission draft in by July the 13th and then you’ll have 4 more days to finalize it so that the deadline for proposal submissions will finish on July 17th but even if you’re just contemplating getting involved as a proposer or as a voter or as a community reviewer or any Of the roles that we sort of talked about coming to town hall is really important because you’ll get to interact with some of the other people there that are also going through exactly the same place and whilst you’re competing for resources there’s so much collaboration in Goodwill and just a freedom and Free-flowing knowledge exchange that happens in these sort of town hall squares and then we hold after Town Hall breakout sessions after the main Town Hall broadcast so you can come and have even more discussion with people rather than it just being listening to information coming from the Catalyst Team but yeah first protocol project catalyst.io nice and obviously if you guys want to go follow Chris on Twitter it’s just Chris Baird which obviously you can see how his name is spelled there underneath him at or at Chris Baird um and I’m and this project catalyst Have its own uh Twitter as well or is it I’m gonna uh put all the links in a tweet as well okay and I’ll tag Chris and I’ll put all these links that we have uh we’ve been putting on the screen yeah so on callus Twitter no we don’t And that’ll change soon enough I’m sure um it’s truly decentralized you don’t need a centralized Twitter right now yeah no I mean that’s actually been part of the reason for it right yeah who would own the Twitter right um but it will get addressed and we’re Pretty confident that at the end of fun 10 we’re going to then have the mandate to go forward uh to continue with our roadmap and all being well then you know things like our own Twitter will get spun up but um there’s been so many other things to build first and foremost Before worrying about our social media presence yeah and how how old is uh project Catalyst again okay I can’t remember if you said that earlier yeah well so we we ran fund one in December 20.20.it’s a really kind of December January 2021 was when um things really Sort of kicked off and um no forgive me sorry fund one started in September 2020 that was um behind closed doors it was literally a proof of concept test between um just our team and and then from one two onwards which was from the end of 2020 into January 2021 we’ve run pretty much a new fund every three to four months and doubled in size from 250 500 1 million two million four million eight million sixteen million dollars worth of ADA and now we’re at um about the same 16 million dollars worth of later in front 10 alone 30 Could be crazy there yeah definitely I mean and it definitely shows that no matter the market conditions you know this project Catalyst has been growing and for only being you know not even three years live I mean that’s that is a really it seems like you know from what You showed us here a really huge step to decentralization and obviously the you know CIP uh you know 1664 you said I think is yes bull terrier yeah all that sounds like super you just you know with the ethos of you know what web3 is so you know that that’s super exciting And obviously Chris I’m glad you know we’re coming up on the hour um show and so glad you took time out of your day to come here and show it to all of our viewers like I said I know we have a lot of Al Green people but I I am One of those you know algoran people who love it but I’ve enjoyed hearing more about what cardano has going on and this is the reason why we’re kind of branching out and getting uh you know these different people because you know you’re in a bubble you kind of you know It this like relights the fire right it helps you see that you know what they’re even if this thing you know doesn’t work out you know there’s people over here working just as hard to create something just like it if not better so Al Grant has its has its pros and weaknesses but I feel like cardano is definitely shining with project Catalyst for sure yeah I appreciate it guys I mean my sort of uh idea on this is that and my Mantra in ethos is that we’re better building together right so yeah whether you’re in the our grand ecosystem or or any other Community the the warm the water should be warm enough for us to all come and swim together right yeah agreed it should be as warm as the beaches right outside my door which is middle of summer in Florida so it’s very warm yes more cardano interviews love egg Around but damn you’re right that’s that’s the way everybody’s feeling today and obviously for anybody who’s watching maybe in the Al Green or cardano ecosystem uh our boy John Allen Woods is actually going to be uh going toe-to-toe with somebody in the algor and ecosystem Uh I don’t know what’s all gonna be said but it’s gonna be happening at 4 P.M so two hours away from that that’ll be fun I’ll be tuning in yeah I know I know I know John Allen Woods has been heavily missed from the cardano ecosystem and I Know a lot of our grand people including myself have loved having him uh you know working in the ecosystem so make sure to tune into that as well later on today uh and see what you can go ahead and close this on out most definitely thank you Chris thank you everyone who has been leaving comments tapping in and watching the show please share this get the replay look out for my Twitter uh post with all the links look it up and once again thank you all we going Please nice 🔊Sponsored by NF Domains.
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