Catalyst Circle and Community Participation

The Catalyst Circle is a “human sensor array” acting as the representative body for all the different groups participating in Project Catalyst. The Circle monitors the current state and future plans regarding governance in Catalyst. It detects and discusses concerns, objections and opportunities arising within the Catalyst ecosystem. The Circle might discuss, for example, the definition of amounts allocated to challenges Fund over Fund; changes or conditions to incentive parameters; the Catalyst API, etc.

By recording meetings and capturing actions in a backlog accessible to all, this activity provides a view into the hopes, wants, needs, and concerns of the community within Project Catalyst. The Circle is also responsible for determining its own future shape and defining the election processes for Circle v3.

The Circle exists to fulfil four key goals:

• To facilitate communication between the different functional groups

• To provide a heads-up when red lines are crossed within a certain group

• To suggest improvements on plans and processes that shape Project Catalyst

• To define the election process for upcoming Circles

There are also numerous examples of community-led governance initiatives in addition to Catalyst. One significant example is the Cardano DeFi Alliance. The Cardano DeFi Alliance is a consortium of projects with the primary mission of standardizing Plutus and Cardano best practices within the Cardano ecosystem. It aims to drive composability across Cardano DeFi protocols. The DeFi Alliance offers a framework to Plutus protocol development teams who are focused on collaboration of key issues and their strategic development.

Cardano’s ecosystem also encourages broad community participation. The Cardano improvements proposals program (“CIP”) allows ada holders and other third parties to build applications on the Cardano blockchain. The CIP describes standards and processes and provides general guidelines and information to the Cardano community. It is a formal, technical communication process that exists off-chain.