Intersect Development Update #8 - April 5th

Another week, another Intersect development update! This week, we spotlight: member orientation, committees & working groups, Cardano continuity, the grant projects currently underway, and an update on governance tooling.

Member orientation

Welcome to this new section for both new and returning Intersect members. As we work towards achieving our shared objective of developing a self-sustaining ecosystem within Cardano, Intersect, a member-based organization, plays an important role in championing and orchestrating Cardano’s development and governance. We will feature this segment weekly to assist members in navigating this journey, particularly amidst Cardano's rapid growth.

Let's start by taking a quick overview of Intersect before delving into essential resources accessible to all members.

Intersect is a member-based organization tasked with ensuring the continuity and future development of the Cardano ecosystem. Bringing members together behind a shared vision, Intersect enables a more resilient, secure, transparent, and innovative Cardano ecosystem that puts members in the driving seat of Cardano’s future. As a community-governed blockchain, this means caring about the technology and processes, enabling technical progress and consensus through discourse and collaboration.

Intersect’s pillars

1. Supporting the community in developing the ecosystem by hosting developer-focused conferences, hackathons, and other events.
2. Administrating and championing Cardano’s community-led governance as implemented by CIP-1694.
3. Orchestrating delivery of the community-approved Cardano Technical Roadmap.
4. Facilitating the continuity of Cardano for system stability.
5. Coordinating open-source development of core technologies for Cardano.

Committees & working groups

Our committees have been crucial to our mission of ensuring a brighter and more efficient future for the Cardano ecosystem. All committees now have email addresses, which will be announced soon. In addition to the current communications channels, members can email committees directly via these addresses, which the respective committee chair and secretary will manage.

Open Source Committee

The Open Source Committee (OSC) has made significant strides recently and published its initial strategy. Cardano’s open-source strategy encapsulates the vision and mission of Cardano’s open-source approach, envisioning a future where a thriving community strongly leads the Cardano project and no single entity dominates its open development. The OSC added:?

‘We want to see Cardano evolving as a mature, open-source initiative driven by a strong and diverse community. We foresee a future where the project is known for technological excellence and a democratic, inclusive development process. Cardano will exemplify a decentralized but stable ecosystem where every contributor plays their part.’

New Ecosystem Process Design working group

The purpose of the Ecosystem Process Design working group is to support Intersect pillars 3 & 4.?

Having taken community feedback, the simplest way to explain this working group is to design and govern a backlog for continuity, features, and research initiatives. Keep reading for more information on continuity, with more information about this group available here.

Cardano continuity

One of Intersect's core functions is facilitating Cardano's continuity, which is defined as any approved and required technical services needed to build or fix current and future areas of the Cardano blockchain. In Q1 of 2024, we issued continuity contracts to seven Intersect members to continue development and bring exciting new features to our community.?

Here is the full list of these members and what they are delivering:

• Input Output Global (IOG): Input Output Global’s infrastructure group is developing and testing the Cardano governance node in readiness for CIP-1694 and continuity maintenance.
• Galois: development of Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for future interoperability of the Cardano economy.
• Welltyped is developing new Log Structured Merge Tree implementations. These will store the ledger's UTXO set on disk rather than in memory, substantially increasing the number of UTXOs—supporting many more users—and allowing nodes to run on cheaper, lower-spec machines.
• Tweag: is developing the Ouroboros Genesis mechanism, which enables new nodes to join the Cardano blockchain and bootstrap themselves without relying on a trusted service. It also allows nodes to become disconnected and rejoin the network similarly.
• Vacuum Labs: ensuring the continued practical use of the Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets for the Cardano community and enhancements to support the Conway era.
• Byron: launch & beta testing period to discover and fix bugs, and collect feedback on the GovTool web app.
• DQuadrant: developing a range of web app-based tooling to support the emergence of governance on Cardano and creating testing strategy best practice documentation that can be shared and applied across current and future tooling.
• EMURGO: producing educational materials covering key aspects of CIP-1694 alongside the development, testing, and support of the Cardano serialization library.?????????????

The quarterly continuity plan will be published in the coming weeks, providing more information on what is being developed. Look out for more updates in upcoming newsletters.

Read more about continuity and how Intersect facilitates the development roadmap here.

Community tooling

Community tooling to support the rollout of Cardano’s upcoming new governance features is critical to ensuring inclusive and accessible on-chain decision-making. From products to education, members can apply for various funding opportunities.?

Among the funding available are the grants currently being offered to Intersect members. The Inclusion and Accessibility category is still open for applications and provides exciting opportunities to support participation in Cardano governance. Please visit here for more information on this grant's subcategories and how to apply. The DRep Pioneer Workshop Leaders Programme has now closed. Next week, we will update the final number of applicants and the evaluation plan. In addition, the Open Grant category closed on Thursday, March 28.

Application & review process Now that the application process has closed, we will be working with a small community pilot group to conduct the first round of evaluations as part of the next stage. The working group of 4-5 individuals will feed any decision for ratification to the Membership and Community Committee (MCC). The winners of the grant proposal will be announced by the end of April. Look out for further information on our social channels and future correspondences.

Take a look at all the grant projects currently underway.

Governance tooling

Last week, the Strategy and Architecture team completed their Q2 planning with Intersect members Byron Network and DQuadrant, which are developing the current version of GovTool. The key goal for this quarter is to release the new GovTool features (DRep Directory, Proposal Discussion, and Governance Action Submission) to sanchogov.tools to open GovTool development and operationalize the decentralized overall product development process. Testing for these features was completed last week alongside a new process to provide context for on-chain votes. Furthermore, usability testing for the proposal discussion feature happened this week, and we are now incorporating feedback to continue development. In other news, this week marked an exciting development for GeroWallet, a recipient of the Intersect grant, as its creator unveiled the CIP-95/SanchoNet wallet build, making it available for community testing on SanchoNet. With the addition of GeroWallet, the SanchoNet ecosystem now boasts five community wallets, each primed and ready for user engagement. This expansion is a significant step towards enhancing governance participation through the SanchoNet GovTool. Users keen on exploring the functionalities of these wallets and participating in governance activities can find detailed information on wallet statuses and capabilities within the GovTool documentation.?

Here are this week's stats for SanchoNet and Govtool:

This week's reminders?

On this week's reminders section, we’d like to highlight:

• Our knowledge base continues to expand, and you can now learn more about all the current and proposed working groups supporting the various Intersect committees.
• We’re recruiting - We’re seeking a Community Engagement Manager to support the rollout and consultation process. For those interested, Intersect members are encouraged to apply - learn more about the role here.
• Intersect returns to Tokyo next week for the Teamz Blockchain event. Jack Briggs, Intersect’s director of marketing and communications, will deliver a keynote speech on the main stage at 14:00 JST on April 13. If you are in the area or heading to Japan, Intersect members can still access a special discount to attend - visit https://en.web3.teamz.co.jp and use the code INTERSECT2024 at checkout

Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading! As you can see, we are constantly working with our members and community to improve the Cardano ecosystem for everyone. We look forward to updating you on our newest developments in future newsletters.

We’re always interested in hearing more from you about subjects important to you, such as Cardano’s governance. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please get in touch via email, X, or LinkedIn.