[Link to: Proposal deck]

Marketplaces are a proven solution for fragmented, inefficient systems — and builder support is no exception.

The Cardano Builder Support System (BSS) applies this model to match Cardano builders with trusted, whitelisted providers for critical services like audits, marketing, and interop intergration—all through a single, easy-to-use platform.

To further enable builders with access to critical services, we’re launching a $1M subsidy fund, lowering barriers and unlocking progress where it’s needed most.

Backed by our experience of successful pilots in Arbitrum and Uniswap, we’ll run streamlined funding cycles and manage provider matching. The platform will be open to all projects and individuals developing on Cardano, providing access to a wide range of valuable resources.

Looking ahead, we’ve identified critical growth areas like liquidity management and incentives as a next major area of focus—an urgent need for many teams and a category that currently lacks strong service coverage in Cardano. With a successful pilot, we plan to help build out this and other underdeveloped but essential service areas that are key to unlocking ecosystem growth.

Beyond serving as a central access point and clear counterparty for Cardano builders, the BSS delivers:

• Cost Saving: Reduces service costs by 20–30% by increasing visibility and competition in a historically opaque landscape. This enables better price discovery, preferred pricing, and improved access to high-quality providers.
• Process Efficiency: Streamlines complex and time-consuming key service procurement by connecting builders with trusted, pre-vetted providers. This significantly reduces the time and effort required to find, assess, and secure essential services.
• Awareness & Builder Attraction: A strong organic marketing opportunity, positioning Cardano as a credible, builder-first ecosystem. By publicly showcasing structured support for developers, the BSS drives ecosystem visibility and network growth.

We’re fully committed to bringing that experience to Cardano. We see this proposal not as a one-off initiative, but as a first step toward becoming a long-term partner in the ecosystem.

Our goal: co-develop this initiative with Cardano-native expertise, leveraging Intersect’s deep ecosystem knowledge to build something that truly fits Cardano’s needs.

Restore consistency needed for Cardano to thrive in Japan. By establishing ongoing engagement this project will achieve the following:

1. Amplify appreciation for Cardano by aligning with market expectations for regular engagement and visibility.

2. Reinforce Cardano’s image as a technologically advanced, community-driven platform, with governance innovations and excellent leadership.

3. Drive measurable increases in brand awareness, media visibility, and stakeholder trust across influencers, enterprises, and the broader Web3 community.

4. Foster relationships with influential Japanese figures and media, converting them into long-term advocates for Cardano.

By enabling stablecoin (USDA) adoption across high-impact African startups—particularly those operating in or reaching Francophone markets—this project offers:

• Scalable adoption of Cardano technologies through real-world integrations;
• Inclusion of hundreds of thousands of unbanked users via startups already reaching those markets;
• Demonstrated use cases that improve transaction speed, reduce costs, and build resilience against currency volatility;
• Expanding Cardano's reach into new geographies and industries;
• Organic Cardano community growth in Francophone Africa—an untapped demographic representing 70% of the global French-speaking population, establishing Cardano as the first-mover blockchain in Francophone Africa;
• Strengthening Cardano’s developer base via education, tooling, and talent pipelines;

This aligns with Cardano goals of Incoming Liquidity, L2 Expansion, Developer Tools, and User Experience.

zkFold will develop and implement ZK rollups on Cardano to scale it efficiently, promoting broader adoption and supporting an ecosystem of decentralized applications and services. Overall, our proposal will have the following positive impact on the Cardano ecosystem:

• Improved Scalability: ZK rollups enable Cardano to process significantly more transactions per second (TPS) by bundling and verifying transactions off-chain. This reduces congestion, benefiting users by ensuring faster and more efficient dApp interactions.
• Lower Transaction Costs: By reducing the number of transactions directly processed on-chain, ZK rollups lower the transaction fees, making Cardano more accessible and affordable, especially for smaller transactions or micro-payments.
• Enhanced User Experience: Lower fees create a smoother experience for users interacting with dApps, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, and NFT marketplaces.
• Increased Adoption: ZK rollups can make the Cardano ecosystem more attractive for developers and users, promoting the growth of dApps, DeFi, and other blockchain applications by offering higher performance and scalability.
• Maintained Security: ZK rollups allow for scalability improvements without compromising the security and decentralization of the Cardano base layer, as Cardano still plays the role of the settlement layer for the rollup transactions.

Proposal Benefit

If implemented, this initiative will provide evidence-based, region-specific input to guide Cardano’s 2025–2030 Vision, grounded in local contexts where adoption is growing but uneven.

1. For Ecosystem Planners: Actionable data, policy insights, and user feedback to improve roadmap accuracy and global relevance.
2. For Developers: Increased awareness among Web2 and Web3 developers in Africa to support a shift from users to contributors.
3. For Projects & Enterprises: Identification of sector-specific use cases (DeFi, AgriTech, digital ID, remittances) to inform adoption pathways.
4. For African Communities: In-person engagement to build trust, inclusion, and local ownership of Cardano’s future.

Return on Investment

A low-cost, high-impact initiative that connects global strategy with local insight, enabling stronger adoption, increased developer activity, and long-term ecosystem growth. Key outputs like the Synthesis Report and Showcase will serve as reusable assets for the entire Cardano community.

✅ Proposal Benefits: The implementation of Cardano World Hub — an immersive metaverse environment featuring 3D virtual spaces, avatars, and AI-driven educational tools — will deliver multiple concrete and measurable benefits across key segments of the Cardano community:

📌 1. Scalable and Interactive Onboarding New users will be able to learn about Cardano in a visual, gamified environment, guided step-by-step by intelligent avatars. This simplifies wallet creation, Catalyst participation, and understanding of Cardano blockchain fundamentals. Estimated impact: 5,000+ new users reached within 6 months Expected conversion: 1,000+ new active wallets in the ecosystem

📌 2. Open and Accessible Education The community will have free access to gamified content, quizzes, missions, and certifications covering topics like DeFi, NFTs, stake pools, Plutus development, and DAO participation. This expands the technical and human capital of the network. Added value: Strengthening the decentralized educational foundation of the ecosystem Beneficiaries: Students, educators, developers, and local communities

📌 3. Visibility for Cardano Projects Native projects will be able to showcase their products and services through AI-powered thematic hubs within the metaverse, fostering collaboration and attracting both users and investors. Expected outcome: 20+ Cardano projects featured within the first 6 months Community ROI: Increased engagement between builders and the community, reducing time and cost of user acquisition

📌 4. Permanent Environment for Events and Community Engagement Intersect, Catalyst, and other community initiatives can use the hub as a venue for events, meetups, training sessions, and simulated voting. This enhances a sense of presence and togetherness, replicating real-life community interaction. Direct benefit: Continuous decentralized interaction channel with a shared sense of presence

Cost savings: Reduced spending on physical events and traditional onboarding

📈 Return on Investment for the Cardano Community:

Increased practical adoption of Cardano tools (wallets, tokens, staking, Catalyst)

Strengthening of decentralized education and ecosystem talent

Acceleration and traction for emerging projects

Lowered learning curve and reduced technical barriers for newcomers

Enhanced global visibility for Cardano through a unique, immersive blockchain experience

If implemented, the allocation of 250k ADA to fund audit fees for open-source smart contracts will deliver transformative benefits to the Cardano community by providing a suite of audited, reusable smart contracts that cover comprehensive lending market features, standardized oracles, and liquidity-enhancing trading mechanisms. These contracts—Fixed Lending, Float Lending, Bond Trading, Interest Rate Swap Market, Governance Action Pool Lending, Multi Oracles, and Leveraged Trading—are designed to support Cardano DeFi, enhance composability, and connect dApps, fostering a cohesive and competitive Cardano ecosystem. These audited contracts can be utilized not only by Danogo but also by the broader debt market and DeFi ecosystem, allowing other dApp developers to plug into Danogo, build more complex DeFi applications without reinventing the wheel, while Danogo covers development costs.

• Fixed Rate Lending Contract enables fixed-term deposit and fixed-rate borrowing, providing stability for DeFi users. This contract supports predictable interest rates, allowing dApps to offer loans with consistent returns, ideal for risk-averse users and institutional adoption.

• Governance Action Pool Lending Contract enables users to borrow ADA for six epochs to fund the creation of governance action, aligning with Cardano’s Voltaire-phase governance (CIP-1694). This contract empowers community members to participate in decentralized decision-making by providing accessible financing for proposal development, fostering greater engagement in Cardano’s governance ecosystem.

• Float Lending Contract facilitates floating-rate lending and borrowing, offering flexibility for dynamic market conditions. This contract enables dApps to adjust interest rates based on supply and demand, enhancing DeFi adaptability.

• Bond Trading Contract allows users trade both zero‑coupon and interest‑bearing (non‑zero‑coupon) bonds.

• Interest Rate Swap Market Contract introduces a decentralized market for interest rate swaps, allowing users to exchange fixed and floating interest rates. This feature supports sophisticated financial instruments, attracting institutional investors and increasing Cardano’s DeFi TVL.

• Multi Oracles Contract provides a standardized oracle framework that aggregates data from multiple sources (e.g., price feeds, market data), ensuring reliability and security for DeFi and governance dApps.

• Leveraged Trading Contract enables amplified trading positions, increasing liquidity and transaction volume by allowing users to leverage borrowed funds.

Cardano GovTool, is a set of open-source, community-owned governance tools, has been providing this support for open participation since before CIP-1694 was approved.

• It first fostered adoption of wallet upgrading to the new governance standards (CIP-95/CIP-105) with its first beta version

• It fostered testing and usage of SanchoNet, with the SanchoNet Govtool (used by over 30k+ unique users), which helped iteration to get to the bootstrapping phase of Cardano’s governance

• Since the Chang upgrade, it opened participation during the bootstrapping phase of Governance, helping grow the DRep pool and the total ada delegated to DReps, as well as making governance clear and visible to the community, also allowing the first-ever community-led hardfork to be decided transparently on-chain

• Since the Plomin upgrade, it has been the key benchmark reference for Cardano Governance for the community, being at the forefront in solving new hard challenges, creating reference implementations, and setting standards, allowing other community tools to provide extended value via their interfaces.

Cardano Govtool has been and remains the only fully open-source, fully community-owned set of tools to support the governing of Cardano without a commercial agenda. Via community feedback and direct decision making via the open Governance Tools working group, it keeps evolving and improving, incubates opportunities to for the whole ecosystem to participate and/or build on top of it.

A set of truly community-owned tools to participate in the Government of our ecosystem, such as Cardano Govtool, is a critical and pivotal component of Cardano, ensuring that regardless of individual tools' decisions and support, Cardano’s governance will always be transparent and easy to access, encouraging fair and distributed governance.

The funds requested in this proposal will be used:

• To keep the current 5 pillars always up and running (5 applications: Voting Pillar, Delegation Pillar, Proposal and Budget discussion Pillar, Outcomes Pillar, and Constitutional Committee portal)

• Adding new and improved features driven directly by community participation and needs, and supporting integration and creation of better standards for all other governance tools in the ecosystem. Based on the high-level roadmap defined by the community via the Governance Tools Working Group, which includes, but is not limited to:

  • Expansion of the outcomes pillars to show transparently the full governance process, from early discussions, through voting, and to outcomes (either enacted decisions or rejected actions)

  • Improvement of the integration of the Constitutional Committee's votes and rationale

  • Expansion of DRep history (including voting history) to make it easier to leverage liquid democracy by selecting and updating delegation, as well as DRep favouring

  • Support to create group DReps

  • Support to have group proposers discuss proposals and submit on-chain actions, lowering the barriers to submitting governance actions

  • Adding moderation to the proposal discussion pillar

  • Adding pre-governance polling to support in a transparent and decentralized manner the social processes that happen before governance actions are submitted (this includes, for example, the CC elections and the budget proposals)

  • Improve code documentation to expand the pool of individual contributors, helping reduce the costs of development and maintenance, and creating rewarding opportunities for everyone in the Cardano community, as well as simplifying the leveraging of open source code to create new governance applications that improve and refine further the experience

  • Expand further open APIs to allow many individual builders in Cardano to create tools to participate in governance

  • Expand support to make it easy to discuss and submit all types of governance actions

  • Funding support staff to stay responsive as user engagement increases across all channels.

In short Cardano Govtool is like a public square where the Cardano community joins effort in defining and improving their experience for a simpler, more open and transparent government, where hard challenges get solved with the shared expertise of our ecosystem and where consolidated effort enables smaller individual contributors to multiply the value provided to the whole community.

• Danogo offers a better UI/UX that enables Bitcoin (BTC) holders to seamlessly and effortlessly participate in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. Through a simple one-click interface, users can stake BTC directly from their wallets which will be locked in Bitcoin script, managed by Cardano smart contract and supplied to the Danogo Float Lending Pool. This intuitive flow eliminates complex, multi-step processes typically required for cross-chain DeFi, making access easy even for first-time users. By lowering friction, Danogo accelerates adoption and unlocks new participation from BTC holders who have traditionally remained on the sidelines.

• The BTC liquidity through Danogo Float Lending significantly strengthens Cardano’s DeFi infrastructure. This can be deployed across major Cardano DEXs, enriching key trading pairs such as ADA/BTC and stable-BTC. This added depth improves price discovery, reduces slippage, and fosters a more resilient trading environment for users and liquidity providers alike.

• Danogo also opens Cardano to a valuable new user segment. Capturing even 0.2% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply,around 4,000 BTC,would inject over $250 million USD into Cardano’s Total Value Locked (TVL). This not only boosts Cardano’s DeFi competitiveness but also brings in high-value assets that diversify and strengthen the ecosystem’s capital base.

• As BTC flows into Danogo, increased borrowing activity from the Float Pool generates yield for BTC suppliers, creating a positive feedback loop. Each action,supplying, borrowing, or trading,drives protocol fees that benefit stake pool operators, DEX LPs, and governance treasuries. This dynamic supports a sustainable, self-reinforcing ecosystem where user activity translates into ecosystem growth and long-term value capture for all participants.

• Lastly, a deep BTC Float Pool enables the launch of advanced financial modules on Cardano, including BTC perpetuals, options, and decentralized BTC‑backed stablecoins. With flexible BTC liquidity, Danogo can support leverage trading across BTC/ADA and stable‑BTC pairs, providing tools for both directional speculation and risk management. These innovations establish the foundation for a BTC-native derivatives market on Cardano, drawing in power users and developers seeking programmable, capital-efficient DeFi solutions rooted in Bitcoin liquidity.

This proposal aims to decentralize Cardano partnerships by intentionally extending their reach to underrepresented regions—Africa, Middleeast, Latam and Oceania. While we applaud the impressive partnerships forming in other parts of the world, it's disheartening to see a lack of representation from regions that arguably stands to benefit the most from blockchain innovation.

The benefits of this proposal are both pragmatic and philosophical. It aligns with Cardano’s core values of decentralization, inclusivity, and real-world impact. Furthermore, it positions Africa, LATAM, Midlleeast and Oceania as a fertile ground for Cardano-based solutions in areas such as governance, banking, identity, education, and health—where traditional systems often fall short.

If Cardano is to become the blockchain of global relevance, Africa, LATAM, Middleast, and the Oceania cannot be left behind. On the contrary, they could become the regions where Cardano sees its most meaningful and strategic adoption. This proposal is a strategic step in cementing that future.

As previously mentioned, our solution eliminates the biggest user experience challenges associated with self-custody, a fundamental requirement for interacting with our Cardano DApp ecosystem

Such a solution would represent significant benefits for all the self-custodial users of Cardano:

• Blockchain-Based Will Execution: Users can set predefined inheritance rules via smart contracts, ensuring a secure, trustless transfer of assets to beneficiaries—without exposing their holdings by sharing a seed phrase.

• Rule-Based Recovery Mechanism: For the first time, Cardano users can implement a smart contract-powered recovery system in case they lose their seed phrase without giving up self-custody. This solution will allow you to recover assets even after a seed phrase has been lost, according to the strict rules you define. This addresses one of the biggest pain points of the self-custody experience.

By significantly improving the self-custody user experience, we’re not only enhancing security and convenience for existing users but also making self-custody more accessible for new users who have concerns about inheritance planning or the lack of recovery options.

There is a large segment of potential users who are tech-savvy enough to use self-custodial wallets but remain hesitant due to these challenges. Our solution removes these barriers, allowing more users to engage confidently with self-custody, Cardano DApps, and the broader ecosystem.

Additionally, integrating Cardano DApps within our smart vaults will provide a seamless experience, making it easier for users to interact with DeFi, and other Cardano blockchain-powered applications. This, in turn, will increase DApp adoption and on-chain activity on Cardano.

Our solution also directly aligns with Cardano’s goal to become the DeFi Layer for Bitcoin. By introducing this inheritance and recovery functionality to Bitcoin users, who deeply value decentralization, self-custody, and trustless technologies, we can attract a lot of Bitcoin liquidity into Cardano with a simple but needed use case that solves a major existing problem for Bitcoiners.

If we take into account only the crypto market, the potential is huge with VanEck predicting that there will be $6 trillion dollars of assets that will need to be passed on to the next generation, in the next 20 years (https://cryptoslate.com/crypto-could-see-6-trillion-from-inheritances-over-20-years-vanecks-matthew-sigel/)

Finally, this solution will also attract real-world liquidity to Cardano. There have been Inheritance firms and Lawyers who have demonstrated interest in piloting this technology in their operations. This is an opportunity we could take advantage of to bring more assets and liquidity to Cardano, as this firm wants to tokenize assets to manage the Inheritance process using this technology and the security, transparency, and reliability of the Cardano blockchain and the untampered data it stores.

Why is the potential for this technology in the Inheritance Industry so large? Currently, the process of managing inheritances is inefficient, manual, and time-consuming, often incurring costs between 3% and 10% of the total inheritance. By simplifying and automating these processes, the solution reduces delays and costs, significantly improving productivity for inheritance firms.

We have already engaged with firms in the industry, demonstrating our technology and gathering valuable feedback for improvements. These firms have demonstrated excitement and willingness to pilot our solution and have expressed their availability to contribute with feedback to help us build a tool that can be used effectively in the real world.

The inheritance industry manages trillions of dollars in assets globally. It is expected that in the next 20 years, $84 trillion of dollars will be passed down to the next generation, accordding to Merrill Lynch ( https://www.queensbusinessreview.com/articles/the-great-wealth-transfer-is-here-but-is-the-next-generation-ready). This technology could be a great way to capture some of that value and liquidity into the overall Cardano ecosystem by providing Firms with an easy-to-use technology that streamlines processes such as inheritance planning, beneficiary tracking, and asset distribution. For the usage of this technology, firms will be incentivized to tokenize the RWAs they manage into the Cardano Blockchain.

As a Cardano Contributor and holder, I believe that what Cardano needs for meaningful long-term adoption is to build technologies that solve real-world problems and have a chance to be adopted by Industries, and this is the kind of work we are doing with GenWealth and this technology, and why we believe it makes sense to propose this to Dreps and the entire Cardano Community to be considered for the annual budget, as one of the priorities for this year is to attract liquidity and more real world adoption, which we can deliver.

In order to track the Benefits and Impact of this proposal to Cardano, here are some of the KPIs we intend to track:

Number of onboarded firms Dollar Value Secured by GenWealth Dapp User Count Value of Tokenized Assets Number of Dapp Integrations

We aim to reach the following Metrics 1-2 years after the launch:

Number of onboarded firms/ Inheritance Professionals: 45+ Dollar Value Secured by GenWealth Dapp: $160,000,000 + User Count: 900 + Value of Tokenized Assets: $48,000,000 Number of Dapp Integrations: 8

You can also see a more complete picture of the impact we plan to have for Cardano in our Scenario planning: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UaFmtoDW06R_ahj14rdzMbN5dgn9-rbw4GES2pURnaA/edit?usp=sharing

Providing exclusive insights and data based knowledge to navigate the market and forge a way forward to success in Japan.

This proposal outlines a qualitative and quantitative survey designed to equip the Cardano ecosystem with actionable intelligence. By strategically engaging key stakeholders and a representative audience, we will uncover critical insights that will:

• Present opportunities for growth and engagement
• Uncover any issues to address
• Inform product roll out
• Enhance targeted outreach
• Establish baseline brand metrics including sentiment
• Optimize marketing and communications for market resonance

This initiative will deliver indispensable foundational data, charting a clearer course to underpin Cardano's strategic growth and long-term success in Japan.

Once deployed, XPort will allow arbitrary data to flow between Cardano, any EVM, and select non-EVM networks. This will enable developers to develop applications that span multiple blockchains. It will also empower developers to shift their focus from extracting value out of a blockchain to importing execution logic into one.

Other potential benefits include but are not limited to:

• Improved interoperability between Cardano and the of the industry
• Expanded access to liquidity and assets on other chains
• Greater abstraction to improve UX
• Reduced bridge risk
• Improved developer experience
• More modular application design/New types of applications

$5.5m cost avoidance opportunity & ~39,000 dev. hours savings for products seeking to integrate native asset display – removing barriers to entry, faster new product launches, improved end-user exp. & increased innovation prospects.

Tangible Benefits ($5.5m cost savings | 39,000 dev. hours savings | >17x ROI)

• Eliminate up-front infrastructure costs (~$100,000 per product) for native asset display
• Accelerate product development by 9+ months by removing the need to build and maintain complex, scalable infrastructure
• Immediate cost avoidance opportunity of ~$1.5m and ~23,400 developer hours across 15+ existing NFTCDN customers
• Additional cost avoidance opportunity of ~$1m and ~15,600 developer hours during proposal funding cycle by onboarding at least 10 additional products
• Maintenance & operational cost avoidance of $3m for 25 NFTCDN users during proposal funding cycle
• Proposal cost of ~$320k with a ROI of 17.20x

ROI Calculations Breakdown

• Typical development cost of infrastructure to support native asset display:

  • ~9 months / 1,560 dev hours
  • ~$100k (developer, PM, infra) per product

• Typical annual running & maintenance cost:

  • ~$100,000 in salaries for labour (back- & front-end, networking, storage, cyber security, admin)
  • ~$20,000 infra cost (servers, hosting, licenses)

• Tasks avoided by using NFTCDN:

  • Cardano node + DB-Sync + Other Cardano software setup & upgrades
  • Middleware for native Asset metadata parsing (CIP-25, CIP-68, v0.01)
  • Middleware for metadata error and edge case handling
  • Integration with IPFS, Arweave, HTTP, on-chain storage systems/protocols
  • Middleware for multimedia content optimisation
  • Security handling (e.g., malware in native assets)
  • Real-time monitoring pipeline of native asset minting & updates
  • End-to-end routing pipeline, including maintenance and updating
  • Regulatory compliance review & management process overhead
  • Performance, reliability, and redundancy infrastructure

• Savings for Current NFTCDN Users (15 active projects)

  • Dev Hours Savings = 23,400 (1,560 hrs x 15 current projects)
  • Labour & Infra Savings = $1.5M in cost avoidance ($100k x 15 current projects)

• Savings from +10 new projects onboarded during proposal period (conservative est.)

  • Adds 15,600 dev. hours and $1M in additional savings for newly onboarded projects into NFTCDN for duration of proposal (18 months)

• Savings for on-going maint. & ops cost (25 projects)

  • Adds $3m in additional savings ($100k + $20k x 25 total projects using NFTCDN)

• Total value returned:

  • ~39,000 dev hours saved for initial development
  • ~$5.5M total ecosystem cost avoidance

• Proposal cost: ~$320k

  • Estimated ROI: ~17.2x
  • Equivalent of ~19 years of cumulative dev time saved

Intangible Benefits

• Removes Adoption Barriers - Eliminates financial (OPEX/CAPEX) & technical (dev. complexity) barriers to entry
• Accelerates Time-to-Market - Enables fast and easy integration of native asset features/capabilities
• Frees Up Product Teams - Reduces backend overhead, letting teams focus on core feature dev, growth & adoption
• Boosts Developer Adoption - Makes accessible for early-stage, under/unfunded and community (free-product) builders
• Enables Broader Innovation - Enables exploration of new native asset use cases (RWA, identity, media, education)
• Future-Proof Native Asset Delivery - Adapts to evolving standards; all users benefit from shared upgrades and fixes
• Eliminates Redundancy - Shared infrastructure avoids every project building redundant, costly systems
• Improves End-User Experience - A high-speed, enterprise-grade, globally distributed CDN for multimedia content substantially improves loading speeds
• Drives Ecosystem Growth – Native asset adoption across more apps creates compounding utility and user adoption
• Aligns with Cardano's Goals & Roadmap – Directly supports Cardano's 2025 roadmaps goals around simplifying developer experience, increasing real-world utility and improving end-user experience

Aligns w/ Proposed Cardano 2025 Goals & Roadmap

• "Get More Usage" Category
  • Goal: Attract DApps and users - product market fit
  • Goal: Easier to build on and to use Cardano
  • Goal: Cardano competitive option
  • Goal: Clear funding mechanisms
• "Developer/User Experience" Category

This project brings great value to multiple segments of the Cardano ecosystem by increasing transparency, accountability, and trust in the treasury system, a fundamental element of decentralized governance. Among the benefits, we highlight by segments:

• Benefits for Community Members and Voters: Get a clear and easy-to-use view of where treasury funds are being directed and going, how much is being spent, and who is receiving the funding, helping them make more informed decisions when voting or delegating their voting power to a DRep in Cardano’s decentralized governance.

• Benefits for Project Proponents: Access historical funding data, identify trends, and compare their proposals to previous successful (and unsuccessful) initiatives.

• Benefits for DReps: Use the platform to track funding performance and outcomes, improving decision-making and voting strategies.

• Benefits for Researchers, Auditors and Finance Members: Monitor and track the delivery of funded proposals and compare them to what was promised, facilitating better accountability and reporting.

• Benefits for SPOs and Developers: Leverage structured, publicly available data for analytics, governance research, dashboards, and community tools.

ROI to the Cardano Community

• Enhanced Treasury Transparency: Promotes trust in the on-chain governance process by offering a single, open-source interface to track every ADA spent.
• Increased Community Engagement: Lowers the entry barrier for new community members to understand treasury flows.
• Better Funding Decisions: Helps avoid waste, identify high-performing proposals, and support more impactful initiatives, optimizing treasury ROI.
• Support for Governance Evolution: As Cardano matures toward full on-chain governance, ADAspending.com will become a vital tool for monitoring public resource allocation in a decentralized way.

Success for this project can be defined and measured:

• Number of DReps using the platform
• Number of Users using the platform
• Number of monthly accesses to the platform
• Validation of users and DReps feedback and platform improvements
• Real-time generated information for site users

Platform's KPIs:

• Number of registered users: 3,000
• Session duration: 4min
• Total amount tracked on the platform: minimum $250.000.000
• Number of hits to the website: minimum 50,000
• Number of tracked transactions: minimum 7,500
• Number of vendors/suppliers: minimum 350

The solution to this problem is to hire an expert external agency with the requisite expertise to do so. SCRIB3 is proposing our agency to handle this workstream by providing a cohesive team of Marketing Program Managers (MPMs) to oversee each of the 10 workstreams with the goal of enabling the 2025 Cardano Marketing Program to achieve the best possible ROMI.

In addition to bringing cohesion to each of the program workstreams, the MPM will also help ensure that the millions of dollars being allocated to Cardano’s first decentralized budget will be spent considerately and in the context of Cardano’s broader business objectives. From our vantage point, allocating 3.77% of the total 2025 Marketing Budget to achieve this end is a non-negotiable.

By anchoring Cardano’s 2025 Marketing Program in robust, iterative Research and Testing, we avoid the aforementioned pitfall of relying on opinions and anecdotal perspectives to drive a $13 million dollar Global Marketing Program.

Instead, each of the Marketing Workstreams will leverage Market/Audience Research and Testing methodologies with the same rigor and sophistication employed by leading brands across all industries and business models (B2B2C, B2B, B2C, D2C, etc.). Cardano’s marketing program should make programming and spending decisions across each workstream based on what has the (objectively) highest likelihood of achieving the intended business outcome(s).

This program also creates a robust set of shared truths across each of the workstreams. For example – Cardano has inevitable Target Audience overlap between Social Media and Events, or Public Relations and Community Management.

As such, alongside the Global Brand Strategy and Creative Campaign Workstream, we can share data-driven Audience, Messaging and Creative insights across all programs — rather than leaving each Workstream on its own to try and make evidence-based marketing decisions without the dedicated budget to do so.

Additionally, as SCRIB3 talks about often (and may be repetitive for those who’ve heard it before), the Web3 Industry has a lot of room to improve the emotional and psychological resonance of its Brands and Marketing Programs.

Said differently, the industry often over-indexes on communicating to their audiences’ Left Brain – consistently hammering the quality of their tech and logic-based arguments for caring about their project.

As we all know, humans are not rational decision makers. And the past 100+ years of marketing evidence tells us that making logic-based attempts to build Brand Evangelists is quite ineffective. We make decisions for all sorts of reasons – but decisions rooted in emotion over rational thought a vast majority of the time.

Cardano has a phenomenal opportunity in its 2025 Marketing Program to double-down on building psychological (and often subconscious) ties between its Brand and Target Audiences.

This opportunity starts with conducting world-class Audience Research/Testing – like Behavioral Research and Neurological Testing – to objectively determine the right emotional triggers worth pursuing in our Audiences and evaluating their physiological responses to our Creative and Messaging Materials. In its most sophisticated form – this means physical sensors like EEG Headsets, biometric devices like Galvanic Skin Response Sensors, Eye-Tracking Cameras and even Facial Coding Software – check out NielsenIQ.

To zoom out and close… The 2021 Gartner CMO Spend Survey estimated that organizations leveraging data and research-backed communications programs see as much as a 25% increase in ROMI compared to those guided primarily by instinct. Given the market Cardano operates in and the massive opportunity provided by the general lack of marketing sophistication across Web3, we expect that data-backed decisions will increase ROMI well beyond that.

This project is designed to deliver tangible and measurable impact across the Cardano ecosystem, directly addressing the need to elevate brand perception and ignite growth within the Japanese market. Our focused approach ensures an impactful project.

1. Amplifying Cardano's Narrative Through High-Impact Media Engagement

By strategically hosting Japanese journalists at Rare Evo we will secure high-impact media coverage, directly shaping public perception.

• Deliver 9+ high-quality, in-depth articles, exclusive interviews, and compelling segments in Tier 1 and influential Japanese media outlets, leveraging our team's connections and the compelling narratives uncovered during on-site execution.
• Guarantee direct interactions between key journalists and Cardano's thought leaders covering the latest developments, robust governance framework, and advancements. This ensures accurate and insightful reporting, moving beyond surface-level understanding.
• Achieve a demonstrable shift in the narrative towards understanding, positive engagement, and ultimately, increased consideration for the adoption of Cardano, amplified through post-event media amplification.
• Generate visibility, deeper understanding, and cultivating admiration, trust, and new allies in Cardano's vision and execution.
• Elevate the profile and credibility of Cardano's governance leaders and dReps within Japan, showcasing their role in decentralization to a wider audience, ultimately aiming to drive growth in Japan by establishing a compelling and accurate narrative.

2. Catalyzing Enterprise and Institutional Adoption

Leverage outreach during the planning phase, the participation of vetted and influential business leaders from Japanese enterprises actively exploring blockchain adoption will be facilitated.

• Work towards a measurable pipeline of qualified enterprise opportunities and pilot project leads within the Japanese market, directly and indirectly contributing to real-world adoption, nurtured through post-event business relationship follow-up.
• Enhance Cardano's positioning as a leading platform within the evolving digital landscape informed by the insights gained on-site business.
• Facilitate reviews for potential investment and strategic partnerships through direct engagement.

3. Forging Deeper and Enduring Ties

• Further integrate the strategically important, yet somewhat isolated Japan market into the dynamic Cardano movement, fostering a wave of unprecedented knowledge sharing and opportunities for collaboration, sustained through ongoing community engagement.
• Drive potential growth in Japanese ecosystem participation fueled by the positive narrative established during the on-site execution and amplified post-event.
• Enhance strategic alignment and synergy between key media/Japanese business stakeholders and Cardano ecosystem players, creating concrete opportunities for mutual advancement, nurtured through ongoing communication.

4. Amplifying Key Cardano Events in Japan This initiative, with its focus on generating high-impact media coverage and engaging key business leaders, provides a strategic springboard to significantly boost the visibility and impact of future Cardano events in Japan, such as the Cardano Summit and Tech for Impact Cardano/Catalyst sponsored events.

5. Cultivating High-Value Serendipitous Opportunities Facilitate coordinated attendance at exclusive side events and gatherings with ecosystem leaders beyond at Rare Evo, creating high-potential, unplanned opportunities for deeper engagement, including.

• Facilitating direct interaction between Japanese leaders and the global Cardano community, fostering connections that extend beyond formal meetings.
• Creating unique and engaging interactions that can lead to further media coverage and compelling content, captured by the team for post-event activities.

By strategically capturing these interactions through compelling conversations, a dynamic event experience, and targeted media content we will establish a narrative of a Cardano ecosystem actively shaping the future of blockchain. These touchpoints will build greater visibility and influence in the Japanese market

We will provide credible third-party validation and amplification of Cardano's value proposition, marking a key milestone in directing the narrative about Cardano as a primary force in blockchain.

If implemented, this proposal will unlock regulatory operability and institutional adoption pathways for the Cardano ecosystem, without compromising decentralization or user privacy.

Zekret introduces a modular Layer 3 compliance and identity infrastructure that can be integrated into existing Cardano-based applications, wallets, dApps, and chains. By providing builders with access to tools like zk-ID onboarding, risk-based permissioning, and jurisdiction-aware audit scoring, this solution removes one of the most persistent roadblocks to real-world, large-scale adoption: regulatory readiness. Benefits to Specific Community Segments:

1. Protocol Developers and Builders

• Can integrate compliance tooling (e.g. travel-rule enforcement, MiCA alignment) into existing DeFi, dApp, or wallet stacks
• Gain access to SDKs and APIs that allow permissioned asset flow or onboarding logic
• Shorter go-to-market cycles and fewer legal uncertainties

2. Stablecoin & RWA Projects

• Ability to issue assets aligned with MiCA, FATF, and GDPR standards
• Interoperability with identity systems and regulated custody infrastructure
• Support for institutional onramps and offramps

3. Institutions, Custodians, and Gateways Infrastructure to operate compliance-focused nodes (Institutional, Watchtower Nodes) Deployment of fiat ramps, token bridges, and scoring engines within a decentralized framework Revenue-sharing opportunities via node license or compliance-as-a-service

With this proposal 45B.io steps forward to help kickstart/facilitate a pilot of a bottom-up way for a small cohort (up to 7) of grassroots communites and small projects to self-organize and deliver online and in-person events (45B included) as well as any other community activities. This model could help derive process/best practices for future/parallel cohorts. It would also explore the boundaries and nuance between purely end-user community groups of people and more SMB or product-oriented products when interacting with the public. This project could also yield new partnerships and collaboration and awareness between communities.