In my early crypto journey, I fell for a scam that cost me $1,700—a loss born not from ignorance, but misplaced confidence. I believed I could outwit deception by changing the script. I couldn’t. That moment taught me that even intelligent users are vulnerable in a system that offers no safety net. What kept me grounded was Cardano: its mission of research, patience, and principled design. That mission is why I stayed. Yet Cardano’s openness and decentralization, while empowering, also expose users to hidden dangers: cloned tokens, misleading branding, and overhyped projects. This proposal introduces a framework for improving wallet-layer safety and trust, including UI enhancements, opt-in transparency tools, and a community-reviewed case study examining the breakdown of post-ISO trust.

Ironlight is bringing Tokenization to TradFi. This is done by creating a fully regulated secondary trading venue for tokenized Real World Assets (RWA). The RWAs are private market funds, company equity and real estate. Ironlight is different from most other players in 3 major aspects: 1. Liquidity: Ironlight has secured 4 major institutions to backstop trading. Additionally, RIAs & Wealth Advisors from the major banks are market participants. 2. Sponsor Access Model: The Alternative Trading System (ATS) allows for trading & settling between anyone in the US financial system not just within it’s own network. This allows for dramatically more participants and thus facilitates liquidity. 3. Institutional Grade Technology: Built from the ground up, the technology can process 2 million messages per second at 20 microseconds per transaction. Additionally, built under Reg SCI. The technology was built at the same standard Wall Street expects for Public Market ATS/Exchanges.

This proposal is not up to date and will be done in a separate budget info action and must not be included or considered in any Intersect budget. To see the up to date proposal see here: https://hackmd.io/@PRAGMA-org/amaru-proposal and will be submitted on chain Amaru is an open-source project that aims to build a new fully interoperable block-producing node for improving the overall accessiblity and robustness of the Cardano network without compromising on its satefy and security. Amaru provides another perspective and solution for stake pool operators and developers alike, focusing on modularity and easy-of-use. The project is implemented mainly in Rust and aims to attract new contributors to the core maintenance of the ecosystem. This proposal is designed to breakdown the objectives, scopes, timelines and costs pertaining to Amaru. It delivers the full vision behind the project and open the discussion regarding a Cardano treasury withdrawal to sustain its development. For better viewing experience please use this link: https://hackmd.io/@PRAGMA-org/amaru-proposal Disclaimer: The following document is a DRAFT proposal for the Amaru project. It is a collective document that describes the vision and the needs of multiple entities/actors involved in the development of Amaru. This proposal will evolve in January 2025 following changes of scopes and resources allocated to the project It is meant as a starting point for discussing Cardano treasury withdrawals in alignment with the incoming constitution. As such, we invite anyone interested to comment on the following document, and share feedback with us. Result of the estimation phase of our proposal: 6 FTEs + $60k (see https://hackmd.io/@PRAGMA-org/amaru-proposal for details) Given our assumptions the valuation of this proposal based on a 200k$ base for an FTE, the estimation comes down to: 6 * 200k$ + 60 k$ = 1260k$ Given our assumption regarding our optimism bias (add 25% of contingency), the proposal submitted will be targetting: $1.578M as a result of the scopes covered in Amaru and ask for the equivalent in ADA at the time the treasury withdrawal is emitted.