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Fund your Project with Catalyst

The portal on cardano.ideascale.com is where the Cardano community’s ideas come to life. Here, users can browse active campaigns, participate in discussions, and put forward their ideas for feedback and voting from the community.

Built around ‘Active Campaigns’, the Project Catalyst Ideascale contains several categories of proposals that idea-makers and entrepreneurs can explore when making a proposal. These include classes like ‘DApps and Integrations’, ‘Local Community Centers’, ‘Developer Ecosystem’ proposals, and more. There are separate funds available for each category, and some classes already have well over 100 active proposals.

Within each active campaign, you can find a campaign brief. This is a short explainer of what proposals should include, how to meet the campaign's requirements and some guiding questions for proposals. You will also find a stage flow that guides you through the timeline of each campaign.

If you click on ‘Browse Ideas’, you can see a list of other proposals that community members have already created. If you’re thinking of submitting a one, this is a great way to see what goes into a successful proposal and how you can position your proposal for maximum traction. For voters and community participants, this is also where you can join discussions or upvote your favourite proposal.

Catalyst Announcements

The best way to keep up to date with Project Catalyst is to follow the announcement channel on Telegram.

Why participate?​

  • To build your reputation.
  • To build something impactful and meaningful.
  • To get your project funded.
  • To learn and grow.

Participate as a proposer​

You will need to create an account first on Cardano IdeaScale and then submit your proposal there. You can collaborate with the community to develop and refine your proposal on the proposals channel on Telegram.

Participate as a community advisor​

You can provide reviews, assessments, and mentor proposers in their delivery and presentation. Check the community channel on Telegram.

Participate as a voter​

Download the Catalyst voting app in the Apple Store or Google Play Store and vote for your favourite projects.

Previous Project Catalyst voting results​

Communication channels​

Please join our different channels on Telegram, Discord and Forum to join our Catalyst funding community and discuss your ideas and proposals:

Instruction guides​

FAQ​

Find common FAQ and the FAQ of previous funds on Project Catalyst:

Alternative funding options​

Project Catalyst should be your tool of choice when it comes to project funding on Cardano. For the sake of completeness, here is a place to list alternative funding options for your project.

The cFund​

The cFund is a venture fund that manages all centralized fund operations secured by IOHK and Wave Financial where each of them participated with 10$ million to back ambitious founders globally.

The cFund is a homage to Apple's iFund that was introduced in 2008 to bootstrap iOS development. Compared to Project Catalyst, the funds available here are relatively small.

The cFund started in July 2020 with the goals to achieve:

  • Growing the Cardano ecosystem.
  • Working with governments, especially in developing countries in Africa and South America.
  • Providing access to high-speed, adaptable financing for founders to manage payment flows and invest in the Cardano ecosystem.

The first cFund investment took place In April 2021. It provided $500,000 to innovative enterprise-grade fintech technology called COTI, the currency of the internet. COTI secured the investment to support stakeholder-driven payment solutions and enables them to pack digitally any currency.