Hello there,

In this 10th edition of our development report, we update you on Cardano continuity, the Marketing Working Group, The Chang upgrade, the DRep pioneer program, Community tooling, governance tooling, SanchoNet, our incoming Members area, and more.

So, without further delay, on to the update

Cardano continuity

Cardano “continuity” is defined or referred to as any approved & required technical services needed to build or fix current and future areas of the Cardano blockchain. Continuity in this definition can include new development, such as the CIP-1694 governance software, components upgrades, or testing improvements, to name a few.

Continuity ultimately describes requirements and technical services that support the Cardano network daily, ensuring the chain is fit-for-purpose and forward-looking. Looking towards the 2025 Cardano budget, Intersect members will define continuity work through community processes and—with on-chain community consent—funded by the Cardano treasury. Intersect will continue to facilitate and administrate the technical delivery of continuity as it does today.

Intersect Delivery assurance function

Delivery assurance refers to the commitment & processes between continuity delivery partners to ensure the timely and reliable delivery of products, services, or projects - meeting specified requirements and expectations. It involves managing risks, monitoring progress, and implementing strategies for successful & punctual delivery. The methodology to gain assurance is flexible, depending on the length, complexity, and associated delivery risks.

Steered by the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), the Delivery Assurance team is a core function at Intersect - completing tasks outlined above on behalf of the community. The team must execute its functions to ensure Cardano's continuity plan is delivered.

Intersect Cardano continuity quarterly plan

Intersect’s Delivery Assurance and Technical Operations teams have been preparing a first-of-its-kind Cardano Continuity Quarterly Plan. Drawing on seed funding from IOG and EMURGO, Intersect has signed continuity work contracts with an initial seven suppliers to deliver over 30 new functionalities and features to the network.

Looking ahead, through committees and working groups, members will play an integral role in shaping Cardano's roadmap by actively participating in developing the backlog. The development priorities, assignment of deliverables or tasks, and sustained enhancements to the core Cardano infrastructure will be guided by insights and recommendations from various specialized working groups and committees, including the pivotal TSC and, subsequently, the Delivery Assurance team within Intersect. For more detailed information and the latest updates on the continuity initiative and the activities of our Delivery Assurance team, we invite you to explore our Knowledge Base.

Marketing working group update

ICYMI, we announced a new, exciting working group focused on marketing Cardano. Since the announcement, we have been inundated with interest, and we’re expecting a fantastic group of marketers and creatives, both inside Intersect and Cardano and from outside our ecosystem.

We have created a quick form to capture interest more formally. We’ll be reaching out to all those who raised their hands across our social platforms, but for now, if you want to participate and contribute, please complete this form.

Spearheaded by Intersect member MLaden of Anastasia Labs, we aim to hold the first kick-off in early May. 

Members area

Our upcoming new member's area will be the home for Intersect members to navigate Intersect and their membership benefits. We are improving onboarding and making it easier for members to contribute. The development of our members' area is in full swing, and we took the Membership & Community Committee (MCC) through an early-access demo for a first round of member feedback. This week, our beta testers' insights have given us high confidence in the member area's readiness. Later in May, beta testing will expand to more members, staying on track for Q2 delivery.

Below is a sneak peek of the member's area and an idea of how it will look when launched in beta! 

The Chang upgrade

Representing a significant step towards minimum viable on-chain governance as defined in CIP-1694, the Chang upgrade (spread across two upgrades) will culminate many years of hard work, including all the community participation that has taken place through community workshops and testing on SanchoNet. As stake pools upgrade their nodes to support the new protocol, Cardano will have moved from the Basho era into the Voltaire Era, creating a self-sustaining blockchain and trailblazing the way forward for the industry.

The first of two upgrades (Chang Upgrade #1) will deploy governance features to Cardano and enter the technical bootstrapping phase described in CIP-1694.

The second upgrade (Chang Upgrade #2) moves CIP-1694 out of the technical bootstrapping phase and unlocks the final features of on-chain governance, including DRep participation and treasury withdrawals.

The Chang upgrade will follow a similar path to the Vasil upgrade. The final decision to a hard fork will be made – in consultation with members of the SPO, DApp, and community – against three key criteria:

• No critical issues outstanding on the node (including ledger, CLI, consensus, etc.) 
• Benchmarking and performance-cost analysis are acceptable
• The community (including exchanges and DApp projects) has been properly informed and has had sufficient time to prepare for the hard fork combinator event

Intersect will coordinate hard fork activity with the community and our continuity suppliers. We will update you on our knowledge base as we progress toward Chang.

Community tooling

Funding opportunities continue to expand, launching numerous initiatives to empower our members and propel Cardano's governance rollout. Before we jump to it, if you’d like to catch up on all the current projects in-flight, please look at our Community Grant Gitbook space.

With the Open category, we have concluded our first grant category evaluation, in which the community has been involved in the process, one step closer to creating a decentralized ecosystem. The Intersect Community Members evaluated each proposal on an agreed framework, which can be found in our knowledge base. The decision will now go to the MCC for ratification before we can release the results next week. The Grant Evaluation working group has now reopened for people to apply to take part in the evaluation of the Inclusion and Accessibility Category. The form to join is available here and will close at 9 am (UTC) on Monday 22nd April.

This is a reminder that the DevOps for Governance Tools grant is still open until Thursday, 25th April. This grant is open to a company in the community that will own and manage the software development operations of governance tools that will allow everyone to participate in governing Cardano. Please review the requirements and directions for applying here.

The Inclusion & Accessibility category is now closed. Results are due to be announced on 10th May.

The local face-to-face events and meet-ups category has been paused while we evaluate the first round of applications. This category is currently capped at 40 workshops. The same application and review process will apply as with any other grant. If you are successful, all liability and responsibility for the event will be with the host, not Intersect. We will contact the individual(s) with the results over the next few weeks.

SanchoNet

Following the installation of node 8.10 last week, the SanchoNet testnet resets, so there are no new stats to report this week. The reset brings new functionality for pushing decentralized government forward, as the new node supports a new cost model for Plutus v3 and new Plutus byte string primitives. Additionally, the Constitution Committee quorum has been renamed to the threshold in the CLI, and a new economic parameter, minFeeRefScriptCostPerByte, has been added for reference scripts. This version of the node also adds support for reference scripts in the Conway era.

Governance tooling

This week, the SanchoNet GovTool is being upgraded to work with the new Node 8.10.0-pre and re-spun sanchonet. The Byron Networks team aims to get the GovTool back online next week, this is dependent on upgrading wallets to the new Cardano node version.

In the meantime, the team has made the Govtool repository public at IntersectMBO/govtool. This is the first step to full community ownership of the governance tools. We invite those governance-mad community members to start having a look. Feel free to raise feature requests or bug reports via the Issues. We are improving our contributing guide for those keen developers to allow your appreciated contributions.

You will also be able to follow the development progress of this GitHub project.

As we progressed in developing the new features of Govtool, the WeDeliver Team started implementing the new proposal discussion area. This and the other new features will be available in Q2 for testing on sanchogov.tools.

Furthermore, this week, the Governance Tools Working Group met for the third time. This working group is responsible for defining how to decentralize these tools' ownership, development, and maintenance to the Cardano community. You can join the discussion on the working group Discord channel.

Events

Update from Teamz - Japan

Last week, Intersect returned to Tokyo for the Teamz blockchain event to share the latest plans with Cardano’s governance rollout and Intersect’s role - including delivering a keynote on the main stage and launching the new community hub in Japan. Across the weekend, the team met hundreds of community members and builders, participated in workshops, and attended local member meet-ups. Building awareness of all the developments Cardano will see in 2024, over 50 new members joined us, excited to learn more and contribute.

Intersect will return to Tokyo in October for the first Annual Members Meeting.

Buidl 
The first Cardano developer-focused event, Buidl 2024, will be held in Toulouse next week. Intersect’s open-source program office and technical architect will join, with many more members attending. Spread across two days, it’s an event for tech-savvy Cardano builders to connect, showcase, and share.

Organized by Arnaud Bailley of IOG and Matthias Benkort of the Cardano Foundation, Buidl marks what we envisage as the kick-off of a series of developer-centric events!

Important member resources

Intersect Knowledge Base - Frequently updated, our knowledge base provides granular detail on our internal governance structure, committees & working groups, and funding opportunities, among many other items.

Intersect website - You will find the latest news, roadmap, and more here.
GovTool - Take part in testing governance actions on the SanchoNet testnet.

Discord / Telegram - Join our lively community and interact with committees, working groups, and other members.

Social - We are continually active on X and LinkedIn, so follow us!
TownHall - Our monthly members' Zoom meeting where we highlight and discuss essential governance topics and member-based news.

This week's reminders 

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

• We’re always looking for talented and passionate individuals who would like to help shape Cardano's future of governance. Learn more about our open positions here.
• Our knowledge base continues to expand. Here, we publish updates and progress as fast as we can. 
• Don’t miss Intersect on the Essential Cardano 360 on Thursday, 25th April, at 17:30 UTC.
• It’s not too late to register to participate in our April town hall meeting, which will be held on 30th April at 16:00 UTC. Join us to discuss community events, funding opportunities, and other important topics you want to be involved in. 

Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading! Next week, expect news on the DRep Pioneer program. Updates from Buidl, new Govtool stats page, and more!

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