Project Catalyst is Cardano's community grant program. Since 2020 it has paid teams from the Cardano treasury to build apps and tools, do research and run community projects, and it has funded more than 2,000 proposals.1,2
Catalyst changed a lot in 2026. The Cardano Foundation now runs it, and its 2026 pilot round picked teams through a review panel instead of a vote by ADA holders.
Cardano's Community Funding Program
In simple terms, Catalyst is a grant program for the Cardano ecosystem. Teams pitch an idea, members of the community help judge it, and the chosen teams receive ADA to build it. The money arrives in stages, so a team has to show progress, and in the 2026 pilot real usage, to receive the full grant.3,4
Why It Exists
Input Output started Catalyst in 2020 as an experiment in letting ADA holders decide which projects the Cardano treasury paid for.1 Its aims have stayed broadly the same:
- Help new builders and creators get started on Cardano5
- Turn promising ideas into products that people use4
- Keep the community involved in funding decisions6
How It Worked Through Fund14
For most of its history, Catalyst ran in numbered funding rounds, from Fund1 to Fund14.2 Each round followed the same steps:3
- Proposal submission. Anyone could post an idea on the Catalyst platform, such as an app, a developer tool, research or a community project.
- Community review. Reviewers from the community, paid in ADA, rated each proposal on impact, feasibility and value for money.
- Voting. ADA holders registered a wallet and voted in the Catalyst voting app. Votes were anonymous, and each one counted in proportion to the ADA the voter held.
- Funding. Winning teams were paid milestone by milestone, and reviewers checked each milestone's results.
Across these rounds, voters cast more than 3.2 million votes on 11,233 proposals. Of the 2,221 proposals funded, 1,768 are complete and 304 did not finish.2 The last selections under this model were made in October 2025.4
What Changed in 2026
Voting for Fund15 was due to open on 13 January 2026. Catalyst paused it at the last minute, citing operational issues.5 In February it said it was rethinking its strategy and put everything on hold except the funding already promised in Fund14 and earlier rounds.7
That same month, Input Output and the Cardano Foundation agreed that the Foundation would take over the program.1 The handover finished in July 2026.8 Fund15 and Fund16 never went ahead as planned, and about 19.5 million ADA earmarked for Fund15 and 21 million ADA held for Fund16 and a retroactive funding program went back to the treasury.8 Teams funded in Fund14 and earlier still receive their milestone payments.1
How the 2026 Pilot Works
In June 2026 the Cardano Foundation announced a smaller pilot round to test a simpler process and fund builders faster. It is paid for with ADA left over from earlier rounds, from grantees that withdrew or missed their goals, so it needed no new treasury money.6 Each project could ask for 50,000 to 200,000 ADA, and applications closed on 24 August 2026.9
The pilot looked for products that use one or more of four recent Cardano integrations: oracles (live price and data feeds), stablecoins, programmable tokens, and on-chain identity.10
Teams were chosen in two steps instead of a vote.11 First, 52 invited community curators12 checked each application against the program's rules and flagged problems, which teams could fix before the deadline; 31 of 117 applications passed. Then a panel of 35 reviewers, most of them community members and seven from the Cardano Foundation, scored each proposal on its business case (70% of the score) and its technical case (30%). The 12 highest-ranked proposals that fit the budget were selected, conditional on each team completing onboarding, which includes identity checks.
Catalyst's documentation says leaving out an ADA-holder vote does not mean public voting has been dropped for good: the pilot tests a different method at small scale, and how future rounds choose projects is still undecided.13
Payment depends on delivery and usage:4
- 40% when the grant starts, after onboarding
- Up to 40% more, based on how close the project gets to its own usage target
- A final 20% if that usage holds about two months later
- An extra bonus for the best-performing projects
Usage is measured by the network fees that outside users pay to use each product, and the results appear on a public dashboard. Teams have up to three months to launch on Cardano mainnet.4 The 12 selected projects cover stablecoin payments, lending, price feeds, trading of real-world assets, credentials for medical travel, and supply-chain records.4
Where Does the Money Come From?
Catalyst's grants come from Cardano's on-chain treasury. Every epoch (five days), the protocol moves 20% of that epoch's reward pot into the treasury.14,15 The reward pot fills from transaction fees and from new ADA released from Cardano's reserves.16
The treasury does not pay out on its own.15 Since the Plomin hard fork, Catalyst can only get new treasury money through a treasury withdrawal, a governance action that DReps (delegated representatives who vote for ADA holders) and the Constitutional Committee must approve.1 So DReps decide whether Catalyst gets new treasury money. See how Cardano governance works for the details.
What Kind of Projects Get Funded?
Earlier rounds funded technical, business, creative and community proposals.17 Two examples from Fund13:
- FC Barcelona's Barça Fan Lab, a fan platform built with Andamio that gives members digital credentials stored on Cardano18
- The SDG Blockchain Accelerator with the United Nations Development Programme, which received 890,400 ADA for its first two cohorts18
The 2026 pilot was narrower. It funded working products built around the four integrations above, each with a public usage target.4,10
How Can You Get Involved?
You don't need to be a developer or a company, but how you take part depends on what round is open.
- Watch for the next round. Catalyst says the pilot's results will shape how it selects and supports projects next.4 The Catalyst news page is where new rounds are announced.
- Prepare a proposal. Under the current fund rules, applicants must be 18 or over, pass an identity check, and may submit only one proposal per round.19 The pilot asked for a product description, market and team details, a three-month build plan, a usage target, and a short pitch video.10
- Review proposals. Earlier rounds paid community reviewers in ADA.3 In the pilot, curators were invited12 and 116 people applied to join the decision panel.4
- Have a say on treasury spending. Any new treasury money for Catalyst needs DRep approval, so delegating your voting power to a DRep gives you an indirect voice. See how to stake ADA for how vote delegation works in your wallet.
- Follow funded projects. Proposals, results and milestone progress are public on the Project Catalyst website.2
Learn More
- Project Catalyst documentation: Official rules and guides for the pilot, including curation, panel review and the adoption measurement
- Catalyst Pilot 2026 results: The 12 selected proposals, listed alphabetically
- Project Catalyst on the Cardano Forum: Announcements and community discussion tagged Project Catalyst
- Governance guides: Guides to DReps, voting and treasury processes listed on ADAStack
