Overview
The Cardano Forum is a public message board where people ask questions, share projects, and talk through how Cardano works. Developers use it to compare notes on building apps and tokens. ADA holders and stake pool operators (people who run the servers that keep Cardano running) share the Staking & Delegation section, and governance participants have their own. Anyone can read the threads without an account, and an account lets you post, like, or bookmark topics1.
Threads stay public, and search engines index them2.
Staff of the Cardano Foundation, one of the organizations that supports Cardano, administer the Cardano Forum, and the forum's moderators include members of the Cardano Ambassador Program3. The foundation is the program's administrative lead, and ambassador duties include moderating community channels4. The official cardano.org site lists the forum among its recommended channels for structured, long-form discussion5. The forum has been online since 20171.
Key Features
- A dedicated space for builders. The Developers category is for anyone interested in the technical and code side of Cardano. Subcategories cover smart contracts (programs that run on the blockchain), native tokens (custom tokens issued directly on Cardano), node development (building the software that runs the Cardano network), and Cardano Improvement Proposals, the formal documents used to propose changes to Cardano6.
- Weekly Developer Office Hours. Office Hours is a one-hour weekly call where the creators of each week's topic present it, then Cardano Foundation engineers and community experts take open questions7. Foundation staff announce sessions in numbered forum threads8; the #79 thread, for example, lists the time in UTC, a calendar link, and a link to the recordings9.
- Governance discussion in one place. The Governance category hosts threads on Cardano's constitution, the Constitutional Committee, DReps (delegated representatives who vote on proposals for the ADA holders who back them)10, and Project Catalyst, Cardano's community funding program11.
- Help for stake pool operators. The Staking & Delegation category has separate areas for setting up a stake pool (a server that helps run the network and earns rewards for ADA delegated to it)12, operating one, and securing it13.
- Conversations in many languages. Besides English, the forum has sections in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, and other languages, plus a Translations category14.
What to Expect
For curious readers, the Cardano Forum works like most web forums. You browse categories, open a thread, and read the replies. The English section includes a Community Technical Support area for troubleshooting, a News and Announcements area, and a Report a Scam area15.
For developers, the Cardano Developer Portal points builders to the forum's Developers category for long-form discussion, technical debate, and community support7. Office Hours presentations are recorded and available on YouTube, and people who prefer not to ask during the live call can submit questions anonymously through a form7. Readers new to building on Cardano can start with an introduction to Cardano development.
Posting comes with house rules. Members should criticize ideas rather than people, start topics in the right category, and may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission2. If a member feels their content was inaccurately removed, the Community team can perform a secondary review for serious concerns when details are sent to community@cardano.org2.
