Project Catalyst started in 2020 as an experiment run by Input Output: ada holders submitted proposals, community reviewers assessed them, and voters decided which projects received grants from the Cardano treasury. Fourteen funding rounds ran under that model, financing hundreds of ecosystem projects.
In February 2026 Input Output and the Cardano Foundation agreed that the Foundation takes over stewardship of the program. Fund15 and Fund16 did not go ahead in their planned form, the ada earmarked for them went back to the treasury, and grantees from Fund14 and earlier continue to be paid per milestone. In August 2026 the Foundation opened a pilot fund of two million ada, financed from undistributed ada of earlier rounds and curated by community experts instead of a public vote.
Since the Plomin hard fork, any new treasury money for Catalyst has to be requested through a treasury withdrawal action approved by DReps and the Constitutional Committee, so Catalyst now sits inside on-chain governance rather than next to it.
Sources
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- TreasuryAn on-chain fund that accumulates a portion of transaction fees and monetary expansion.View term
- Treasury WithdrawalA CIP-1694 governance action that proposes taking funds out of the on-chain treasury and paying them to a specified stake address.View term
- Governance ActionA formal proposal submitted on-chain for the Cardano community to vote on.View term
- DRepA representative that ada holders delegate their on-chain voting power to, so the DRep votes on governance actions on their behalf; like choosing someone to represent your interests in parliament.View term
- Net Change LimitA constitutional guardrail that caps the net amount of ada the treasury can pay out over a defined period. DReps agree each limit through an info action.View term