DEMU's vision is to establish a direct connection between fans and the artists they love, fostering deeper relationships. Their mission is to equip artists worldwide with advanced tools to streamline music sales and licensing, increase licensing revenues, and regain control over their business. The DEMU protocol ensures fair distribution of royalty payments to rights holders for all on-chain sales channels, providing real-time visibility into music usage and owed earnings. To achieve this, DEMU replaces expensive centralized solutions with a decentralized network of node operators, securing music through token-gated access, granting artists full control, and eliminating costly content storage overhead.

Since June 2023, the Hydra project released version 0.11.0, enhancing external wallet support and transaction processing, and deprecating internal commits. The team improved security with authenticated network messages and optimized protocol performance by sending only transaction IDs in snapshots. They also addressed a multi-signature verification bug via GitHub security advisories and updated to GHC 9.2.7, improving compatibility and Plutus script efficiency. The Starmap update focused on making Hydra more accessible and preparing for mainnet deployment.

Since May 2023, the Hydra team has focused on several key developments, preparing for the upcoming version 0.11.0 release. Notable updates include allowing commits with multiple UTXOs, enhancing off-chain performance, and introducing commits from external wallets. The team also benchmarked Hydra Head performance, identified persistence as a bottleneck, and made improvements based on real-world usage. Community engagement included planning a Hydra workshop and concluding the Hydra for Auctions project, which successfully demonstrated moving smart contracts from layer 1 to layer 2 for enhanced scalability.

Most stories today are not creating a positive global culture or envisioning a sustainable future for the next seven generations. Video games are violent, social media is toxic, and TV content is dumbing us down. Mandala aims to change this! In the following interview, the team explains how they aim to create a positive global culture and envision a sustainable future by offering a new narrative that breaks away from the negative influences of current media. Their multiverse incorporates a variety of mythologies, inviting audiences to participate actively and make a difference. Through existing distribution platforms, Mandala seeks to broaden worldviews and catalyze a cultural shift during a critical time in human entertainment.

Intersect, a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem, invites the community to join and help shape Cardano's future. Founding Members can co-design Intersect and participate in governance tooling initiatives, with grants up to 1.68 million ada. Intersect, vital to the "age of Voltaire," focuses on Cardano's maintenance and development, uniting companies, developers, and individuals. Membership enables proactive involvement in Cardano's evolution, including applying for grants and participating in committees. Nigel Hemsley emphasizes Cardano's secure, transparent, and decentralized growth, supported by its large community and numerous contributors.

Since April 2023, the Hydra project released version 0.10.0, the first mainnet-compatible release, which includes key features like limited mainnet exposure, client API enhancements, and quality-of-life improvements for running the hydra-node. The team focused on timed transactions, removing unnecessary configuration options, and improving continuous integration (CI) performance. Community contributions included the Hydrozoa research proposal and updates to the Hydra for Payments project, which aims to make Hydra more accessible for payment use cases with the HydraNow mobile app. The team continues to refine and expand Hydra's capabilities and user experience.

Since March 2023, the Hydra project made significant progress, focusing on preparing for the 0.10.0 release, which will be the first mainnet-compatible version. Key developments include updates to the configurable API, enhancements to the Hydra specification, and fixing script continuity issues. The team also addressed a rollback bug that affected the opening of Hydra heads on the mainnet. Community projects like Hydra for Voting and Hydra for Auctions are advancing, driving API discussions and exploring new use cases like ballot voting and NFT auctions on both L1 and L2.

Since February 2023, the Hydra project released version 0.9.0, which brought significant on-chain and off-chain updates, including cost reductions in Plutus scripts, improved mutation testing, and the addition of a new tutorial. The focus now shifts to making Hydra mainnet compatible, with version 0.10.0 being the first mainnet-ready release. The roadmap was updated, prioritizing API configurability and marking less-demanded features as ideas for discussion. The team also optimized on-chain scripts and improved Hydra's UX. A key milestone was opening a Hydra head on the Cardano mainnet during a team workshop in Austria.

In this interview, Jingles, one of the co-founders of Mesh, talks about the project and how it aims to improve the developer experience within the Cardano ecosystem. Mesh is an open-source software developer kit that provides developers with the necessary resources and support to build innovative and impactful applications on the Cardano blockchain. Jingles discusses Mesh's features, the reasons for choosing Cardano, and the project's plans, such as a bounty program and improving the serialization library.

Dynamic P2P networking is an important evolution for Cardano and a further boost to the network's performance, resilience, and decentralization. It comes as a built-in functionality with node v.1.35.6 release today. The SPO community is now encouraged to test P2P functionality by updating one of their relays to use the P2P topology mode.