Project Catalyst
Project Catalyst is the community grant program of the Cardano blockchain, which funds projects in the ecosystem with ada from the Cardano treasury. Teams submit proposals, community reviewers rate them and ada holders vote on which projects receive a grant.
Input Output started the program in 2020 and ran fourteen funding rounds under this model. In February 2026 Input Output and the Cardano Foundation agreed that the Foundation takes over the stewardship of the program, which continues as the Catalyst Pilot 2026.
Funding rounds and results
The Project Catalyst website counts 2,221 funded proposals out of 11,233 put to a vote and total funding of more than 150 million US dollars. Fund12 and Fund13 each had a budget of 46.5 million ada, and Fund14 had 18.6 million ada. Fund15 opened in November 2025 with a budget of 18.5 million ada and 250,000 USDM, but it did not go ahead in its planned form.
How Catalyst voting works
Voters read the proposals of a round in the Catalyst Voting App and choose the ones they expect to have the most impact. Community reviewers, who are paid in ada for their work, assess each proposal beforehand, so voters see a rating next to every proposal.
Catalyst Pilot 2026 under the Cardano Foundation
After the change of stewardship, the Cardano Foundation and the operators of Catalyst judged that Fund15 and Fund16 could not run as proposed, and the ada set aside for them went back to the Cardano treasury. The program continues as the Catalyst Pilot 2026, for which twelve teams were selected in September 2026.
Examples of funded projects
FC Barcelona launched the Barça Fan Lab on Cardano with the education platform Andamio, a project supported through Fund13 of Project Catalyst. Fans who sign in with BarçaID collect credentials in a Cardano-based portfolio of their own. The Cardano Foundation gives no grants itself and refers funding requests to Project Catalyst.
Upcoming blockchain and digital asset events in Europe
Project Catalyst and Finance Loop
Finance Loop covers how blockchain ecosystems fund their development in the Investment & Digital Assets track. Project Catalyst pays for open-source tools and integrations by vote, and institutions that build on Cardano use many of these tools.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, digital payments, cloud and blockchain solutions. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.