Governance, Growth & Gas Wars: The State of Cardano (May 2025)

01:03 USDm Goes Retail
02:01 Stablecoin TVL
02:49 USDm in EU Markets
03:54 Anzens USDa Update
04:31 What Happened to XSY?
05:52 DJed Updates, Community Pools?
09:17 Eth Gas Fees Cheaper than Cardano
10:31 How to Bridge USDC to Cardano and Earn 20%+ APY
13:10 Big Thank You
14:19 Ecosystem Update: Support Kraken
15:47 Happy Birthday to Cardano’s Best Memecoin
16:13 Devs Should Use Maestro
17:41 Minswap DAO Treasury
19:41 Gasless Transactions, 0 Transaction Costs
21:07 $PALM CEX Listing
21:42 DeFi Opportunity: CSwap Staking
22:32 Optim Vault Update
23:25 Interoperability: Cardano Foundation and Ethereum Foundation Collaborate
25:50 Interoperability is KEY to Broad Adoption
28:04 Wider Exposure for Cardano
29:27 Governance: I voted
33:37 Turning Around Intersect MBO
35:45 Detailed Changes to Intersect

00:00
Okay, we’ve got some awesome news updates to round up your end of the week here. It is the second of May 2025. We got some news around the stablecoin ecosystem. Lots happening there, especially with this project here, Esky. Esky.5. Do you remember this one back in 2024? We also have a look into things that’s happening in the ecosystem at large. Some really cool stuff with the mint swap decks here. The Dow Treasury is being deployed and we also have news around the Cardano Foundation working with

00:30
the Ethereum foundation and of course I also voted in the Interstate Budget Reconciliation process and you can check out what I actually voted on and how I spent 271 million ADA. Check it out, wait till end of the video and can find out exactly how I spent that money. Alright guys, before we get into the video make sure you hit that thumbs up, like, subscribe, notification bell.

00:53
my job here to keep you guys up to date with everything in the ecosystem and all you have to do is take one second and hit that like button. So really appreciate it. If you got a second, scroll down, click done. All right. First news update here. USDM goes retail. This is something we’ve been waiting for. For a lot of the people out there in the US, you can now log into the platform, any of these states here. So if you’re in any one of these states here, you are able to log onto the platform and start minting USDM.

01:23
and bring it directly from your bank account into the Cardano ecosystem. And from what I’ve read also, you can deposit USDC. So they have an EVM based address that you can deposit that USDC into and convert it to USDM. So there lots of ways that you can play around with the ecosystem now and lot of opportunities. And you don’t have to be living or a resident of one of these states here in the US. You can simply travel there.

01:51
and then register and then start minting the USDM. So you just have to be in that state. You don’t have to actually be your resident. So it’s really interesting there. Now, if we have a look at Tap Tools here, we can see the amount of liquidity that is in the ecosystem across these different stablecoins. We’ve got that 10.2 million on USDM. We’ve got IUSD at 3.3 million and USDA at 11.1 million.

02:18
We got our old trusty jet at just under a million nine hundred twenty five thousand in liquidity there as well. So we’ve got a lot of options in regards to different stable coins. What’s up USDC coming in from one chain and USDT, but not as much, nowhere near as much liquidity there. That requires a lot of bridging across the one chain bridge. And I actually did this as well. And I’ll show you a little bit later a tutorial on how to do this. I find it.

02:45
quite easy to do and I’ll show you exactly how you can participate that way. But also check this out. So this exchange here, MBX, this is over in Norway. So it’s a Norwegian exchange that is Mica compliant. So they comply with the EU regulations around money management, money, all the money laws there. And they have the ability here. Check this out. So quick buy using a visa or mastercard or your balance in euros.

03:14
to buy USDM. Amazing. So Alex here also just clarifies, just to be clear, this is not full blown minting yet, but you can purchase and exchange euros for USDM that’s on the exchange. So it’s one step away from full minting where you can deposit into their platform and start minting more USDM. At the moment we’re just purchasing more. So you’re purchasing from

03:39
Euro to USDM isn’t increasing the amount of liquidity that’s being in the ecosystem, it’s just converting at the moment. So really, really good to see the USDM team kicking goals and really building on the Cardano ecosystem. Now Anzins, the team that are bringing out the USDA stablecoin, they have a brand new CEO and Vinith here, which I’ve had on the podcast previously, and this was before the whole

04:08
launch of the USDA stablecoin. He is now the CEO of Anzen’s official, the company behind the USDA stablecoin working on the strategy and partnerships, et cetera. So, Venetia, I think is a brilliant, brilliant person to be put in that CEO position. And I’m looking forward to seeing the growth of Anzen’s and USDA over the next couple of years. Now this project here, Esky, Esky, I believe that’s how you pronounce it. This was announced

04:37
last year in 2024 and this was supposed to be a stablecoin gateway that was going to drive big amounts of liquidity to the Cardano ecosystem. And when you hear that, you think, great, this is what we need. This was a big problem back in 2024. We need more stablecoin liquidity. We’re all talking about USDC, USDT. Where are they? Why aren’t they here? And Esky was supposed to fulfill those goals, help drive that liquidity and maybe attract those big players.

05:07
But here they go. They launched an avalanche. What on earth is happening? What happened here? Here we go. Avalanche. Nothing here with the Cardano ecosystem. So it looks like I do believe this was a one of Charles’s pet projects. It was supposed to be under the IOG banner, but I guess they went, not working here. Let’s move along. So I don’t know exactly the details of what happened with this particular project.

05:36
But this is the video that I did previously last year about it. And it’s kind of unfortunate that we never got this one in. This was back in March 4th, 2024. So crazy that we didn’t hear much after that. So Esky has completely left and people are wondering what’s going on. What have we got left here? And Jed was the original Stabocoin implemented in the ecosystem under Koti.

06:04
And we’ve got some insights here and Phil just shares it and I’m really intrigued. So Phil writes, Esky is no longer under IEG and hasn’t been for a while. The JED protocol from technological perspective is one of the most advanced protocols on Cardano. Without a doubt, it is the protocol which most closely adheres to Cardano’s vision regarding formal verification, extensive property based testing and mission critical security.

06:31
I can comfortably say that there isn’t a single tap on Condano, Ethereum or Solana that even remotely approaches the level of rigorous high assurance testing and formal verification that Jed has. Hmm, really interesting stuff. I know there’s a lot of people that are big fans of Jed as well, but if we have a look at the liquidity here, let me just remind you, just under a million in liquidity there. So this is an over-collateralized stablecoin where you put in a lot of ADA. I think it’s like one and a half to two times the amount of ADA usually to mint

07:01
the Jed stable coin and they also have a reserve currency Shen as well. So it’s a lot of complex, complex minting to actually get the stable coin into the ecosystem. But because of that complexity, it makes sure that there’s a lot of liquidity behind it to keep it as stable as possible. And the minting and burning mechanisms make it appealing for people to participate. But still we only have just under a million in liquidity. But Phil here writes a little bit more.

07:30
I can’t share too much, I can promise you the community is going to love the JED roadmap. The focus is on expanding the operational decentralization of the protocol and opening participation to the community. So it sounds like there may be opportunities to be like node providers within the JED ecosystem or maybe managing the state pools. let’s see.

07:58
Because you have to deposit ADA into the GED protocol as the collateral for the stablecoin, all that ADA is being staked at various stake pools everywhere. How about we get that ADA and stake it to community pools? That way we can decentralize that ADA and allow it to be helping minting blocks on small pools in the ecosystem. Wouldn’t that be great? I don’t know where all this ADA is being held at the moment. And I spoke to

08:28
previous community members about this as well. And it would be really good to see a community based initiative where we can engage with Jed, Jed Alliance or Coty or whoever’s managing it now and have that community based delegation of that ADA. I think it will make a big difference in the adoption of Jed and the attention and eyeballs and helps with its marketing and all sorts of different aspects.

08:58
The staple operators in the Cardano ecosystem do have a loud voice and I think doing something like that will have a massive impact. Let me know what you guys think. Are you a staple operator? Do you want to be a node operator out there? Leave a comment down below. I think this is something that could really help the ecosystem at large and help Jed as a stablecoin.

09:18
Now mentioned a little bit earlier about the USDC, the one chain one, and I have been experimenting with that. So I had some stable coin assets on Ethereum. Yes, on Ethereum, I had some over there and I started to move things over. And this post here by Paul kind of reminded me of those high gas fees. And this is something that deterred me from doing so. So I had those assets and I just left them there because the gas fees were so high. But have a look at this.

09:47
The gas fees and transactions fees on Ethereum have dropped significantly. A bit because people aren’t using as much, there aren’t as much JPEG NFT trading. But here we go. We can now move assets for less than it costs on Cardano. Think about that guys. There is all this talk about how cheap and how fast Cardano is. But if you have a look at some older tech such as Ethereum, they’re cheaper than us now.

10:17
So we really got to do something about that to reduce those gas fees, those transaction costs so that more people can participate in DeFi in general. So this is really important. But let me get back to this one over here, what I was saying before. So here now on liquid, I moved over some assets and let me just go through this tutorial and show you exactly how it’s done. So here I’m connected to the one chain bridge.

10:42
And I’ve clicked my Metamask wallet and now I’m going through and selecting the USDC and then where I want to put it. So I’ve connected up my Cardano wallet here. I have to paste in the address. That’s how it works. So I just grab my wallet from my address from my LACE wallet, paste it into the field there. Then I need to confirm that. Then I can add in the amount of USDC that I want to move over. In this case, it’s that 34 USD. Click next. Then there’s a confirmation screen that comes up.

11:11
So I’ve just got to make sure that I’m sending it to the right address, non-exchange. And then here you can see, yes, everything looks good. And I can confirm these details here. There’s various wallet prompts that come up in Metamask. You just got to double check that all those details are correct and your spending amounts are right. But you can approve those. And then your bridging of the USDC assets is on its way. And that will arrive in your Codino wallet at any moment.

11:40
Now, once that does arrive into your Cardano wallets, you can navigate over to the Liquid Finance website. And these are all the pools that you can add assets into for borrowing and lending. And here you can supply that USDC. There is a minimum amount of 30 USD, but I can choose the wallet that I want to connect to. In this case, it’s my LACE wallet where I have the assets. Authorize that wallet. And then from there, I can click on supply.

12:07
can see the amount of USDC that I’ve got there. So I’m going to click on Max and then supply my balance of USDC. From there, I just need to authorize a transaction, assign the transaction to approve it and we’re done. That submits a transaction on chain and that deposits that USDC into liquid finance and other people can borrow against that. Okay, so now you can see that I’ve got the liquidity there. I’ve only got 30. The minimum is 30 USDC.

12:37
USD onto their liquidity pool, but I can start earning that lovely APY, that 21.48 % there and earn some extra rewards. So this is a really good incentive from Liquid Finance to actually bring in more liquidity onto the ecosystem and also drive up the usage of USDC, their platform and One Chain Bridge. I’ve also put some written notes up on the Learn Cardano website. So if you’re wanting to learn how to use the One Chain Bridge and Liquid Finance,

13:06
Check out the links down below to learnCardano.io. Now I just want to stop the video there and give a big shout out to the channel members that have been signing up recently. So these are people that are buying me a coffee and supporting me along the way. And we’ve got a couple of new members. So three new members have signed up over the last week. We have Salsa Paul, we have Eric. I am not going to attempt to even say that. And the Architect signing up over the last week. you know, thank you so much guys for signing up.

13:35
become bio coffee supporters. So I think it’s a 4.95 or 5.95. So it’s fairly low cost. So it’s affordable for a lot of people to support the channel there. And you know, thank you so much for doing so. And you can see exactly how much I’m earning per month here off the channel members. just over $40. I can actually buy a nice big bag of coffee next month and keep me paring on through the through the month of May so I can deliver you guys more and more.

14:03
download related content. So awesome. Thank you so much, guys. But you know, if you can’t become a channel member, totally cool. Just hit that thumbs up button and you get a lot of value out of the channel and I’ll keep you guys up to date with everything that’s happening in the ecosystem. With that out of the way, let’s get into the ecosystem updates. Now this first ecosystem update, this was from a comment in the YouTube channel. So thank you so much for leaving this comment here. The scamhater007, he writes, if the community wants these big exchanges to hear the message,

14:33
They should move their assets from Coinbase or Binance or Gemini to Kraken. Just makes sense to support the businesses who is supporting the ecosystem we are invested in. I kind of agree with that. And I know a lot of people say, you know, don’t use, don’t store your assets on exchanges. If the exchange gets hacked, then you lose all your assets. Self custody is the most important thing. But what about on and off ramps or just some general trading? You’ve got something trading around.

15:02
Why not use the exchange that supports the ecosystem? And I am totally behind this. I’ll do a couple of tutorials on how to use Kraken and how to sign up and move some assets over just so you can do a bit of training there and, and see how things work. So if you haven’t done so already, find the links to Kraken. I can’t give you the links directly because apparently that violates the laws here in Australia. So you can find them yourself, do a quick Google and you can sign up and be a Kraken member.

15:32
Now, a lot of people do like this idea. We’ve got 400, 496 likes on this particular post here. So this is something that the community seems to enjoy and definitely is worth supporting. So do check out Kraken if you haven’t done so already. Now, this is all because of SNEC. They have launched on Kraken. I love the timing here. An exchange listing on a tier one exchange as Kraken turns two years old. It’s a

15:58
Not often that you see a meme coin stick around for this long and still do so well. So if you haven’t checked out the SNEC project links in the show notes, I can give you the links for that one. So check that one out and find out what the SNEC ecosystem is up to. Now this one here, this is Maestro and Maestro is an API provider. They’re a data provider that allows developers to connect in and pull in all the on-chain data and submit.

16:27
transactions and do all sorts of really cool things. Now Lace here is powered by Maestro. I thought it was using the Block Frost API and that’s why the IOG team bought it, but it seems like they’re also using Maestro or maybe they’re using combination of both. I’m not sure. But Maestro here is connected to many more chains. So they did an API for Cardano, then they did an API for Bitcoin, Doge and some other ones as well. So they keep on expanding.

16:56
And that is definitely a good partner to look into or provider to look into. They’ve got free tiers of the API as well. So if you’re a developer and you’re wanting some free access, you can use Maestro, but they allow you to connect to all these different chains. So if you are building a wallet, if you’re building a DAP, if you’re building anything, it allows you to tap into all the really good stuff in the Cardano ecosystem, as well as other chains that they’re connected to. So do check out what Maestro are up to if you’re a developer and want to build more things.

17:25
The other prominent project that I know I use him is Tokyo Wallet. So if you’re using, if you’re wanting Bitcoin assets and Cardano assets, Toko is the wallet to play around with and they’re using master as the backend to. Now this one I thought was really, really cool. And this is what the Mint Swap team are doing with their Dow Treasury. Now I did talk about this a little while back in a previous episode as well, but now they’re.

17:53
This is going into action now. So let me just read the summary here for you. Create a treasury management working group to manage aspects of the MinSwap DAO’s treasury, including all the various assets that they have. The mandate is threefold. Diversify and bootstrap the treasury for future sustainability of MinSwap’s DAO. Find safe and sustainable yield opportunities to earn revenue on assets in the treasury. Optimize the DAO’s assets to incentivize trading.

18:21
So really cool stuff and initiatives from the team there from Marco and who else has been working on this, but this will push the ecosystem forward in regards to what they can do. So this is a lot of, lot of DOWs, they just sit on those funds and let it earn liquidity, liquidity fees or LP fees, et cetera. But they are now looking for active ways to manage this. And I believe they set up, I think it was in the Marshall Islands, they set up a proper DOW

18:49
organization in the Marshall Island. So they can actually do this legally. So they can do things with the treasury, such as put it into maybe bonds on the bond market or invest in other type of assets like that, that will allow them to earn extra revenue on top of the protocol. So really interesting stuff here, guys. I just sit back and watch what they do. It’s definitely going to take the MinSwap decks to the next level.

19:19
really, really interesting stuff. But they’ve got some more details around everything that they’re going to do with these particular mandates that they have put in place. And it’s definitely something to watch and find out what they’re up to. But MintSwap is probably another project that I think is going to list on Kraken really soon as well. So keep an eye on that. Now, I was talking a little bit before about the transaction fees on Ethereum and how cheap they are now in comparison to Godano.

19:47
Now this team from Newcast, I mentioned this before, but they have gasless transactions and it is now live on the ecosystem and builders bookmark this post because you can look at their documentation on how to implement this on the ecosystem. So this is the GitHub library here. This is all the code that you need to try and look into implementing it on the or DAP or whatever you’re building. And from what I understand, if I read correctly,

20:15
Instead of paying the fees for the transactions on your DAP from the user, they’ve worked out a way where you can have a treasury, for example, that holds a whole bunch of funds. And whenever a transaction is done on a DAP, you can pull the funds from the treasury to pay for those transaction fees. So it doesn’t get rid of transaction costs overall.

20:42
that allows someone else to pay for it. And if it’s a community fund, if it’s funds from like an IDO or an ICO or something like that, and they put those funds away to reduce the costs and increase adoption of their platform or whatever it is, that is really cool. And having gasless transactions on Cardano is another step forward to bring in more adoption. So really cool innovation there from the new cast team. Now this one here, I’ll give a shout out to the Palm economy, the Palm token.

21:12
They’ve listed on NBX as well. So NBX is that exchange that is allowing users to mint the USDM on their exchange. So now the Palm Token guys have listed on their exchange as well. So we’re going to see more and more listings over time of the Palm Token. So if you’re into real world assets, it’s probably a token that you might want to look into to get a better understanding of what they are doing and what they’re offering for their community.

21:42
Now C-Swap have some nice staking opportunities on their platform. So C-Swap is another DEX. They’ve been around for quite a while. I’ve done interviews with them as well. So check out the show notes for those interviews. But they’ve got some really nice staking tiers where you can earn some extra C-Swap tokens. So if you’re staking for a C-Swap bronze, silver, gold or platinum, these varies in the days and the length of the lock period. So here we can see 30 days, 90, 180 and 360.

22:11
and can earn some various tokens in their platform. You can see the APRs here as well and how many people actually participating in each one of these pools. But all you need to do is get some of those C-Swap tokens, lock in the contract and you can earn those rewards from it. So it’s a nice way, pretty easy way of securing their network and getting some more tokens from the platform. I mentioned Optin Finance in my last update and their vaults were full and I was just checking back on how full it was.

22:41
and their current max capacity is at 17.50 ADA. And I was playing around with the platform as well. And I was like a re managing and repositioning everything. And I earned a little bit of extra yield from my state 0 ADA there as well. So it’s a nice easy platform to use if you want to earn some extra ADA rewards. I’ll try and pull up that video tutorial that I did on this one here. It was quite a while ago, but if you see it in the top right hand corner,

23:09
There you go. That would be the video tutorial. Check that one out if you want to learn how to use the Optum Finance platform and earn some little bit of extra ADA for staking your OADA or minting the OADA and then staking in their vaults. So really cool stuff from Optum Finance. Now, one of the things we need to worry about is quantum computing, because when quantum computers come along and become readily available and become more more powerful, we could be in a position where those quantum

23:38
computers can basically brute force attack into our crypto wallets. And we need to prep for this. We need to upscale the wallets, the ID wallets, everything that we’re using to be quantum secure. And this is really cool to see that the Cardano Foundation and Ethereum Foundation are working together on quantum secure wallets. Let me just play this clip. Cardano Foundation actually just

24:06
Lawrence and identity wallet, which has some quantum security in it. And the Cardano foundation and Cardano in general are working with the theorem and the theorem foundation about how we make the whole internet and hold enterprise architecture, quantum secure. Right. So we actually sharing academic research. And that is always really good to see when research is being shared across different ecosystems. It’s, it’s a kind of sad that we’re so siloed sometimes. And a lot of this stuff can be applied anywhere in the crypto space.

24:34
So it’s good to see that the Cardano Foundation is sharing that research for the Ethereum ecosystem so that we can have better tech out there overall. So this is really good stuff. And let me remind you, I’ll put a link to this video down below, but this is Microsoft’s brand new Mo- I don’t know how to pronounce this properly Mojana chip. And this is apparently a thousand times more powerful than the current quantum computers.

25:03
out there. So this is the first chip that they created. I’ll put a link down below for this video. So you get a better understanding of what is possible right now. But in another year’s time, we’re going to see these chips in production. This is tiny. This chip is tiny. This is like a fingernail sized chip. And, you know, having this ability to do quantum computing in a brand new physical state that they created is

25:31
mind blowing. So check out this video so you get a better understanding of what the future is going to be like with content computing. But yeah, back to my point here. The security of our wallets is highly important now because of this brand new tech that’s coming out. So good to see collaboration between different chains. Now talking about interoperability in general and Ethereum, I thought this was a really interesting post from Dave here, invalid EUTXO.

26:00
And he was at Token 2049 listening to a presentation from a project founder that built on Ethereum. And he was talking about DeFi and he was asked about interoperability and potential diversifying to other platforms. And he responded with this. Well, we can all see what’s happening in Ethereum at the moment. But honestly, why would you go anywhere else? Nothing is better than Ethereum. Where else would you go?

26:26
And this type of mindset is kind of scary and it is the blinded cultism of a lot of people in the crypto space. And I don’t think we’re immune to that either in Cardano. We’re very, very set in our ways with the division and how things are. So this is kind of something that we need to break and kind of something that we need to try and convince others as well in other ecosystems to stop.

26:56
siloing themselves and think broader interoperability and cross-chain compatibility across the ecosystem. So this is a really good point that Dave brought up and I really encourage you guys to look beyond the Cardano ecosystem and look at what other chains are doing and see what we can do to partner up with those other chains or even

27:22
I collaborate with them in some sort of way. So this is really, really interesting and really important for us to think about at the moment as well. The end goal is to increase usage of crypto. We want more people in crypto overall. And if we can decrease the barriers and get people using our different chains, whatever it might be, this is the end goal. This is what we want to see. So let’s try and

27:52
and get to that point where we are just bringing people into crypto and it doesn’t matter what chain they’re on. We’ll get to that point eventually, but we really need to start thinking about that and moving towards that goal. Now, one of the things that we can do to try and get Cardano out there again and into the minds of people so we can actually get these partnerships is gaining more global visibility. And Amerigo here have a proposal that they were working on the Unified Global Events Marketing Strategy.

28:21
for Cardano, this is one of the budget reconciliation proposals and they are trying to get more Cardano projects and Cardano in general at these big major events such as Token 2049 and all those consensus, cetera, et cetera. So a lot of the time we don’t see Cardano projects there and

28:47
It’s because we don’t have the type of funding that these other projects throw at those chains. So Solana throw a lot of money at marketing, Sosui and Aptos, and we do need more projects out in the ecosystem on these chains and getting in front of people and getting that global visibility. So I overall think this proposal here could really help.

29:12
Do check it out if you haven’t voted as a D rep yet, but this is the type of stuff that we need to actually be able to start conversations about interoperability and gaining more traction across different ecosystems. So let me know what you guys think about that in the comments down below. Now talking about governance, let’s move on to the governance side of things in the ecosystem. And I have finally gone through all those 196 budget proposals and ratified them within the intersect.

29:40
budgets. So I’ve used that tool 2025budget.intersect.mb, no intersectmbo.org and you can go through and reconcile all the proposals that are going to be put into that that particular funding budget. In total, I used up 271 million ADA and it was a mix of marketing and development focused proposals generally.

30:09
but more so focus on the core development side of things to push the chain along in terms of scaling and what I think we need for the ecosystem. You can see everything that I voted for and you can see here it’s a lot of tech heavy stuff, tooling, ZK Fold, L2 kind of solutions. So a lot of focus on that to make the developer experience better and the Cardano ecosystem blockchain.

30:38
faster overall. So that was my main focus, but I also looked into various ecosystem things such as the marketing pavilions and that proposal from, and that proposal from a Mergo around marketing for global events. So it’s a very aligned with those types of things. And I think it overall is

31:02
is good from what I’ve chosen. I’ve gotten some feedback and people kind of agree with what I voted on for as well. But it did hit that $270 million mark, $271 million mark in regards to the amount of budget that would be spent. Now, it doesn’t mean that all of those projects that I voted on will get through. A lot of the projects, if you go through the budget process, it didn’t meet the thresholds yet. So some of the projects that I did vote yes for didn’t make it through.

31:31
Now you can see on Adastat here what I actually voted for as well. So 44 yes, 124 for no and 34 abstain. And a lot of the ones that I voted no for, I clearly thought it should have been within catalyst. There were very low funding amounts and it didn’t quite resonate with me in terms of a project that deserved treasury funds. When you’re using treasury funds, see it should be projects that are building and developing things for the ecosystem.

32:00
as a whole. So not just one vertical or one industry, it should be something that everyone will benefit from. So like a brand new transaction library, scaling for Cardano on L2, all projects can use that, not just one single project benefiting from it. So that was my slant in regards to where and what I allocated my yes votes for. Things I voted abstain for, these were projects that I thought probably should have had the funding.

32:30
but I thought we’re still better off in catalyst or coming back at a later date for additional funding later because I was focused more on that core development and scaling for Cardano and marketing outreach. These projects here that I voted abstain for, I thought, yeah, it would have been good, but not this time round or maybe look at catalyst. So that’s why I voted abstain for a few of them as well. But overall, I thought it was quite an easy process after you get into it. It still took me about a week.

32:59
on nightly basis going through the different proposals. I left comments on as many as I could. I got kind of bored repeating myself over and over. So if I didn’t leave a comment, essentially it would have been a no because I thought catalyst might have been a better option at this point in time. But if you want to check out what I voted for, I will put a link down below here for ADAS stat, but you can check out and try and find my D-Rep ID. And from there, you’d be able to see exactly what I voted for.

33:27
You’re going to see everything I voted for in regards to the on chain governance at the moment as well. So I think my participation level is quite high, but you can check all that out at aderstat.net. Now, one of the budget proposal I did vote yes for was the intersect budget. And I, I thought this was important to vote on. And I think overall over the last year or so intersect have been doing a good job, but there were problems. There was a lack of communication.

33:57
Change of direction and a lack of transparency and because of those things people really confused about what’s going on like why are we changing this process now why are you flip-flopping and making last minute decisions and making things harder for the community. And I think with Jack on board as the top dog now at Intersect he will bring some clarity to the ecosystem and what’s actually happening at Intersect and you know with these long posts already.

34:25
you can see that the clear, transparent communication and trying to drive what’s happening there is a lot better already. And I think with this change, we should see better direction and better management of intersect overall. So the very first thing that he was going to do here after their board meeting was have a detailed action plan to correct course and reinforce a foundational purpose as a lean

34:53
bottom up facilitator supporting Cardano’s decentralized governance. And you can see this with their brand new updated governance proposal. So they have revised their budget proposal. This was originally a 20 million ADA budget proposal. So if I might be able to find it here quickly. Here we go. This is their members based organization, Cardano Intersect Budget. It was 20 million. They’ve reduced that down now.

35:20
and they’ve reduced it down to a 7 million USD, which is what they used last year. But let me find it here. So they’ve gone down to 15.75 million ADA. So it’s on par with what they are using currently. So it’s the same burn rate that they had last year. And let me just go back up here and go through some of these highlights of this revised budget. So first off, new leadership changes. So Jack Briggs appointed as

35:49
interim executive directors to support NC who is Nick Cook as interim director of operations. So brand new people at the top there to help steer the direction of intersect. Brilliant stuff. Now around the core infrastructure intersect have been maintaining the core Haskell code base over the last year. I didn’t know this. So they ensured the upgrades of the Chang hard fork and the poem hard fork during that era. So this is stuff that should.

36:17
definitely be continuously worked on. And if they’re maintaining that stuff, they should deserve the funding for it. Now, one of the interesting things here is that Intersect is going to be named administrator for over 100 proposals that were submitted in this budget cycle. So what this means is that Intersect is going to be managing the funds for these projects. So everyone that has gone through here, if you look in detail for each one of those proposals, you can see they may have ticked an option

36:47
for a fund management. So that means they have to work through their milestones, prove that they delivered what they were saying they were going to deliver, then intersect to release those funds. So it’s a good management point, a check within that process so that you can see that funds aren’t being misused. And it’s a really good option to have. And with having over 100 extra proposals asking for that management of the funds,

37:16
you’re going to need a lot of oversight. You’re going to need a lot of people working on that process to make sure that it’s all being done correctly and people are being paid on time. So they’re working on things to make that a lot better. So integrating in smart contracts and whatnot to make it a lot smoother overall. So this is definitely something that we need and it’s going to play a crucial role with the treasury funding overall. Now, like I mentioned a little bit before, they have reduced their funds, but they’re also working through this.

37:45
the fund distribution on a quarterly basis using a smart contract developed by Sunday Swap. So this is a multi-sig enabled smart contract that will drip feed them the funds over the year. So they won’t have that big deposit of funds at the beginning. They’ll have it drip fed to them over the year so that they won’t dump all the ADA on the market, for example, or accidentally misuse or overspend the funds in the early days. This keeps a good check on the team as well.

38:14
They’re working on leaner and more flexible operations, which is always good. They’ve also defined the funding period and not a retroactive ask. Some people did ask for funds to pay for things that they were doing in the previous year. A lot of people didn’t like that. So this is a good shift in their perspective there as well. Now this part here I thought was quite interesting and I didn’t realise that this was put in, but this is some stipends or compensation for committee members.

38:44
So all those people that elected into those particular committee roles would have a little bit of contribution back to them for their volunteer work. it’s not in the millions for all the people that are working as on the committees, but it is a little bit of something for their time and effort. So that’s kind of nice because I thought that all these committee positions were working for as volunteers completely for free. a little bit of something is better than nothing.

39:13
Now since intersect is a nonprofit, it’s good to see that all the spending will be audited, transparent reporting and any surpluses returned to the treasury. That is really good to see. So if the price either does go up over, you know, $2 or something over the next year from all this development and things that we’re doing in the ecosystem, anything over that return back to treasury for any stuff we’ve got the ability to donate to the treasury now. So intersect can do so.

39:40
I really hope other projects do that as well because they’ve all asked for a certain amount of ADA at 50 cents USD and their budgets are know X amount you know they need 10 million USD at the predicted price of ADA being 50 cents so if they gain more ADA overall in the future hopefully they do all return that ADA back to the Treasury and we have a longer burn rate for the Treasury so that would be really good to see. A couple more here.

40:08
Apart from long term stability, Intersect membership model remains accessible while treasury support is essential today. We’re actively working on diversifying revenue and building a more sustainable model. Now for those that don’t know if they’re not Intersect members, the membership cost I think was about 10 USD. Not much at all. It’s fairly affordable for majority of the world. I know a lot of people can’t afford that still, but it is a lot cheaper than some of these high tier membership costs.

40:36
for some of these other MPOs around. So might be in the thousand dollar mark. And, you know, that kind of puts me out of becoming an Interset member. But 10 US dollars, think it was. I can afford at this point in time. And it is a lot better to have more members in the ecosystem join. But they’re looking at more ways of earning revenue other than just memberships. Because as you can see, my memberships on the YouTube channel

41:04
It’s not that high, definitely not going to make it sustainable for myself to run the YouTube channel and they’re facing the same kind of thing. So they’re looking for different revenue models and I probably should as well. Last but not least, a big thank you. Thank you to everyone who engaged, challenged and shaped this revision. We hope this proposal reflects your feedback and strengthens our shared commitment and permissionless coordination to the community sovereignty.

41:30
So this is all overall really good news from the Intersect team. A big thank you to Jack, who I believe would have spearheaded this movement, become a lot more transparent and community focused within the direction of Intersect. It is all about the members. It is a members based organization. So listen to your members. Anyway, guys, that’s all I have for this video update. Thank you for watching. Did you know that the channel has reached over two million views?

41:59
the last four years. So the two million views. I’ve got over 800 videos on the channel and they’ve been viewed overall over more than more than two million times. I don’t know how much watch time that is but it is astronomical. if I have influenced you along the way over the years to participate in the Cardano ecosystem for the better leave a thumbs up, leave a comment, let me know down below. I’d love to hear it but it’s quite a milestone and with that I’ll leave you

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Have good weekend and I’ll see you in the next video.