Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
$80M from Cardano Treasury to Draper Dragon?
Recorded: Jan. 21, 2026 Duration: 1:22:27Space Recording
Short Summary
Draper Dragon and the Cardano Foundation are set to launch an $80 million treasury initiative aimed at enhancing Cardano's scalability and adoption, alongside strategic partnerships and a focus on real-world assets. This initiative reflects a growing trend towards institutional adoption and the need for compliance in the crypto space.
Full Transcription
Hello everyone, welcome to this week's atrium x space we have another great guest this week
um we'll be joined by samiz bayan from draper dragon i apologize in advance if that's not
pronounced correctly but um yeah it's going to be an interesting one so um
draper dragon together with the cardano foundation is proposing an 80 million dollar
treasury allocation um to be used over the coming years um to advance um
cardano scaling and adoption so um you, curious to hear all about it.
I see we have our
speaker here as well
and Nicolas from the
Cardano Foundation will also be
joining us.
Alright, so let me get you guys up here.
Alright.
We should have Nicholas already.
How are you doing, Nicholas?
Fine, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for doing this space.
All good, all good.
Great to have you back.
It's always a pleasure.
Yeah, thanks for having me, especially regarding such an exciting topic.
Yeah, definitely.
Welcome, Samiz. Is that pronounced correctly?
Yeah, you got it. Thanks for having me as well.
Excellent. Great to have you on.
So, yeah, usually we start off the spaces with so ecosystem news to update our community and to give people some time to join so they don't miss anything.
So I'll go over a few of the highlights of this week and then after that we can get started.
a few of the highlights of this week and then after that we can get started so
when it yes when it comes to regulations so there have been intense
negotiations regarding the clarity acts in the two US subcommittees. So current timelines are for to have a draft ready by the end of January.
So we'll see what comes from that. The clock is ticking though because it will be difficult to get
legislation passed once we go towards the midterms in the U.S., so we'll keep you guys updated about how the negotiations go and how the legislation is unfolding.
Peyton is also here already. How are you doing, Peyton?
Hello.
Good to see everybody. I'm happy to see Nicholas and Samus here. It's going to be an exciting space.
Hey, Peyton. Great to see Nicholas and Samus here. It's going to be an exciting space. Hey, Peyton.
Great to see you.
Great to see you, Peyton.
I think some of our team might be in here as well requesting to speak if they haven't.
I haven't seen anyone, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out for them.
And as always, these spaces are open, so if you have any questions, feel free to request the speaker.
And yeah, come on up.
There we are.
Two requests.
Let me get JJ.
Let's see if this is going OK.
We have JJ and Cantor, correct?
Hello, hello, yes, James Cantor over here.
Yeah, everybody.
Glad to have you on.
So to continue with the news, Project Catalyst 1.15 voting has been delayed for an unspecified
period, citing technical issues.
So we'll keep you guys updated for when things kick off again and voting starts as a result we've also delayed our diffusion voting
campaign until we have more info on when voting voting starts so we'll keep you up to date on that
one next is the Iagon and Fireblocks partnership has been announced so Fireblocks is a major player in crypto institutional worlds.
So integrating Fireblocks into Cardano is something that's very necessary.
And yeah, Iagon is pulling it off.
And it seems like they will be using Iagon infrastructure as well to make to make it work
so yeah exciting announcements can't wait for them to um deploy fireblocks uh and
yeah increase cardano adoption it's a necessary necessary one
yesterday also search launched on cardano minutes so search allows her for the creation and
deployment of automated trading bots and strategies on cardano so it's always nice to see arbitrage
are yeah it's a necessary part of um defy and the relationship between centralized exchanges
and decentralized dexas so you know trading bots is always a good added feature to uh to
a blockchain ecosystem so excited to see what uh what they'll bring to the table
what they'll bring to the table.
And as a last point,
the New York Stock Exchange
announced the launch
of a blockchain-based tokenization
and trading platform.
There aren't too many details
about that available yet.
So not a lot of the specifics
is known yet
about which blockchains or
public blockchains or perhaps maybe a private blockchain who knows it will be
used but yeah I don't have to tell you that the New York Stock Exchange is a
big big player in finance so I'm curious to see what comes of that and
which blockchains and technologies they will be using.
Anything missed?
Nicholas, Payton, Samiz?
I think the biggest thing that we've missed
is the thing we're going to talk about today in this space.
the thing we're going to talk about today in this space.
Yeah, makes sense.
I left that one out.
So I guess we can we can dive in directly.
So to me, JJ and Nicholas, I guess it would be nice to have a short introduction of yourselves um draper
and in specifically draper dragon so might be good to start off there awesome no appreciate you
you're having us we're super excited um i'll give a a brief personal intro and I'll pass it off to James and
JJ. So a little about myself, I actually started in crypto in around 2019. And my first chain I
got in on is Cardano. So I got introduced via the UTXO models. I chose Cardano because it was more
of the peer-reviewed, academically backed, research driven. And at the time, you know,
you want to go by an evidence-based design
where it has security, sustainability or not. And that gave more confidence because in that era,
it was still uncertain of what crypto is for many people. So you try to go to the safest one that
you can find. And my early entrance was actually with my t-shirt company. I tried to bring some
physical goods into Digitalize.
So that was through ironing on chips to make it an NFT.
It was more of an experiment and it was ahead of its time.
So taught definitely a lot of utility lessons around that.
And fast forward to when I got to Stratify at Bank of America for several years
and then joined Draper Dragon
and built and worked with a lot of great
founders. So, you know, we're very excited about this initiative. Full circle moment for me.
I'll pass it off to James. Hi, everyone. So first of all, thanks for this space.
My name is James Cantre. I've been in the Cardano ecosystem first as an investor since around 2018-19.
What drew me in early was the long-term approach, building something meant to last, even if it
moved more slowly. Before Cardano, I was already active in crypto in China for several years.
As both a builder and an investor, I co-founded Scarcity Labs,
which got acquired by DraftKings in 2021, where I worked as a product director together with JJ.
And so let me start by briefly explaining the idea of the Venture Studio. So the Venture Studio that we want to do
under this Draper Dragon fund exists to address
a recurring issue that we see in Cardano,
which is, in our view, Cardano has a very strong tech,
but usually we don't see enough support around execution
and go to market after early funding. So the way I like
to see the Venture Studio is more like a hands-on execution layer that sits upstream of the fund.
And practically what that means for us is two different things. So first, each year we expect
to incubate like one or two startup end-to-end. And second beyond incubation, we expect to incubate like one or two startup end to end. And second, beyond incubation,
we expect to accelerate roughly five to eight additional teams per year. Now, let me explain
a little bit the difference here between incubation and acceleration. So for us, incubation here,
what means is shaping a company from very early stages.
And the acceleration is about speeding up a company that already exists.
So for incubation, what we want to do is work with very early initiatives
to help them shape ideas, support MVP development,
refine things like product direction,
token structure, and so on.
So in that sense, share early execution risk.
Then when there's clear traction, such as user revenue signals
or on-chain activity, then that project becomes a candidate
for follow-on investment from the fund.
Now for the acceleration part is for us to work with existing kind of like founder led projects that already have a team, an initial direction in place.
So in those particular cases, support will be more focused on targeted areas such as product refinement, compliance, readiness, institutional positioning,
and so on. So my idea is that these teams remain fully independent, and our role is more to help
them move from early traction to being ready for growth capital. So ultimately, our goal is to have fewer speculation bets, higher quality projects,
and a consistent pipeline of teams that are already execution tested before larger amounts
of capital are deployed. So from a treasury and governance perspective, this is more about reducing risk early rather than trying to react to failure
later.
So in short, the Venture Studio is how we basically turn Cardano's strong research and
engineering culture into a more repeatable real-world outcome before the funds step in
with growth capital.
So that's the idea at a high level.
JJ, do you want to jump in and
expand on how the studio operates?
Yeah, sure. Hi, everybody. So my name is JJ Lax, and I also co-founded Scarcey Labs with
James here and some of the other team members. We're really excited to be part of this. And
I mean, I've been in the crypto space um you know also since about 2018.
and i think like everybody else here what really drew me to cardano specifically was peer-reviewed
um you know especially after going through the ico era and all the fud and all the kind of nonsense
that happened then to see some you know to see a community taking taking crypto seriously in a way that not everybody was, I think it
was really exciting to me.
And so just to kind of add on to what James offered, and the Venture Studio here I think
is one of the differentiation points that Draper dragon brings to the space um and uh and i can i'll throw it
back to samiz after to kind of you know give a kind of broader picture but just you know specifically
what are we really offering here well we're offering um kind of like uh you know we're
offering basically both the incubation aspect the acceleration aspect and that's kind of like
you know startup startup resources,
right? And so we've got knowledge resources like product management, strategy, go to market,
marketing. We also have engineering resources available as people that, you know, work with us
full time on this, that have experience in Plutus and Aiken, and also a broader understanding of the broader crypto industry, like Rust,
Solidity. And I think that's really important as we think about where Cardano is headed.
Cardano doesn't operate in a vacuum. It operates in this broader crypto space and understanding
and learning from what's happening elsewhere in the space is really important to the success
of Cardano specifically.
So that's kind of like what we have in terms of knowledge.
And then we also have operational resources,
which kind of translates the knowledge
into helping the startups that we work with grow, right?
And these are new startups, you know,
that are new to the fund or new to the ecosystem,
but they're also existing startups.
Um, you know, people that have gone through programs before that are building right now,
um, you know, we're, we want to get involved and we want to meet these people. Um, and so these operational resources is getting our hands dirty. Okay. How do we translate what we know into stuff
that actually matters and getting projects to increase their user count, solving technical
problems.
If you have a technical team, but you don't have like a go to market team, we can help
solve with that.
And then finally, there's the financial resources, which is what Draper Dragon, you know, in
the broader Draker ecosystem brings to the table, which is okay, you're really excited
about your project, we're really excited about it. Let us fund it.
And I think that all of these things fit together
in a way that we can have maximum impact
beyond kind of maybe the traditional ways
in which crypto projects have been funded in the past.
We want to kind of bring a higher level of sophistication,
but at a higher level, like a bigger toolkit to the table
in order to help everybody be successful, because when
the ecosystem wins, we all win.
And so I guess I'll throw over to Samiz to kind of give,
you know, a broader overview of Drip or Dragon as a whole
and what we're doing here.
Samiz?
Awesome, thanks JJ.
Thank you James for the Venture Studio piece.
Zoom out a little bit on Draper Dragon as a whole.
So we were founded back in 2006 by our founding partners,
of course, Tim Draper, Richard Wang,
Larry Lee and Andy Tang.
So we've been around from 2006 to 2015.
We focused a lot on the track by
World Web 2. So semiconductors, AI, medical tech, internet, SaaS, a lot of the early,
early internet boom that they caught. Fast forward to around 2015 is when they saw the
emerging of crypto, especially in the Asia market. So early exchanges, early infrastructure,
founders and builders. And that's led us to start our first digital asset fund
within the Draper ecosystem.
And today we're one of the longest running
and leading the digital asset funds
within the extended Draper network.
So we have a team of more than eight experienced devs,
investors and devs of course
with JJ and James Venture Studio piece.
And we integrated this piece to work with
the investors who have 15 plus years of experience and worked with a lot of great portfolio companies
like Ledger, Gemini, Coinbase, EtherFi, Centrifuge, a lot of the great players in RWA and DeFi.
So we've been able to prove the ability to support these companies from if they were
from ideation to revenue generation or already in revenue and going to growth. So we've established a great strong BD network of stable coins,
of exchanges, funds, and a lot of Bitcoin institutions throughout the time. And Bitcoin
DeFi has been a big focus for us this year. So we have a core philosophy of just operating with
the founder's mindset, putting a founder's hat on, our previous founders in the team. So we've
sat in the founder seat and also sat in the investor seat.
So we're excited to build and deepen and just scale alongside Cardano.
So I'm happy to dive into anything else, but I'll pass it off to you, Pei and Atrium.
Okay, thanks for that great overview of Draper, Dragon and the idea.
So what I'm curious about is, if I understand correctly, this is a multi-year program, I guess, and to start maybe digging into the weeds a little bit about how the governance
of it will be structured, how the treasury withdrawals would be structured.
How is the setup for this program?
Definitely.
So the fund and the initiative is, I believe, one of the first professionally
structured ecosystem venture funds that focus in a decentralized environment with a strong
governance. And it's really designed to both grow the ecosystem and also make a return
and essentially make the treasury a permanent capital vehicle that can compound growth. And this is done, it's not a grant program or running any typical grant programs that
you would see, but more so a way of making a repayment mechanic accessible and a blueprint
for other funds to learn from this and hopefully hop on board as well.
So our high level goal for this fund is twofold.
So it's the financial goal, which like you mentioned, an $80 million total target fund
size.
75 million of that will be from the treasury deployed over a six year basis and also withdrawn
from a six year basis.
And 5 million of that is going to be fund rose from external capital.
So we're going to work with external LPs, whether this is Bitcoin institutions, Bitcoin
miners, a lot of the different strategic LPs we're trying to work with to bring them over.
And it's more so a strategic advantage for them rather than a capital advantage of 5
million.
If we get a lot of demand, it definitely could grow.
But our main goal is to see who what LPs can we add in new capital, can we bring into the
ecosystem and work with them in a longer scale and plug them in with our portfolio companies. So this tranche structure, how we structured it was
the first tranche, which is the proposal that will go out this year and more than likely
this month or early next month is going to be a $15 million USD withdrawal. And we have
a hard set cap with all our withdraws on in USD and in ADA. And
we have an absolute maximum cap of 175 million ADA. So we did this to de-risk the treasury
as much as possible and also have it where it's more of a as we go, we can show what
we've done. And in that way, it's more of a early stage outcome and forward looking.
We treat the treasury with venture discipline.
And we start with a smaller first tranche, prove our execution before scaling out capital.
And you know, we think this is plenty and enough to show results without outsizing the
risk. So you know, this is essentially an initial check, not a full allocation. And
we can observe the execution delivery with our transparent dashboard that we'll have
open. So that's within the first 15 million.
We have another tranche the following year after we get everything out.
That's 30 million USD.
Also has an ADA cap.
And the last one is on the fourth year.
So we skip third year, go to fourth year.
And that gives plenty of time to even more and look at how much impact we've done since
then.
So again, this is all to de-risk and simplify and also respect the governance and budgets
even within each year.
So our financial intent, like I mentioned, is return to deploy capital back to the treasury
and we hope to do this and generate an upside beyond just the repayment and it's a traditional
80-20 fund as far as the carried
interest goes. And the second fold of this is the ecosystem goals. So, you know, how
can we, like James and JJ mentioned, how can we make this builder and company support and
how can we support the current Cardano native companies that have been here for a very long
time and are ready to keep scaling? And how can we fill in this post catalyst and grant
capital gap where they can get scaled and get resources and grow even more? And lastly,
how do we bring in new developers and a new generation of builders to introduce new liquidity
providers, enable these exchange listings that we have access to within our portfolio,
and bringing a lot of institutional partners into the ecosystem? So all of this, we at
the end of the day want to increase developer activity, higher on-chain
transaction volumes, sustainable network revenue, have growth in TVO and liquidity, and expand
on the stablecoin side, which is very important.
And we have a strong network and hope we can move the needle with that and also the RWA
side.
So before I dive deeper in, Nicholas, Sarhand, if you want to jump in.
Yeah, thank you so much, Samiz. And really quickly, hi, everyone. Nicholas here from the
Cardano Foundation. One thing that gets me so excited about this proposal, and might not be
the most exciting thing for everyone, but it's really the long-term sustainability of the Cardano
treasury. Because this is one of the Cardano treasury because
this is one of the things that's sometimes forgotten because we're still in this nice age
of Cardano and the reserves that the treasury is growing right we see a lot of inflows but most of
those inflows come directly from the Cardano reserves so there's right a finite amount of
ADA the fixed supply that we have
and a certain amount flows into the treasury but at some point and i mean since uh since we have staking right this reserve gets smaller epoch by epoch by epoch there's less flowing into the
treasury and it's it's a reality and i think it is time that also we as a community understand that and think about
ways on how we yeah how can we make this treasury sustainable in the long run because Cardano as we
all know will run for the next I don't know thousand years or more so we need to find a way
how we can finance the future maintenance the future also the incentives with running the network
the future maintenance, the future, also the incentives with running the network.
How can we make that sustainable?
And this proposal, this ecosystem fund is one of the ways that we believe
the treasury can become sustainable.
And yeah, I just wanted to highlight that because sometimes the why,
like why are we doing this, right?
It's really this, that Cardano Treasury profits
from the success of its builders from the community, right? This is, I think, also important
to highlight. Sorry, Samis. Oh, no, thank you. That's exactly, I think, one of the core pieces.
And that leads me to the capital deployment pillars and how we anticipate to use the funds.
And majority of the capital is going to be direct investments.
So that's going to be equity and, of course, token investments within Cardano native startups
and also external bringing in Cardano startups for new startups to join and build and grow
and have this developer mindset of a new generation and focusing on
specific verticals. So that's stable coins, RWA's, institutional DeFi, privacy, consumer,
Bitcoin DeFi. And we have a great pipeline of current builders in Cardano right now that
we're excited to back. And we've been speaking to a lot of them since the Draper University
cohort happened in March. So we've been still in contact with many of them since the Draper University cohort happened in March.
So we've been still in contact with many of them and bringing in as much value as we can.
And we essentially want to take this direct investments into a venture style ownership
and return alignment and put skin in the game from the founder side and of course from the
investor side.
And that's the only way I think we can win at scale.
Then the growth capital piece is also a very crucial part
because that's going to be where the Venture Studio comes in and helps a ton. And also
on the education piece of accelerating and mentoring a lot of these partners together
with Venture Studio. And this is going to be purely liquidity support and go-to-market
acceleration. We're going to help make exchanges and market maker introductions. That's our
goal to get in much more tier one exchanges.
It's very different going to a tier one exchange when they're a portfolio company or we're
already in terms of them, help them get a lot of TGEs within our portfolio versus a
startup reaching out to them directly.
And I think that helps a lot having this direct warm intro and we have a plethora of exchanges
that we're working with right now
to help a few for co's TG. So that's going to be a big core engine of it. And also the
distribution and just ecosystem activation of with our venture studio and in house Cardano
engineers to lower barriers of entry of newcomers coming in and also the current builders here
that need resources, need help and whatever might be, that's where we can really get hands on. And that just goes back to our thesis of the
fund is putting the founders hat on and working close with the founders. And we want to build
this strong first education piece and also pipeline. And that leads me to the education
portion of this, which is also a critical part, which is the accelerator of Hacker
House programs. Their goals are to turn developers into founders and founders into developers
and help them essentially feed talent directly into this investment pipeline
and build this long-term builder supply for Cardano
and even sharpen the current builders in the space.
And we want to see that developer activity rank go up and the TVL go up.
And these are all just signals to other ecosystems that there is movement happening more so than
just the number going up.
So I think that's a really crucial part.
On the governance side, I'll quickly run through it.
So of course, our fund manager is us, Draper Dragon, and investment decisions are all made
at a GP level.
So the general partner being Draper Dragon.
And we did this very unique,
and this took, Nicholas can attest this,
this took months and months
to sort of the perfect way of doing so.
And obviously the treasury themselves
doesn't have arms and ears and eyes
to be able to sign a limited partner agreement.
So the way we went about this
is a special purpose vehicle or an SPV.
And that's going to be in Cayman Islands based and acts solely for the economic benefit of
the treasury.
It's a purely ownerless structure and the SPV is essentially LP into this fund on behalf
of the Cardano treasury.
And this will have three direct directors initially.
So there will be one independent director, one Cardano Foundation rep, and one community
SPV director.
And that
community director gets selected via this public process that we'll have. And that's equal rights
and equal oversight responsibilities. And that helps us essentially give all the info that is
very difficult to give publicly. There's a lot of regulatory risk behind giving any public knowledge
and metrics, whatever it might be. But as an LP, you know, we're able to give this direct info and work with SPV directors to communicate and exchange info out. Nicholas, if you wanted to give Cardano
CF's role within all of this, I think that'd be great too. For anybody that's down below,
if you're enjoying the space so far, leave a little comment. You guys can also ask questions
to the people up here by leaving a comment down there.
Or you can just request speaker and come on up.
It's an open space, so feel free if you have anything.
But sorry for interrupting you, Nicholas.
Go ahead.
All good, Peyton.
Don't worry about it.
Yeah, so I think, Samiz, you already covered basically everything.
But I'd be happy to quickly also run through how the Cardano
Foundation is supporting Draper Dragon and Draper University with this proposal.
So as you said, right, the first of the three is we are orchestrating this setup of the SPV,
of the special purpose vehicle, which, as you said, right, it's ownerless and it has really
no other function than to act as the limited partner to the fund.
And what is the second role?
We're also acting as the administrator from the constitutional side.
Well, that was the news item, Stephen, that I think we could have mentioned that there's going to be a new Cardano constitution starting on January 24th.
But anyway, we're now talking about ecosystem
funds. Let's not go into governance. Right. So we are acting as the administrator, even
the new constitution requires that. So that's fine. And then we're also providing, of course,
just like we did over the last few months or even now it's more than a year, I think,
support to Draper, Draper Dragon, Draper University
from a technical, from an ecosystem point of view,
just with our know-how from the Cardano Foundation.
And yeah, so this is how we participate here.
Yeah, makes sense.
A lot of good info there already.
Sorry, Nicholas for not introducing you.
I didn't notice, but yeah, in my mind,
you don't need an introduction anymore for us.
I was wondering, so you were mentioning
the number of projects that you're aiming for per year.
So will kind of like cohorts be organized per year as you mentioned before
or is it more projects on an individual basis running through um yeah whatever support that
they need basically um and the second question is how will who or how will those projects be selected every year?
Great questions. So for for the amount of projects, I think there's there's a few decoupling
that's that's important is there's a cohort piece that the educational side supports,
which will have two programs annually. It will be the first zone, which is a 10 week Silicon Valley accelerator for 10 investor
ready companies.
And this Draper University in Silicon Valley, we essentially want to make this the Cardano
hub.
So anyone within Cardano that wants to come over and need a place in Silicon Valley introductions
to VCs, whatever it might be, this is going to be the hub for Cardano.
And that's kind of placing the flag in Silicon Valley.
And it's going to be done with the two programs I that's kind of placing the flag in Silicon Valley. And
it's going to be done with the two programs I mentioned, one of them being the growth
accelerator, where you get for sure investment and also the equity piece with it, which is
negotiated for founder. We target around three and a half percent. And that's a full residency,
there's an optional extension. And that's going to be a big focus on the RWA, the institutional
DeFi and the enterprise side.
Then you have the Hacker House, which is a four-week program for 15 early-stage companies,
and that's also going to have the investment piece and also the full residency and the
optional extension.
And the Venge Studio piece connects to this because it gives, it bounces back on getting
this pipeline of developers and working with the current founders in the space and also
bringing in new ones. So these are working together. On the side of investments
and how many companies, I believe we'll end up reaching around 60 portfolio companies
through the span of the year. That could be more or less, but that's roughly the angle.
And it's going to be broken down with the early ideation phase, pre-seed, seed, and then pre-series A.
So we're able to work with multiple stages of founders and work with them.
If they are in the ideation phase and we do invest, we go to the next one, which is pre-seed and follow on them with the round.
And there are many companies in Cardano right now that I believe are the seed level.
Maybe they just don't have the resources to be able to get that pre-Series A,
but that gives us an opportunity to be flexible and work with multiple types of founders
and scale with them in the long run.
I think I answered all of your questions or any of them I missed.
Yeah, the question, the second part was also, who or how will those projects be selected?
Is there a committee within Draper or together with CF or community based?
Maybe I'm just wondering how would the projects will be selected?
Yeah, so on the investment piece, we have the investment committee of eight investors.
Our founding partner and other partners
will join us. So this will be our same investment committee and most of these guys have been with
each other for 15 years. So that's how the investment pieces will get invested in. They
go through the diligence process and there's roughly three calls to take it to the committee
meeting and that's where the investment piece is made. On the education piece and where the accelerator and cohorts are chosen, that's going to be
with Draper University and their internal committee.
And there will be a lot of work in close with A, the community, B, CF and the foundation
of the entities.
And we'll have the ears to the ground of selecting and seeing who did and didn't get in.
And if there's any feedback of XYZ seeing who did and didn't get in.
And if there's any feedback of XYZ should have been in and whatnot, that's where the
fund comes in and takes another look and works with them on it.
Because we want to bring as much value as we possibly can to as many great companies
in Cardano and also outside of Cardano.
So there'll be a lot of balancing and that's where we really want to listen in and work
with the community.
And we do this too with the dashboard I mentioned.
So we're going to have a MVP of it out there and share it with everybody.
But essentially, this is going to be an on-chain dashboard of all the metrics from the fund's
inception, and also all the portfolio companies that are in our portfolio.
And on top of that, all the educational cohorts that got in and the selection process and the memos behind it, all the important things that the community
should know and also, of course, the SPB and everyone else. And that gives us a way to
open the doors and work with the community on this.
Yeah, and really, thank you. And I think this is really important to highlight right this
this sort of i see this fund and uh just the fact that we have such a well-established and
and well-known bc like draper draper dragon entering the cardano ecosystem it's a sign of
our ecosystem and the whole funding landscape professionalizing more and maturing.
And this notion of making sure that everything is as accountable as possible with public dashboards and really showcasing how the funding will be used.
This is so important because it should not be just funding goes out of the treasury and then we have no idea what's
happening in any way right it doesn't matter if it's a grant or an investment like this
and and in the proposal this is one of the things that made me extremely happy right that
there is this commitment and of transparency and and making sure that the Cardano ecosystem is informed and everyone can just
go there verified by themselves, like as we know in crypto, on trust will verify, right?
So it's, yeah, I just wanted to highlight that.
I was curious about Intersect's role, if there is any, you know, a lot of proposals, at least
in the past year, have been administrated specifically by Intersect.
And you mentioned that the Cardano Foundation is playing that role with
this proposal. Does Intersect play a role in this at all?
Just curious.
Yeah, that's a good question. So as an administrator,
no. So from a constitutional standpoint and from that perspective, it would be the Cardano Foundation who is the administrator of the budget.
But of course, Samiz, I don't want to speak for you, but you and me, we're talking to Intersect.
Cardano Foundation has a wonderful relationship with them. We're part of many committees, part of a lot of working groups, and we're working hand in hand with them.
But from this perspective, right, I think it's also for an ecosystem to be important that we
do not just have one administrator for Cardano ecosystem budgets, or I mean, now we will not
have that anymore in the new constitution
but that we have more administrators out there because yeah it's just I think it's a healthy
signal and we don't want to have a single point of failure and that's I believe the same way also
again I don't want to speak for anyone else but how Jack and the team at Intercept is thinking about it, right? They have a lot on their plate already,
and I think they might be happy that we take that on our plate.
Yeah, just to piggyback, I definitely agree with Nicholas,
and I think it definitely is a is a a very tedious and and
long running role we've had and I think if anything we save them the heavy weight of
eight to nine months prepping this and and working with with CF on it so I think it's
it's definitely I agree it's designed as a coordinated governance standard and you know
this kind of separation of of rules with with CF we did as administrators, it avoids any
confusion, any legal risk, and obviously legal teams working together throughout this whole
process. It was truly a very professional and great working with CF's legal team and our legal
team. So it was a lot more than just choosing. It took a lot of vetting and a lot of time.
And if anything, I think we saved them some
time too. Yeah, I was curious specifically, because I've seen you guys work together in the
past. I was thinking of the joint marketing proposal last year around events all over the
world. So good to see that there is still some room for collaboration there. We do have our first
guest questionnaire up today
ck i hope you're doing well what question do you have for us today my friend what's up hey uh it's
good to see you man and shout out to shout out to you shout out to atrium shout out to nicholas and
samiz and and and the cardano community um really just keeping it you know keeping it uh constructive
because i i really do believe I do.
Like I just saw you recently say, Big Pay, that you're bullish on ADA.
And hey, just for the record, guys, I'm I'm very bullish on sovereign digital assets.
And we are one of the premier. It's Bitcoin, Litecoin, Cardano and Midnight for my money.
You know, there's 21 million Bitcoin, 84 million Litecoin, 45 billion ADA, 24 billion night.
Midnight Network will be the Roman aqueducts of privacy for all of crypto.
That is so powerful.
We're building in the lessons of the last eight years of Cardano smart contracts,
E-U-T-X-O expressiveness.
I mean, BigPay, you and I know that Cardano is the solution for allowing Bitcoin to transcend
seven transactions per second while maintaining custody.
No, ooh, lightning network, all that.
Anyway, for my piece, I'm looking at this $80 million from the Cardano treasury to Draper Dragon.
And I look and I go, you know what?
I wonder what Atrium could do if we said, yo, Pay, what if we did a cool promotional event?
If we said, yo, pay, what if we did a cool promotional event? We reached out to most of the major teams already fly out to San
Francisco and spend time with Draper U, having conversations with Tim Draper himself. And for
those that do not know who Tim Draper is, that was the gentleman that took up the U.S. government on
their bid when they had Bitcoin for sale. Tim Draper famously bought, I believe it was over
100,000 Bitcoin at a very favorable valuation. So the
point that I would say is this, spending $80 million and giving that to people that have
failed to get a tier one exchange listings, the business development, a stable coin, come on,
this is a joke. These doors are open. Tim Draper knows exactly who we are. Tim Draper has publicly
said, give me ideas. I have a checkbook and I'm looking to commit capital.
That's the reality we find ourselves in.
That's why Bitcoin's going to do great.
Litecoin, Cardano, Midnight, we are going to do fine, guys.
We are in the solution.
That's why, and also shout out to Coinbase and Brian Armstrong.
You know, I will levy criticisms at Brian, but shout out to the man.
He's got a checkbook and he's got lawyers and he's actually out there fighting for the people because this this really is a typewriter's to personal computer situation.
This is creative destruction and the people finally can actually own our capital and make it productive.
So I'll land the plane on this big pay. And thank you so much again for having me up here.
I look at that 80 million dollars and I think big pay and atrium could do more with it.
I look at that 80 million dollars and I think we could we could empower at least a handful of projects that would return far more.
I think if we pay the same people and expect different results, with respect, I'm not insane.
So we can do better for my money. Thanks for all of your thoughts, CK. Always a pleasure. And
I will say that it is nice to you know see some outside
forces you know take a look at the Cardano ecosystem that already have a lot of experience
and investment and startups and acceleration uh you know we've definitely come a long way in that
regard it used to just be uh you know a few companies around here and we've grown exponentially since then.
I'm going to check the audience little questionnaire to make sure we don't miss anything.
And I'll let you pick up here, Steven.
Yeah, I was wondering.
So you mentioned the first year will be $15 million.
I would think that would be.
By the way, I also like the ADA caps it's a nice idea
so that means that the proposed 80 million dollars I would say will be spread out over
five or six yearly treasury withdrawals then meaning that every year a new treasury withdrawal would be
needed to be approved by the d reps to yeah basically can continue the programs is that's
how what's what the idea is yep uh exactly so you know we we chose these it tranches and 15 million USD and it does have an ADA cap of 5050 ADA
and that's absolute cap, not necessarily that it will hit that, but we wanted to put guard
rails everywhere we possibly could.
And the rationale behind doing three tranches instead of deploying all the 75 million from
the treasury, because the 5 million will be fund rows externally.
So we will bring an external our hopes are and goals are is to bring external LPs into
it rather than the full 80 million. So the rationale we did is, like I mentioned, was
the deliberate de-risking mechanism of early stage outcomes are more forward looking. So
the treasury is more treated with venture
discipline. And we've had in our team years and years of experience and running, working
with ecosystem funds before having a network of ecosystem funds and our founding partner
being in the ecosystem for 20 years as far as the venture ecosystem. And he brought this
as a venture mindset analogy essentially so you have an
initial check not the full allocation you observe the execution you increase exposure
only after performance and that same logic that we use for startups is applied at a fund
level so what the community sees before approving the later tranches because like you mentioned
it does need to get approved still it has has to go through the withdrawal process. It's not all at once. And what we can show is our hopes of an evidence of execution,
showing this public dashboard of KPIs, giving visibility into a productive use of capital
and what we've done. This is quarterly reports to the community, just like we would with
our LPs. And look, I mean, our team has been around for so long and they've
been going through many LPs and many limited partners that have invested in them, request info,
they just show more info, whatever it might be. So they're bringing that philosophy into
the fund. And essentially, we want to show a proof of delivery against commitments.
And that does year by year. So the risk management
piece it not only protects the treasury but protects the ecosystem and communities and
it gives us an ability to have a more progressive capital release and more data driven follow
on tranches and decisions are truly based on results not promises from the first tranche
and I am super excited for the team that is able to work with us on it, especially the
Venture Studio piece and the experienced operators.
They're not first time managers and builders.
We have five to 10 years of development experience on that side and venture experience as well.
So there has been execution across multiple cycles
and ecosystems and I think this way is the most de-risked
and also the strongest blueprint for other funds to join.
Yeah, I like this setup of smaller allocations
and transparent reporting know reporting and kpis it will allow the reps to and the community
as well through their d reps to evaluate how it's going on a yearly or semi-yearly basis
and yeah evaluate when and how to properly allocate treasury funds.
So I think that's a nice way of setting it up, actually.
And it's the right way to do for accountability towards the community
and to ecosystem to have this transparency, basically,
because the treasury is open, but that doesn't mean we have to
we have to spend it wisely i mean so um that's definitely a very nice addition to it
one thing i was curious about is the uh you know if the proposal is funded um you know is it going
to be dollar value you, invested into these projects or
used to accelerate these projects?
Is it, is it ADA, you know, is the, the amount going to kind of be sold as soon as it's received
ultimately, you know, to ensure that value?
Yeah, great, great question.
So it, it will be in ADA, um, and, and it really depends on depends and this is on the discretion as a GP, but
obviously as a fund we have to de-risk and also forward think and start deploying properly
and it's impossible to tell prices of ADA.
So there may be portions that get converted to stable coin and that's to make investments,
to have the lights running, pay the legal fees, the council fees, audit fees, whatever it might be.
Obviously all of these are in US denominations.
There isn't too much crypto accepting auditors or crypto accepting tax people that are within
the fund or outside of the fund that we work from for many years.
So the short answer is yes, there will be. But that's discretion of the
GP and where we see the market going. And I think it's definitely turbulent right now,
but I'm very optimistic. And I wouldn't say that determines our thoughts on the markets
purely just the risk and be able to make whatever payments we need to on audit side and other
expenses.
Yeah, makes sense. Oh, it seems like pay has dropped off. I'm back. Can you hear me now?
Yeah, there he is. Welcome back.
Okay, sorry. Usual X space happenings. Well, I heard everything. Thank you for the answers.
I have a comment here.
Cayman Islands is a big red flag.
I'm not sure about that.
Care to
comment a little bit on that, maybe?
Yeah, no, happy to.
That's a fair to illustrate.
I think a lot of kind, kind of, you know, whatever.
Oh, you're breaking up for me, Peyton, completely? I can't hear you.
Go ahead, Samiz.
Yeah, I can jump in. I think the Cayman Island choice was not necessarily a red flag, and I can understand why and I
understand why that would raise some concerns.
But Cayman Islands historically is a global standard for venture fund SPVs that's legally
neutral, well understood by regulators, and widely used by institutional funds and other LPs. So it's not being used to avoid
oversight accountability. It's more so a neutral and well established area that you can manage
an SPV and manage a fund and the counterparty span across multiple countries. So many of
the legal teams within fund side and within in the financial
world have have a lot of experience in Cayman Islands and that's where it was more of a
middle ground for our legal team and the SPB's legal team can can work closer together and
solve things faster. So it definitely is, I believe, a much safer access and a much more robust as far as legal jurisdictions go and much stronger as well.
So I think it's definitely a great option to do in Cayman Islands.
Makes sense.
Thank you for the clarification there.
Is there anything that we haven't covered today
that you guys would like to go into a little bit?
We've covered the audience questions and stuff like that sometimes.
Definitely.
I think I can give a brief overview of our vertical focuses and what we look at seeing in the ecosystem,
and both within and want to introduce and bring in.
and both within and want to introduce and bring in.
So as far as verticals go, starting all this out,
we saw how strong the governance participation was,
but there has been missing breakout apps in the ecosystem.
So we believe winning one vertical strongly
changes the trajectory.
And I think we've seen this in multiple other ecosystems
like Solana within prediction markets or internet capital markets that one vertical within define
you have ETH with define Wall Street. So winning one vertical changes the trajectory and an
example I can give is RWA is you know, multi billion, hopefully trillion dollar opportunity. And I believe RWA's stable coins, institutional
defined more are fits this very well because when you get to the regulators perspective,
you have to look for a compliance first chain. And I think it goes down the history of as
this chain that down before, has there been downtime has there been hacks and it goes
through that list. And I'm very happy to say, I mean,
obviously Cardano has never, and that shows how strong of a network it is and how strong of a security it has. So, you know, because of all this, and that's what got us to get this all
excited and started up, we have a front strategy of a few vertical focuses and I can go through
them at a high level and just why these and why now and how we position it. So within the core verticals,
of course, stable coins and payment infrastructure, I think is a key point. And obviously stable
coins right now are the backbone of crypto. It's a 300 billion plus market right now with
growing every day. There's regulatory clarity that we briefly touched on in the beginning. Institutions are entering more ecosystems via stable coins.
That's kind of their entry point and on ramp to the whole ecosystem. And, you know, Cardano
is missing that tier one stable coin liquidity. And without stable coins, it will be very
difficult to get institutional adoption. So I believe this is the foundational layer of
all the other verticals and all the other
sectors.
And that's one thing we hope to fix with our network and reach to be able to have some
more stable coin liquidity and also institutions come in with the current stable coins on chain
right now.
And that leads to RWAs being the next and I believe one of the fastest growing sectors
and how I got into the space.
Institutions are still deploying capital.
It's a compliance first design and that's crucial because it does fit Cardona's architecture.
Being deterministic, having auditable RWAs and winning this does unlock that long-term
TVO plan and goal we had and also the revenue piece.
So this vertical, I believe, can redefine Cardona's position and help scale
it and that can be done twofold with stable coins and real world assets. Then we get into
DeFi infrastructure, which is also very important. I think it's institutions want DeFi. I mean,
it's much more productive and I think consumers want DeFi as well. We saw how Coinbase almost
killed most savings accounts with their yield and easy stablecoin
yield to get back.
That's much more yield from traditional savings accounts.
But lending, settlements, credit, Dexcoin, and all these different things that right
now are in the ecosystem and doing great in Cardano, but I believe could use some resources
to help scale and get into that growth phase.
And that stablecoin and RWA does feed into the institutional DeFi as well.
So that helps with regulated financial workflows and infrastructure over the apps at this stage
can scale a lot.
And lastly, and of course, our head is always on a swivel for new narratives that pop up,
but the privacy and security infra.
Of course, with MidNikes, I think that unlocks
a compliant privacy from what we've seen. But also our portfolio has a lot of privacy
and DID in it. So the regulatory pressure is causing a lot of privacy companies to start
focusing on it. And institutions can't operate on fully transparent rails. Obviously, not
every fund, not every bank can be fully
open doors. So there needs to be some sort of audible layers. And I think for, and this
expands on all the verticals is privacy is more of a moat and not a niche. So it's definitely
needed across payment infras, across RWAs, across institutional DeFi, and having Cardano as a security first chain
does help that a lot.
So all of these combined, truly, you know,
the takeaway for me is winning one vertical
truly changes the trajectory of the ecosystem.
And I think a lot of this builds on top of each other
and can attract a lot of institutional capital.
And that's what we hope to do within this fund.
Awesome.
Yeah, it was really interesting for you to go into the verticals.
That was honestly my next question, so it's great to hear about that.
And I would honestly agree on kind of the verticals you guys are looking at. They seem the most valuable and also the most kind of revenue generating
to bring some of that value back to the treasury in the future.
With your guys' expertise on helping seed stage companies
and helping companies accelerate,
are there any other ecosystems that you guys are looking at doing this with
or already doing this with?
Or is Cardano what you guys are focused on right now with trade per track?
Great question.
So our previous funds, we have focused and worked with other ecosystems with trade for track. No, great, great question.
So our previous funds, we have focused and worked
with other ecosystems like Solana, Ethereum,
Base, and a handful of others.
But as of right now, and of course,
depending on this fund to get through,
our full focus will be Cardano.
It will be a strategizing of deeply focusing on Cardano
and also bringing in Bitcoin DeFi.
And that brings over the whole picture of UTXO environments that, you know, as you alluded
to, I mean, Tim Draper was in there very early.
And we all see the great opportunities UTXO has.
And I think as regulations start clearing up and becoming stronger, that's where UTXO
environments can shine, especially Cardano.
So our full focus will be the Cardano ecosystem and scaling it up.
Awesome. Yeah, it's great to hear. Steven, do you have something? Sorry.
Yeah, I had one question that I saw in the comments from AccelaCoin, I think is also in the space here.
And after that, we can go to
phil high phil always great to have you um so the question from axella coin was if the objective is
adoption and ecosystem maturity a wide cap external lp capital at 5 million was a co-investment or
matching capital structure considered to bring more
outside capital into the Cardano ecosystem alongside with treasury funds?
Oh, great. Great question. So I wouldn't say the $5 million is capped. I briefly mentioned
early on that our $5 million is a checkpoint. So if we are able to close that out ASAP, then
we can start scaling it up and keep getting more investments in. And that's from external
LPs and other partners. And the way our current funds are structured, we're not able to directly
invest into one of our own funds. But what we may do is co-invest with this fund and
introduce this fund into other consortium of VCs that we are very close
with and been on the cap table with. So that spans across multiple tier one and tier two
exchanges and funds, sorry. And that's where I think we can bring in more capital is obviously
many funds don't typically, they're not really a fund to fund, they're more of equity investments
and they have a liquid portion like many others do.
But sharing this deal flow and trying to get the eyes onto the ecosystem and putting in
front of their table as much as possible and keep showing them, oh, if they miss out on
pre-seed round and they didn't get in, the same company is now on their seed.
Their valuation started at 10, now they're at 50.
And we can show this growth within the Cardano ecosystem to these other funds and
hope they'd co-invest and join us as well.
And it will be a team effort of funds and also us just championing it and doing a road
show with the startups to get them more investors.
Phil, good to see you here, my friend.
How are things?
And if you have any questions, feel free.
Hey, Phil.
You there?
Yeah, if you're talking, we can't hear you, my friend.
You might be muted.
Okay, no Phil, but we do have another member up here.
Marike, do you have any questions?
No, I'm listening in, and I really think it's super exciting that you're launching this fund.
We definitely are going to see, we're going to apply and see if you want to, if you see Open Food Chain is a good fit.
But I just want to applaud the initiative.
I think it's amazing.
Yeah, that kind of, you know, raises a question for me.
I don't know, we've covered a lot,
so we may have already covered it,
but what does the application process look like
for just a company that's already building on Cardano
that has some revenue
and a live platform out there in production?
Yeah, great question and great to see you on break.
I know, lovely you guys doing at Open Food Chain.
I know we spoke quite a bit about this as well.
So I'm very happy to see you.
On the application process and how we look at sourcing deal flow.
So this will go on a few different tranches and roads of doing this and ultimately coming
back to the whole committee.
And the way this would be done is first, obviously online,
through our website, we will have a clean and easy form
that you can apply to and send information.
And that's through a, you know, send the pitch text
and the blurb and go through everything.
And we're gonna utilize internal AI resources as well
to help sort and organize between the stages
based on the pitching and what variables you put in. So that's one piece of just constant deal flow
coming in. But also working with close community members and essentially quote unquote influencers
and builders that are already up there that we already are very close with. And that's
where we can get this prime deal flow of, look, we know this company that's looking to fundraise and wants to grow and we're looking at whoever might be. And that's where we can get this prime deal flow of, look, we know this company that's looking to fundraise and wants to grow and we're looking at whoever might be.
And that's where we can get direct access because I believe warm introductions and getting
directly close with founders and builders through another founder builder is how we've
cultivated our relationships.
And that's another route of doing it.
And then another piece of it will be
through ecosystem spaces like this,
we'd invite some companies to speak and give their pitch
and essentially go through their whole pitch
and work with the communities and say the feedback
and see what questions they have
and be as engaged as we could.
But essentially we'll try to make it as easy as possible
for anybody to apply for funding.
And we're gonna try to talk to every single one of them because how we're expanding the team and working close with everybody that we will have the bandwidth to speak with as many as we possibly can.
One interesting avenue might also be, I think Nicolas can direct you through to that is a
Cardano builder DAO so it's it's a DAO that's also received Treasury funding
but it's a setup a DAO that is organizing basically organizing and
coordinating a lot of good Cardano builders,
projects and founders,
which the structure is already in place
and a lot of good projects are in there.
So it might be a good pipeline
to potentially source good candidates as well.
Amazing.
Thanks for reminding me because that is another piece of it.
We're very close with the Clarity team
and BuilderDAO,
and I think they will have
a great pipeline of builders
and they'll work very closely
with Tripper University's cohorts
as well with those programs.
And that's another source of investments
and going through the cohorts as they do their
application processes.
So we want to work with BuilderDAO on making as much of that process transparent and also
getting a lot of deal flow from them.
And we've been speaking to them for months now on a few strategies.
And I think we're coming to a pretty good conclusion on how we can position this in
a DAO perspective and plug that in directly with this whole pipeline of builders within the programs and
also builders out there in the ecosystem that might be a little more mature and don't need
to go through accelerator, but they need funding.
And of course, working with CF and their team to get deal flow and anything they see interesting.
They've been amazing at it already.
And we've been talking to many Cardano projects already and a lot
of them asking for funding and getting ready for this thing to close. So we're
seeing how vibrant it really is.
Nicholas.
Thank you. Yeah, for me, right, it's really all about getting this flywheel
started because I mean we all know Catalyst. It's been here about getting this flywheel started because, I mean, we all know Catalyst.
It's been here for a long time.
I mean, this was for a very long time the only thing that was available.
And since last year, we have the BuilderZao.
Now people can request directly also from the treasury, right?
And I really see this ecosystem fund from DraperDragon and this Cardano ecosystem fund from Draper Dragon and this Cardano ecosystem fund, sort of this, maybe not last puzzle piece,
but really this engine that starts the flywheel of how we get builders,
right, from this grand stage, professionalize them and move them
into this, yeah, potentially new ecosystem fund, right,
and then get them to mass adoption and to in the long run
profit the cardano ecosystem with transactions with more activity and make it on more sustainable
and really for me what's so important about this this proposal is also that it is sort of a template
for other similar success stories potential success stories stories, right? I'm an optimist.
I think it's going to be successful, but we can use that and then go to other
potential VCs in more targeted markets where Draper is not part of or work with
other sort of companies and enterprises to also think about how we can create a win-win situation
for the Cardano treasury and for them as well right and this this is the future this is how we
need to grow the ecosystem and make Cardano even more successful as it is today
Makes sense, thank Nicholas.
Marike, you had something to add?
Yeah, I have a question.
So one of the things that we're struggling with or thinking about is how can we make
good connections with existing other projects on the Cardano ecosystem?
So for example, I think most of you know, Palmera, ScanTrust.
Is there a way that the fund,
or maybe let me put it really as a question,
how can we, in an application to the fund,
how can we accelerate those connections?
How can we really make one project bigger than one project
within the cardano ecosystem would that involve like epic doing the application with two projects
or what's your thinking there how how is the fund gonna encourage like connections between existing projects? Yeah, great question.
And I think the two ways of this that can happen is first the Draper University piece, because
after that cohort, I believe there's almost, which Marieke, your team was there too, I
think within that cohort there's around 50 partnerships that ended up happening within the ecosystem and also outside of it. But the way I see it that can
be helpful is not just the Drip University piece, but also the Venture Studio arm where
they target a lot of support and I'll let James or JJ jump in. But I believe they're
able to bring in support and bring in, open the doors for new builders
to apply and mention what key issue
or problem they want solved.
And that's where they come in and give support
and connect with us, connect with the entities
and connect with everybody to start expanding the network
and partnering with each other.
Because we cultivate our portfolio to work with each other.
And that's how we've constructed our 80 portfolio companies nearly right now of working with each other if they need a need we
have another portco that can help with it and that's what we're bringing out here too for the
network but James go ahead about the targeting piece yeah so I think that question have like
two different angles in my perspective there's like the philosophical answer
and then the more uh hands-on operational answer that jj can can tell more but from the philosophy
from the philosophical perspective i think that the only way that this can work is if it's uh
if it's collaborative so the way we build a strong connection out there
with existing project is basically by showing up as partners,
not like gatekeepers.
So we won't ask projects to change who they are
or how they should operate.
So what we are trying to offer here is to support
where it's actually useful.
And then in a more practical sense,
so we would like to have like open
and visible entry points, right?
So existing projects, they can reach us directly
or be referred by ecosystem partners.
But yeah, JJ, would you like to talk more about it?
Yeah, sure. I think um when you're talking about collaboration in the ecosystem um there's a couple ways to go about it one is obviously like the marketing kind
of side which is you know how do we just get more people talking to each other and thinking about
points of integration um and then the second piece is is actual integration like okay so I've
launched um you know let's say like let's say I'm launching a stable coin and I want you know more
projects to support this or I'm launching some kind of asset right I've got a meme coin or I've
got some kind of tokenized asset or you know um nft project or whatever and how do I make sure
that you know there's a lot, enough projects
out there in the broader ecosystem that are helping to support my project. And I'm going to go and list
their project, you know, on my platform, if it's an exchange or it's a, you know, I'm thinking more
along the lines of kind of like DeFi protocols here, where integration is really a key point to
kind of unlock liquidity and, you know, get projects working with each
other. And that's exactly the kind of thing that, you know, when I was talking originally about,
like, resources, like the knowledge to integrate, and the operational capabilities to help you,
like, join the team and get our hands dirty. You know, that's something that we really want to be
involved in, is that, you know, if you, we in, is that if you're super busy,
it's a one person builder,
and it's like, well, I've got a whole list of things
that I wanna build and I just don't have time for this,
even though I think it's a really great idea,
come talk to us.
This is the kind of thing that we want to promote and support.
And honestly, it's the thing
that we're the most excited about, And it honestly, it's the thing that
we're the most excited about, because if we can build that environment of collaboration,
then as you add one more project into the ecosystem, well, then that boosts every other
project that's already in the ecosystem. And that's kind of the approach that that we really want to take with this
collaboration is key Bill are you back yet can you hear us does your mic work
okay so I'll do a little update on the the atrium side while we wait for Bill here if we'll ever come back I hope he does so So about a month ago, we launched Knight tokens on top of the
diffusion staking basket. So you can essentially delegate to 50 different single stake pool
operators at the same time and earn Knight rewards every Epic. And what's exciting about that,
for one other than earning Knight, is our TVL went from 600,000 to almost 3 million ADA.
is our TVL went from 600,000 to almost 3 million ADA.
And TVL delegated all 50 of those SPOs.
You know, people are already claiming night every epoch.
The APY changes, you know, based on ADA and the price of night,
but it's about 4,000 night going out every epoch every five days
for the users that use the diffusion staking basket.
And you can also get Atma.
And then you can use that Atma. And then you can delegate to your favorite content creators,
projects, SPOs in the Cardano ecosystem. We've got Phil here. What you can do is you can take
your Atma tokens that you earned from Diffusion, stake them to Phil. You start earning rewards
every Epic. And then so does Phil if he gathers
enough delegation. So we have these profiles within Atrium that you can mint right now.
They're about 25 beta. You can send and receive to them, but you can also gather delegation
just like an SPO. That's an update that we went live with in December. But 2026 is going to be
an exciting year from Atrium. We're talking about accelerating
all of these projects on Cardano. Well, we're trying to accelerate projects on Cardano
through Atrium. Every profile in the future, you're going to be able to follow them. You're
going to start receiving notifications from them. We're going to be able to have challenges. Right
now, we have a whole leveling system inside Atrium. I posted a post on my account today. You can see people in there leveling up. We're going to expand the leveling
to other projects. So as you engage with Snek on X or on chain, you'll start to earn XP and
challenges. We're doing a lot in 2026, but the biggest thing that I'm looking forward to
is every profile. It's currently an NFT in the wallet that you own, that're doing a lot in 2026. But the biggest thing that I'm looking forward to is every profile.
It's currently an NFT in the wallet that you own, that you can level up, you can gather delegation.
These profiles will also have profile pages that live in Atrium that you can gather followers on.
You can send notifications to all your DREP delegates, all of your SPO delegates, all of your token holders, all in one app.
So, yeah, there's a little update.
It's been fun.
2025 was awesome, you know, getting Atrium live.
But that's a little update for everybody.
We do have an XP code.
So, you know, if you use Atrium, you can type in this XP or this code on your profile
and get some XP for tuning in.
What's our code this week, Steven?
Yeah, the code for this
space is CardanoDragon.
CardanoDragon
in one word.
So go claim
that XP.
Awesome.
I don't think Phil's coming back.
No, I think
he might just be joining and listening.
He's farming us.
He's farming the Cardano Foundation.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay, so if we don't have any more questions,
any closing thoughts from you, Nicholas,
or any of the Dragon members?
Oh firstly I mean appreciate you guys for setting this up and everybody listening in
I think we're you know we're super excited to just get started on this and start helping
the ecosystem and start growing and scaling it it's the beginning of a new year so I think
it's beginning of new metrics to keep hitting all-time highs. And I'd like to definitely thank Nicholas
and the rest of the CF team for working close with us and helping us structure everything.
It's definitely a very difficult balance that we have to do with legal constraints and also
the decentralization aspect, which is both really great. And a big shout out to Esko, I see here as well.
I just saw them pop up.
Great to see you and love what they're doing at Better.
It's always amazing and appreciate everybody.
We're super excited.
This thing will go on chain very soon.
And when it does, we're excited to keep building.
Go ahead, Nicholas.
Yeah, thank you. I also just wanted to say appreciate the space appreciate
atrium what you guys are building i remember last year i think one year ago i was here and
so much has changed it's it's fantastic to see and yeah as always i gotta say please continue
to participate in cadano governance we need need participation only in that way we make Cardano better.
So yeah, I'm super excited about the future and can't wait for the proposal to go live,
the Treasury withdrawal, and then to see how everyone votes, right?
Because as always, as long as you vote, I'm fine, right?
Of course, supporting it would be great, but I appreciate all the different opinions and voices in Cardano.
I got a bunch of votes in last week, Nicholas.
You'd be proud.
But Esco, what do you have for us today?
I came a little late, but I did want to chime in
that I really love how CF is supporting an entity that is going to be highly focused on ROI.
And obviously, ROI comes in many forms.
We're not going to get into whether it's financial and all these other things.
But because CF is a non-for-profit and obviously they have their legal structure,
it's just awesome to start to see this really strong support
for companies and entities that are coming
with ROI focus for the ecosystem.
I think that Catalyst has done really good for the ecosystem
and a lot of startups and stuff,
but heightened level of ROI focus makes me excited.
Agreed. Thank you so much today to Steven for hosting. We host these every Wednesday at 16 UTC.
When you guys get that proposal out there and it's, is it already live for voting? I don't think so.
and it's uh is it already live for voting i don't think so it's just an info action right now correct
It's just an info action right now, correct?
actually right now it's only on the kadano forum so you can check it out and comment and post and
and just check it out there kadano forum exactly awesome well when it actually goes live on chain
we'd love to have you back on again and also when you guys start accelerating uh some of these
projects you know imagine we host a space and when you guys start accelerating some of these projects,
you know, imagine we host a space and if you guys have like a first cohort of, you know, five,
10 people, we can have them all on, you know, let them pitch and have an awesome kind of exciting
space for everyone if you guys do have that success. But thanks again, Steve, for hosting
and everybody for tuning in today. It's been a pleasure. Appreciate it. Thank you guys.
it's been a pleasure appreciate it thank you guys uh thanks everyone for joining so um
we have we host these spaces uh every wednesday at 1600 utc uh so make sure make sure you join
next uh next week for our great guests um and it comes to uh governance participation nicholas
um we have some we have some ideas for that in developing
we have some we have some ideas for that and
we want to make the DREPS more able to communicate with their uh yeah with people delegating to them
uh gather feedback through atrium on how they should vote for how they voted in the past so
to make a direct line between the people that voted
as D-reps and the people that are delegating to them.
So we're trying to figure that out, include that a little bit.
Yeah.
So thanks everyone for joining and make sure to tune in next week.
Thanks to all of our guests and yeah, see you next week. Thanks to all of our guests. And yeah, see you next week.
Bye.
