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Powering Cardano’s Future: The Critical Integrations AMA
Recorded: Dec. 18, 2025 Duration: 0:54:42Space Recording
Short Summary
Cardano is set to enhance its ecosystem with a $70 million budget for critical integrations, including a partnership with Pith network, a leading oracle provider. This initiative reflects a strong community response and a strategic focus on growth, interoperability, and sustainability in the blockchain space.
Full Transcription
Okay, let's hope it works this time. Can anyone hear me?
Maybe a thumbs up if you can hear me all right.
Testing, testing.
Testing, testing.
Okay, it seems to be working this time.
Okay, fantastic.
Apologies for the technical difficulties.
Oh, no more music. Stop the music. Stop the music. technical difficulties.
Oh, no more music! Stop the music! Stop the music!
I can't control it!
Oh, jeez. Music God damn it, this music.
You hear me, Pedro?
Yeah, we can hear you, but we hear also the music.
Yeah, I hear this pop. It's always a drop of basketball. yeah we can hear you but they're here also the music Thank you. I'm going to go to the next video. is it off yeah
yeah
whoo
Giorgio
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Okay, I think we can go ahead as planned now.
That music is a bug. I've never seen that before on desktop.
Can everyone hear me okay? we've got you i think we're just waiting for fred to rejoin now we've got fami we've got jack georgio myself
phil is a listener so we need to get phil up to speak
okay i've shot Jack an invite.
Looking for Phil.
Again, apologies for the technical difficulties.
I have no idea idea was causing that music
there's friend Thank you. Okay, we got Jack up here. Welcome, Jack. Oh, back to listeners. how's everyone doing today
i think x has been on the uh on the sherry and the mince pies this afternoon seems that way
this afternoon seems that way okay i'm here i can hear you guys all right awesome welcome jack
howdy howdy so this was a nice 15 minutes i hope you had your meditation session your five
your meditation session, your five seconds in, five seconds out.
But I would kick off the space without further ado.
While we wait for Fred, I will introduce the rest of the folks.
We're gonna have shortly Fred, the CEO and the foundation.
We have Phil, CEO of Emurgo, although I don't see him.
Is he there?
Fami, the president of the Midnight Foundation.
We have myself, the CTO of the Cardano Foundation.
We have Tim, executive VP, community and ecosystem at IOG,
and Jack from Intersect Executive Director.
Maybe let's kick off with the latest announcement,
the integration with Pith network, the Oracle.
And maybe I would like to ask Fami from Midnight,
why is this a big deal and what do you think Pete can bring to Cardano and
Midnight? Thank you Giorgio, hello everyone good afternoon good morning good evening wherever you
are in the world joining us. Yes look we all got together on the next space I want to say
I want to say two weeks ago, and we asked the Cardano ecosystem to have faith in the projects
and the conversations that we were undertaking. And we said there will be various announcements
to come. And lo and behold, there was an announcement last week around the integration or plans to integrate Pith.
Pith, those who don't know, is one of the top two oracles in the blockchain industry and sector.
They were one of two oracle feeds who were accepted by the U.S. federal government to share U.S US economic data, the other being Chainlink.
So we're delighted that Pith recognize the potential within the Cardano ecosystem. We see
the potential of what they can bring. And this is just one step of the journey we're taking with many
counterparts that we're speaking to that's going to improve the ecosystem and infrastructure
within the Cardano space that allows us to take our strong position and connect to others
in the industry.
Thank you, Fami.
Maybe, Tim, I mean, the community response so far has been huge,
and not only with the governance action approval speed,
but also the announcement on X about PIT. Can you speak a little bit about this momentum
and this excitement of the community?
Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, thank you to everybody for joining the space.
We got there in the end, but also particularly thank you for the incredibly rapid response
and sheer weight of support that we've seen for this critical integrations proposal.
Obviously, there's quite a few different governance hoops we have to jump through, as we all know, in being something from the initial proposal stage and the initial budget info action stage,
all the way through to actual full ratification implementation. But we've made progress in a very
short amount of time. And I think this is actually a very strong reflection of the community getting
it. Understanding that we're talking about here really are a number of integrations that, yes, we would have loved to have had these earlier,
but the time is now. What all these integrations ultimately do and what so many of the community
have recognized is really start to plug Cardano into the much wider Web3 ecosystem and bring in
new capabilities and new partnerships that will really sort of help power the next
stage for Cardano. As we've just heard, the first announcement with Pith, who are a very serious
sort of tier one Oracle partner, I had a call, myself, Jack, had a call with them just the other
day, in fact, and they're super excited about working with Cardano. We were brainstorming
ideas of how we can work more closely together,
how we can make sure that all the key developers understand the integration paths
and the timelines and these sort of things.
So if that's any indication of the future and further partnerships to be announced,
we also need to recognize that this is the first stage.
This is the plumbing, if you like.
This is the wiring. This is the electr, if you like. This is the wiring.
This is the electrics.
What we ultimately need is flow.
And that will require a combination of two things.
It will require us as members of the Pentad to try and facilitate as effectively as possible.
But it'll also very much rely on the community and particularly the incredible ecosystem of builders we've got to recognize and understand how they can implement some of these, you know, incredibly strong new capabilities into their products. So yeah, I mean,
as I say, fantastic response so far. We'll obviously cover up some of the concerns that
people have raised during the course of this call, and I hope we'll be able to address those
very effectively. But thank you, everybody, for everything you've done so far. And for most of
now, we're at the stage now where ultimately we're now looking to the Constitutional Committee to be able to move things forward.
And again, fantastic response and a particular shout out to all the SPOs for voting again so promptly at bringing Cardano Curia in.
Not only does that bring full governance back, but actually it brings five incredibly talented and well-known Cardano OGs
into the heart of governance which I'm particularly thrilled about so yeah looking forward to this
space and very much looking forward to what we'll be announcing over the months ahead.
Jack welcome as well and maybe could you comment on this panted approach and
why or why not you think this is a good approach
on my side it has been very exciting working with the with the with the squad with the avengers
yeah yeah i think i think that's what it's actually it's the energy isn't it giorgio i think
what's really good about this proposal and this new way of working is that we've got a focus we've
got a really clear purpose of what we're trying to do together as a collective.
And that's working for me at the moment.
As Tim mentioned, we had a call with the Pith team yesterday.
And the excitement is really strong with the Pith team.
And that's just the first one of many.
and then I know we're obviously having conversations
And then I know we're obviously having conversations nearly every day between us as entities,
nearly every day between us as entities,
which is a breath of fresh air for what has been
not quite like that, right?
Let's be honest, in the past it's not been quite like that,
but it definitely is now,
and it's really exciting that we've got this shared purpose.
In fact, we're going to hopefully have some new announcements
tomorrow as well, so a little bit of alpha there,
but I'll let everyone else know tomorrow won't
be confirmed but yeah what time at what time jack what time i'm not gonna comment on the time it'll
be europe sort of afternoon okay thank you thank you for the for the alpha um maybe uh for fred uh could you comment on uh why exactly do we do this fund uh
what's the i mean we all know why but maybe for the wider audience this is not yet clear or
crystallized we have different interpretations yeah and thank you everybody for joining.
I mean, it's really cool.
And sorry for the technical problems.
I'm not really sure what it is.
I always say, you know, if you want to go fast, you go alone.
If you want to go far, you go as a team. And I think Cardano is really going far and we have the best team possible.
But for certain things, specifically when we anchor into the more old style, how the world works with TradFi and how it works with centralized data systems,
some of those have been sort of, frankly, pitting us up against each other.
And that basically meant it was really hard to bring things forward.
And the idea here with Penta is, you know, we coordinate
and we have a way to drive decisions and take them forward.
But we also risk mitigate against some of the biggest hurdles
we've created for ourselves in a positive way, right?
Because what we saw when we've been negotiating
with some of these vendors,
where some of them have already been announced
and others will be announced,
when they discovered that Kedana was in full governance mode
and there was 1.5 billion ADA in the treasury,
the ticket sizes just went up, like 10x or even more,
because they were like,
oh, if your community is guarding that much money,
why wouldn't we claim it?
So this idea that we basically are talking here about
70 million ADA already brought panic in between some of these vendors, where we can also try and
basically pit them against each other and say, we don't have more than 70 million ADA. So we need
to prioritize that in a way that the community gets the most bang for the bucks. And as was said
before by Tim, that we also see that there is a demand side
generated on the other side of that.
So this is a really good way to bridge,
let's say, some of the non-blockchain part
on these integrations and break out of the bubble
and give a better negotiation power
to Cardano as a whole by doing that.
Thank you, Fred.
We also have Phil back now.
Maybe a question for you, Phil.
You have been one of the main catalysts for all of this to happen.
First of all, in Singapore, when you put all of us in the same room,
in the Marina Basin, and now with the Murgo playing
a good role in putting all of these on the governance on chain.
Could you comment on what are your expectations in terms of what are the top priority?
What is the process for protocol selection?
How is the PENTAD decision team, working on deciding the targets and
what's the end goal? Thank you. Thank you, Giorgio. A fair amount to cover. I'll try to keep it really
concise. I think, number one, it's quite clear to not just the PENTAD, but certainly community on
what are the missing core primitives, right? Cully Pricing Oracle, Bridges, Stablecoins, Analytics.
The selection processes we are aiming for Tier 1.
I think anyone on this call can Google and figure out what the top tier Stablecoins are
and who would be on our Christmas wish list.
With the help of all members, specifically FAMI and the Midnight team,
as really a tip of the spear for us,
a number of these conversations began quite some time ago,
particularly as Midnight was building.
With the strength of Cardano
and humbly the stewardship of the Treasury, these conversations have accelerated.
We sit at a steerco level with members of all of the Pentat as well as community representation,
largely through Jack, who is a champion for obviously the Krona community writ large,
and really sharing what we think we can get done with a finite budget,
bang for the buck, and speed of integration and prioritization of Cardano versus other
chains.
This is not one where we simply can barge our way to the front of the line. This is a competitive environment where we need to
provide assurances as well that, you know, if we build it, will they come, so to speak? And we have
a large number of projects that are incumbent or present on chain now, but we really need to
attract new builders into Cardano. And so, you know, for us, that conversation at the Steerco level really is forcing us
to kind of figure out who goes first and when.
And so, you know, that I think is really how we go about doing it.
We try to be as transparent as possible by sharing information as soon as contracts are signed.
I think, you know, Jack will have more to say on that.
And then you will see, you know, words translate into action and action translate into results.
And results translate hopefully into the KPIs that people are going to hold us accountable to.
You mentioned KPIs.
What are some, for everyone, what are some of the KPIs that you have in mind?
Look, I think for any of our stablecoin partners, they want to see TVL, right?
They want to see how much we mint on chain.
And that is more than a function of ourselves, but bringing new TVL from other ecosystems into Cardano.
So TVL B1, transactions, of course, is another.
There is no magic to it.
We're not creating a playbook that hasn't been played before.
We're just doing it on UTXO, which is a little bit harder.
And so I think it wouldn't be a surprise for me to tell you
those are the things that we think about.
And frankly, those are the KPIs that our
integration partners are holding us accountable to because they once again are prioritizing us over other chains
which is why it's really important that they see the support of not just you know the you know some of the founding entities and
partner institutions but also the community backing us and supporting us which is why I'm so excited to see how quickly these governance actions and info actions have been approved
and resoundingly voted in the yes kind of scoring on chain.
So that's giving our negotiation teams a lot of ammunition to sit across the table from
these core primitives to say,
not only are we saying it, but the community is saying it and will back us up with building.
And just to add a point to Phil's there regarding KPIs, I think one of the challenges we had in
2025 around budgets in general was not really having an aligned and clear set of the outcomes
and the associated KPIs that
we wanted to try and address with where we targeted our development work, where we targeted our
funding work. So I think in 2026, this is obviously going to be much more front of mind. And I would
just like to do also a call out to the Intersect Product Committee, who I believe yesterday
submitted a product and vision info action, which actually states for the KPIs
from a Cardano ecosystem perspective that they feel we should be targeting with any
initiatives. And the sweet spot obviously is going to be where our agreed and sort of ratified
ecosystem level KPIs can be directly fed by some of these iterations, in some cases bringing new
liquidity, for example, new use cases.
In others, improving what we've already got, providing new opportunities for product feature
level integrations. So I think KPIs are going to be something that as an ecosystem, particularly
through this integrations work, but also more widely, need to be very front of mind. Ultimately,
we're looking for positive outcomes. We're not looking for outputs, we're looking for
outcomes. And again, that really sits at the heart of why we're trying to do these
particular integrations.
Fami, maybe from the Midnight perspective, what do you think, what are your KPIs and
what is for year one and two for Midnight, what are the, what does success look like?
what are the what does success look like uh so i've said many a time that success means we become
invisible we become a privacy engine a privacy layer to not only midnight native applications
but to any application sitting on any chain and so for us when we think about that success we need
to think about connectivity uh connectivity to the outside world, whether that's Web3, whether that's Web2.
And that's why we've been very much focused about infrastructure.
What are the infrastructure layers that allow a village to grow into a town, a town to grow into a city?
a town, a town to grow into a city.
So for us, when we laid out our plans
and we looked at the critical infrastructure plays,
we had institutional custodians.
So can institutional custodians support Cardano native assets?
Because Knight is a Cardano native asset.
Can they also support Midnight and the tokens
that may present themselves on the Midnight network?
Can we have wallets that also do the same?
So we're supporting not only institutional pathways, but also retail and individual pathways.
Then it was about what are the other layers?
So liquidity is key.
Liquidity is about reducing friction.
It's about making the Midnight Network accessible.
So to make us accessible, we need to make Cardano accessible.
So the announcement with Pith, and again,
I want to echo Jack's words earlier to thank the community
in the Cardano world for supporting the Treasury proposal.
Again, that is not a benefit to Midnight directly, but indirectly we benefit because it shows that as a community, whether that's Cardano alone or Cardano Midnight working together, we can bring large infrastructure participants to that. are one stable coins are another uh bridges and then once you've done that and you have liquidity
and flow and applications building showing that we are a vibrant ecosystem then you need the
analytics uh partners to show what you're doing there's no good in being humble and saying we've
done it or letting people try and discover it you've got to
go and show people so that's what we highlighted at the midnight foundation as key elements to
success in the future and building the ecosystem and building liquidity and we recognize because
of our launch on cardano as a cardano asset if if we could bring that to Midnight and we can help also
highlight and showcase the existing community and ecosystem with Cardano, then that success bodes
well for us all. But ultimately for us at the foundation, I want us to be talking about our
partners and the applications, the DEXs, the lend-borrow activations, the healthcare solutions, the AI solutions and beyond that Midnight can bring, showcasing the importance of privacy in a blockchain network.
And then extending that privacy to Cardano and to other chains beyond.
So we're delighted by the support from the Cardano ecosystem in recognizing the importance of these infrastructure participants.
And we're delighted that we've got Pith announced.
And as Jack alluded to, there is another announcement coming tomorrow.
And then I can say, maybe I'll give it a little bit of alpha like Jack did.
There is a legal contract that has been
received in the last 24 48 hours for a stable coin partner so hopefully that if we can get it signed
and agreed and legally reviewed that will be a future announcement in the coming days and weeks
as well and if I may add I think there's integration like the BitGo one that was announced yesterday.
And this did not happen because of the pen that it happened independently.
And this was midnight work.
So I think success breeds success.
And I think more integration will be easier in the future as everybody gets to see what Cardano can do.
Yeah, yes, absolutely. Look, ultimately, people are in this space for two reasons. One,
they want to build something different. They want to change the way that society, the internet
applications work to open that space up for people. And then there's the other side where
people are in it for speculative reasons. And where people are in it for speculative reasons.
And when you're in it for speculative reasons, you want to back winners.
And so success breeds success.
This kind of attention and partnership that we're showcasing and bringing to Cardano
puts us in that sort of winner's circle.
Maybe, Fred, could you share
the Cardano Foundation perspective?
I know internally we speak a lot about sustainability
of the treasury long-term success.
So what's your take on the KPIs?
I would expect there's a lot of revenue and transaction
and having this flywheel of the treasury funding growth.
Yeah, I think my view is quite simple, right?
I think we have some potholes we need to fill, which will break us out of this hemisphere
called Cardano, which we all love and appreciate.
And by filling those potholes, it gives us the infrastructure
to really attract some of the use cases who work on other blockchains,
but also to be attractive to very large projects.
And when I say very large projects,
we've seen a trend that people are really giving up
on private permission blockchains.
And they are out in the market right now looking for something
who looks incredibly like Cardano from an architectural perspective.
But we are not yet ticking all of the boxes which they need to have ticked
in order for to take us seriously on an RFP.
And this will give us scalability both in the RWA space
for people who already tokenized a billion dollars, right?
But it will also give us, you know, in terms of FMIs, in terms of payment rails, in terms of, you know, all sorts of database integrations.
And here, this is really what we are aiming for by ensuring that we have the right interoperability partners, that we have the right level of TVL.
We're already a top 10 currency in terms of market cap, so that's great.
But we are still lacking some checkboxes in terms of having community projects in plural
listed on tier one exchanges.
And here, unfortunately, we only have really a snack at the moment, right?
And we really need more of those.
And all of that sort of leads us into a situation
that it's not just the Cardano crowd who sells Cardano,
but it becomes the McKinsey's, the Accenture's,
the Deloitte's, the PWC's, the E&Y's,
all of these really large integrations
and classical IT partners will go out
and recommend
Cardano as the platform to be.
Because our architecture is rock solid.
It's just about some of this tooling and some of these interoperability layers
and taking some of those boxes in terms of liquidity, TVL, listings, etc.,
in order for them to feel comfortable selling what we got.
They're already extremely impressed about our governance.
So the ability for some of us,
we might think that it's a little bit hard governance at the moment.
There's a lot of governance actions.
It's complicated and so on.
But the fact that it's written down and most of it is implemented
as ledger rules and smart contracts on chain
is something which is really being appreciated out there
by the very large enterprise partners.
And I think this is going to give us exponential growth as well.
The other part is on the ETFs and ETPs side.
You saw we're getting there with some of the ETPs.
And on the ETF side, this is also looking better.
But there we again need a couple of tick boxes
to get those finally over the line.
But that's also looking very good.
But it's really about filling those potholes.
And I think this is really what this critical integration budget is the start of, but probably not the end of.
And on the other side, due to this, we're already having meetings and already getting interest from community projects.
It was like, how do I play into this?
How do I scale out to this?
How can I use some of those functions?
And here Intersect has already started an alpha group about some of this,
but more of this to come.
Thank you, Fred.
Moving on on the governance side of things, and maybe Jack, could you give us a brief explanation of the governance structure, the composition of the steering committee?
How do we ensure transparency, but yet keeping a lean approach to negotiation?
Could you speak about that?
Yeah, I can give it a shot.
And then, yeah, welcome to any of the other steering committee members
to chime in.
Essentially, yeah, there's five members of the SteerCo,
four voting members, which are the IO, sorry, IO, CF, Emurgo,
and the Midnight Foundation.
And then Intercept sits as a non-voting member
in our administration capacity,
just to have a bit more neutrality there
when we're
signing contracts as the counterparty like we did with pierce um so essentially what happens is just
to be super transparent we meet uh on a sort of formal weekly basis uh as a steerco we look at
where the current negotiations are with various different integrations and where and who should
be uh the counterparty who's the best to be
the lead on this particular integration and so forth. And we sort of agree an action plan between
us all and share as much as we can. And then when it gets close to contract terms being, you know,
in a good place, we review them and then get them over the line, like we did with Pearson,
like we're going to do with another one tomorrow. So that's essentially how we work at the moment. The
other side to this is the transparency piece, which is super important because we're using
treasury money. So it's always, it's really forefront of my mind. So what we'll do with the
PIF contract, for example, is we're going to work on that to make sure that we're not falling foul
of any NDAs or exclusivity clauses
or anything that could upset Pith
because it's really important as well
that Cardano looks,
and Phil's spoken about this actually
on previous spaces, which is true,
that we have to protect the relationships
that we're signing with
and these partners we're signing with
for commercial reasons,
but also just good business practice.
But on the other hand, balancing that with transparency. So Intersect does have a mandate
here to do that. And we will do our best to satisfy transparency as best as possible, right,
whilst protecting those relationships long term. So essentially, that's how the Pentad work at the
moment. And then sort of linking on to the what fred mentioned about the alpha
program it's something that we were speaking tim and i were speaking to pith about yesterday
and really it's like a good dilemma to have because as soon as we announced pith i had my
dms were full of people wanting to be part of it and um how do they get involved who do they speak
to at pith i've already connected a few ecosystem partners and DAPs and builders to Pith
directly, but it's really spoken of the need to have a bit more of a pipeline here so that DAPs
and projects are easily connected and fast-tracked to the integrations that we're bringing forward,
which is really important because it has to be tangible for me. And this is a clear way of making
it tangible. So that will be something that we probably will launch in the new year, just looking
at the timings before Christmas.
Now, we're not going to get that album program out before Christmas, but it will definitely be launched in the new year for everyone in the ecosystem to sign up to.
And if they're interested and we can help sort of filter and triage that pipeline.
Essentially, it's very what's great about it is the pith team for example and i'm
using pith as the best example because it's real is uh they have a really well-oiled machine for
onboarding at their end and so we want obviously builders to be integrating with pith and and you
know improving pith from from a codano perspective as much as the other way around um so it's super
exciting but yeah we've got to what's great about it is being presented with problems and
dilemmas like these, which are good dilemmas to have, but then obviously,
making it, you know, seamless and efficient at the other end. So yeah,
I don't know if anyone else wants to chime in, Giorgio, about how the Pentad works.
Maybe for the others, Fred and Phil and fami is there uh is the discussion of disclosing
the price tags for those integration where is possible is has this discussion happened and
is there a willingness to be transparent and disclosing the price tags
not not really right so we have a big willingness, specifically from the Cardano Foundation, to disclose all vendors, including the costs and the addresses. And we want to like to do that based on the reef or the ledger on the blockchain, right? And it's one of those sort of peculiar things we run into, right?
from a business perspective, right, that they don't want to have us to disclose the price
because then somebody says, we want the same price as Cardano or better, right?
And, you know, that is sort of the old world of doing business.
But I think specifically for people who really believe in blockchain, this is extremely important
to create those benchmarks and to create fair value.
And specifically for the people we will be signing as the Cardano Foundation, we will be aiming at ensuring that we can disclose that price, but they might not like it.
And we might need to use either a privacy layer such as Midnight when that's available or to roll that up into an undisclosed vendor account.
But if you're good with a bit of machine learning, you'll be able to figure that out by just looking at what we publish on the blockchain in terms of our finances.
And I will need a little bit of help from my legal team to defend against that.
But we definitely have a huge, we want transparency around these things.
We think the community deserves that.
We think the world deserves that.
We also think that it's fair to pay a fair price.
We also think that it's fair to pay a fair price.
But just because you have a larger treasury in terms of the Cardano
blockchain decentralized treasury, you should not be paying a premium.
I think we can be proud of what we have achieved and what we have to offer.
Thank you, Fred.
We already touched a little bit on what success looks like,
but maybe in the short, medium
term, what can we expect to happen in the ecosystem?
And maybe Tim, what are the expectations for IOG?
Well, I think in terms of expectations, obviously, as we've said, this really is kind of the
beginning of a program.
It's the rubber stamp on the funding required to get these integrations in place.
But, you know, five key areas.
We've talked about stable coins.
We've talked about analytics.
We've talked about institutional custody.
We've obviously talked more a little bit about oracles, which has been kind of the first one out of the gate.
out of the gate. But ultimately, as I say, it's a program. It's really going to require close
But ultimately, as I say, it's a program.
collaboration, not only within the entities within the Pentad, but also with the key builders in the
ecosystem. And I know Jack has already mentioned, but we're very keen to reach out to the members
of the BuilderDAO, for example. We're very keen to talk to the key projects currently building
on Cardano, just to really truly understand how we can facilitate and enable their future success.
There's a lot of projects out there
that have already seen
some fantastic success.
A shout out, for example, to Strike,
who recently announced
that they were not only
one of the top projects on Cardano,
actually, they're one of the top projects per se.
So I think really the key measure of success for me
in terms of these integrations
is ultimately usage
and positive outcomes for all the people building in the ecosystem who can take advantage of these new capabilities to add, as I said earlier, whether it's from a pure feature basis, whether it's making things more efficient, or whether it's kind of having that ability to be able to reach out outside our beautiful Cardano bubble. And it is a bubble. We are rather an island these days.
This couldn't have been foreseen originally, but the way that the world of the three has developed,
integrations are absolutely key to that kind of functioning architecture, that true cross-chain
interoperability, I guess, if you like, but it's more than that. So I think a measure for success
for us is actually people using these integrations. And that's why really, once we've got these
budget proposals fully in place, once we've got the partnership signed, once we've got
the contractual terms all locked down, then all the work has to be done really to make
sure that we can do what we can as one of the major entities within the ecosystem to
help facilitate and enable those one-to-one partnerships between the key players in our
ecosystem, the rising players in our ecosystem. and of course, players from outside the ecosystem.
We need to recognize that this will make Cardano more attractive, much more broadly.
So I think that facilitation role, based around achieving KPI-driven outcomes,
is going to be absolutely key over the next six to nine months.
Thank you, Tim.
I will be opening it now to questions, so you can raise your hand if you have a question. And while you do that, I will ask Jack one of the most frequent questions we get. Why 70 million exactly?
Yeah, good question. Well, I think there's a bit of honesty here as well that 70 million is roughly, approximately what's left of the current net change limit.
And to be quick here, because of all of the integrations that are really close to being finalised, we needed to mobilise on a number.
And that was the number to get a lot of these off the ground.
to get a lot of these off the ground.
Knowing, though, and I think this has been well understood
by the ecosystem when the budget was launched,
or the proposal was launched,
that these costs are greater than 70 million in totality.
So this gets us off the ground,
but it doesn't necessarily cover everything.
And I know that some of the founding entities
and others are picking up some gaps there as well,
which is all part of the Pentad working arrangement.
But fundamentally, that's the motivation and rationale
for the 70 million today to get a lot of these things
over the line as quick as possible.
Thank you, Jack.
We have a couple of questions that were submitted,
maybe one from Esco Web3.
Is there a guide for the community to reference as to who is responsible for what?
Maybe also this is for you, Jack.
Yeah, this is a good question.
So I think I alluded to it, actually, in how we're working together at the moment.
I think I alluded to it, actually, in how we're working together at the moment.
So some entities are having had conversations.
I mean, that foundation have been leading a lot of this, actually, with their own work streams, leading the conversations.
But where midnight have gone, actually, this is a benefit for Cardano, bigger than midnight, but midnight benefit and can contribute separately.
Then let's make sure let's bring this into the Pentad.
The decision making really rests with the Pentad and the voting members.
So we agree on should instead be the counterparty or maybe the CF should be the counterparty
because of the different relationships or the different type of integration that's required.
So we have those conversations very openly and collaboratively.
There isn't really a set definition, I would say, of what each entity's role is,
apart from focused on the framework
of those tier one integrations, as we've talked about.
But, I mean, listen, Georgi,
I'd be keen on other Pentad members here
elaborating more on how they think their role is as well.
I speak from an intercept perspective,
which is our administration function primarily. Maybe I can provide some specificity for
for EMURGO. I think this question came from a community member a while ago, I think Jonah.
He asked who are the quote, you know, and I'll paraphrase where the throats to choke,
so to speak, right? So clearly at the Steerco level, we've been quite transparent.
It's the heads of all the entities, right?
So myself, Fred, Femi, Charles, Jack, right?
From a calmest perspective for Emurgo, it's Nate.
Nate's well-known in the community.
He's on the call tonight.
From an ecosystem perspective and navigating ecosystem and governance,
it's Mirasaki-san. He's on the call tonight. So we've been pretty transparent. Our team are fully doxed.
We're public figures. Our roles are very clear. And EMURGO is not massive in size. So these are
the folks that are responsible within my organization. I think each of the other groups
have differing levels of fluidity on staff and people.
Perhaps we can follow up afterwards and just kind of say who is the point person for comps,
who's the point person for ecosystem, who's the point person for if there's a commercial
discussion, who they should talk to.
I think that's what the community is looking for.
And I think that's pretty easily provided by each of the Pentad
members.
We have a question from James.
Hey guys, what's going on? Glad to be here. I was listening to a little bit of the EMURGO
one that you had a couple days ago. Murasaki did a great job translating everything. That was absolutely
amazing to listen to. I had a question because Charles came on a few days back and was talking
a little bit about what IOG is planning on doing, creating some sort of group themselves in order to,
he said, as he said, he's only one of five members within the Pentat, obviously,
but wants to potentially put in an info action.
And Jack sort of alluded to it having to do with, at the Emurgo AMA, having to do with the Alpha
Group. What exactly will that look like? I know that Charles alluded to it as well in what he
was talking about. And then how would that exactly look in your guys' eyes? I know this is fresh, this is new,
but I'm just curious as your opinions as to what that would look like and how would it be
facilitated, one. And the other is in order to ensure, because a lot of people get really caught
up in picking winners things here, that we ensure that it's very data-driven, it's merit-based in
order to ensure that people aren't being discluded based on who they are
or what they might have said on X someday or something like that.
So that's the two questions I have.
I'll take some of that, James, and then maybe Tim has some ideas as well on the alpha side of this.
I completely agree with you.
There's going to be no uh exclusivity sort of
components to who can be integrated to or partner up with some of these guys uh definitely not
certainly not through intersect and we're going to be administrating that uh with inclusivity in
mind what what i mean by that is that contractually we actually have plenty of licenses to go around
right so we there should be no one that's not able to integrate because
we've run out of a license for example because i'll fix that so it's totally open um for everyone
and anyone building on kadano to integrate with these guys there may be of course a queue right
i mean this is depending on their own pipelines and how they onboard depending on the integration
partner um but certainly access is is not restricted in any
shape or form and then from the alpha sort of design of the program i think i'd love to hear
thoughts from you james as well and the community on how this should look and feel and what's the
best way of running it for as for builders and entrepreneurs in this space so i'd love feedback
on it as we design it up and i think we'll start initially with building out a simple mailing list of
these projects that want to get involved and start to, you know,
integrate these partners.
That's a really quick thing we can do.
And Intercept will facilitate the bulk of that,
particularly on projects and integrations that we are administrating,
that we are the counterparty for.
We will take responsibility for making sure that pipeline is smooth and available.
But yeah, maybe, Tim, I don't know if you've got any other ideas.
I mean, that was great, Jack, but I think the only other thing I'd add to that is obviously
a lot of this is ultimately about the challenges that projects are facing and the opportunities
they foresee and how those can interlink with some of these integrations.
I think another part of this is as we get further
into this program to be very, very clear, not only to make directly facilitated relationships,
we don't want to act in any way as kind of middleman. We want to try and smooth relationships
and help people talk to each other, but also for projects to truly understand what these new
integrations can bring to their project, what value it can add, maybe what are some of the itches that they can help scratch.
So I think trying to make sure that we as Intersect and as the Pentab members just really make clear what the value position of these individual partners is going to be
and what that can look like in real life for Kydana, what it can actually bring, not just to the network,
but as I say, to individual challenges and individual problem statements that some of the existing ecosystem projects may have.
So I think it is very much about facilitation,
but also clear articulation of both the value proper project,
but the value property integration part of themselves.
Yeah, Tim, I had one follow up.
So I appreciate Jack, what you mentioned.
And I think along with Georgia
and what they're doing as a working group for Pintat, that there is something within, say, the Internet Steering Committee, that there's a working
group there that would be associated with those who maybe have been doing a lot of that work
already. I know I've done a lot of that with Product Committee and all the interviews they
were handling, whether they be Web2 companies coming in, enterprise solutions, commercial
applications, things of that nature, and or all the interviews
that we did with the founding members of a lot of dApps currently operating in our ecosystem.
So I think with that, that would be probably a better way to go about that. And then how does
that look with the discussion with the Pentad working group on the advances that we're having
with internally within Cardano itself, and of course, what they're doing externally outside of it, of course,
excluding anything that's coming up, of course,
because you wouldn't want to give away any of those things until they're
actually inked.
Yeah. And I think James is a,
there's definitely a few kind of different threads to start to tie together
here.
And I know that I've been speaking with all the members of the intersect
product committee, for example,
in my role as the chair of the GMC at Intersect,
to try and identify as kind of a business development and enterprise onboarding workstream as well.
And I very much foresee that a lot of the work that's going on within the Pentad,
there will be lots of crossover there.
I think part of this is about very clearly defining roles and responsibilities
alongside those opportunities.
Inevitably, it'll be a bit messy and scrappy at first,
but at the end of the day, it's kind of a nice problem to have.
And I think Intersect Product Committee, for example,
can play a very helpful role in this
alongside anything else that's going on as well.
Awesome. Thank you, James.
Maybe one last question and then we close it from Alpha.
Oh, hey guys thank you for um the opportunity
so my question is directly to feel um first of all it's i'm thrilled to have the opportunity to ask you this directly uh it's something i have probably put chip on that being
It's something I probably could chip on.
I've been expecting a response from the EMURGO Academy regarding this for almost a year now.
Oh, sorry, since the EMURGO Academy was dissolved.
It's regarding onboarding into Cardano.
A lot of the, because I took some of the courses at Amerigo Academy back in 2021,
and since Amerigo Academy technically doesn't operate anymore,
a lot of those resources, I think, educational resources,
I think, still a lot of them are very relevant. And I was wondering if it is within the, what's
it called, the agenda of EMERGO to release some of those educational resources.
So developers within the ecosystem, especially because I've taken some cohorts myself here
in Nigeria, I've taught software development, or Cardano, I've taught Clutus and Akin and
stuff.
And we're in need of a lot of those resources, right?
A lot of them are updated and whatnot.
So I was wondering if Emrago has the intention of releasing those resources,
making them open source to the community.
Yeah, that's my question.
Thank you, Peter.
Sure.
Happy to address it very cleanly and precisely.
We made a difficult decision to shutter
Emurgo Academy early in this year.
But as part of that closure, we handed over all of the IP
and documentation courses to Intersect.
So Intersect possesses that at present.
That's open source.
You're welcome to it.
Thank you, Phil.
No problem.
So thank you everyone for joining.
Any last word of wisdom from any of the panelists?
If not, I wish you a happy Christmas and happy new year.
Actually, Giorgio, there was a couple of questions as well from Shaggy that I just wanted to address because I saw them in the chat.
One is around how do we hold them accountable?
In the contracts that Intercept are signing, we have clear delivery dates and we'll publish those in the new year.
And we'll be holding them accountable to those
delivery dates so we'll make that happen and be transparent where we can and then when it comes
to sustainability I think there's the I think broadly speaking the awareness that transaction
volumes at the moment contribute less than five percent of treasury income and we're we're
Kodano is relying on the reward mechanism for filling the treasury,
right? To grow transaction volume, this is exactly why we're doing this proposal and exactly why we
need to focus on these big integrations into 2026 and a renewed effort on growth and adoption in
2026 to do exactly as you mentioned, you know, to make the treasury sustainable and to make Cardano
more broadly sustainable, not just the treasury. and to make Cardano more broadly sustainable,
not just the treasury.
Yeah.
Anyway, but that was just,
I wanted to quickly address Shaggy there
and hope that helped Shaggy.
And otherwise, have a great Christmas, everyone.
Thank you, Jack.
Fred, do you want to have the closing,
the last word?
No, I just want to say I'm extremely bullish on 2026
on all factors.
I think we're moving ahead really fast. I think a lot of things are really lining up I just want to say I'm extremely bullish on 2026 on all factors.
I think we're moving ahead really fast.
I think a lot of things are really lining up.
And, you know, I'm seeing so many positive signals around.
I know that everybody's looking at the market action and so forth.
But we just had an internal discussion about it today. And we're not alone feeling bullish in the Cardano Foundation.
I know the other entities around us are feeling bullish as well.
But also I spoke to several market makers. feeling bullish in the Cardano Foundation. I know the other entities around us are feeling bullish as well.
But also I spoke to several market makers.
I spoke to several last exchanges that have been following this space.
And Cardano is really carving out its name for itself.
And by closing these potholes and getting these integrations done,
this is going to be a very busy year, but it's also going to be a year where we're going to leave our mark out there.
All right. Thank you very much and we can start the music again
bye merry christmas eric happy holidays everybody thanks for joining everybody happy holidays Thank you.
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