#project-catalyst ## What is Project Catalyst? The aim of Project Catalyst is to "create, fund and deliver the future of Cardano. Project Catalyst is an experiment in community innovation, providing a framework to turn ideas into impactful real world projects." Cardano is funding projects on its platform using Project Catalyst. They allocated 700M+ USD for this. There are currently 50,000+ people that are a part of this and this number is growing. ## Where to begin? The first ~30 minutes of this video is a great introduction to Project Catalyst: [Intro to Catalyst Video by Catalyst Swarm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17gQhua_hJA) These are community websites with lots of information but info may not be up to date! - https://projectcatalyst.org/ - https://cardanocataly.st/ Subscribe to the official Catalyst mailing list: https://bit.ly/3dSZJvx See [[Cardano Links]] for all links related to Project Catalyst and more. ## The Basics ### Town Halls Every week on Wednesday 17UTC, there is the townhall meeting. These are meetings in which 100s of people participate. Any and all things Project Catalyst are talked about. During each meeting, there are breakout rooms of around 10 people. These are great opportunities to network. You can register for the meetings with this [link](https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtduyupzMvHNUczCQwfFJGcXzmw2lDwkIf). Make sure to add it to your calendar. You can watch all past Town Halls on IOG's Youtube channel: https://bit.ly/2UxT9Uv ### Proposals Proposals are made from [ideascale](https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/community/login). You will need to signup to view them. This is what they look like on Ideascale. You can browse current and past proposals on Ideascale to get a feel. ![[Pasted image 20220605170103.png]] ### Funds There is a funding round every 3-4 months. In May we concluded Fund 8. We're now going into Fund 9. Find more about Fund 9 schedule here: https://cardanocataly.st/en/funds/ ### Challenges Each Fund has categories for proposals called challenges. You will find them in [ideascale](https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/community/login) as campaigns. ![[Pasted image 20220601142528.png]] Here's an example challenge from Fund 8: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/campaigns/26433/about This is a technical challenge, focused on this question: ``` How can we create a positive developer experience that **helps the developer focus on building successful apps? ``` Not all challenges are technical. For example the **Grow Afrıca, Grow Cardano** challenge: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/campaigns/26442/about You can submit yours own proposals through [ideascale](https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/community/login). ### Proposal Assessors (PAs) The easiest way to get involved, and make a good amount of money, is to become a PA. Before Fund 9, PAs were known as Community Advisors (CAs). Anything you learn about CAs is likely to apply to PAs. Learn more about PA work here: [[Proposal Assessors]]