Under Intersect’s influence, the community's development of the core Cardano code has widened significantly.

It’s no secret that Cardano, the highly efficient and reliable top-tier blockchain, has been the brainchild of Input | Output(IO) and its founding partners since 2015. IO’s vision has always been that Cardano will belong to the whole world, and with the arrival of the Voltaire era, that vision is approaching achievement.

Several organizations have formed a unique community of developers with a shared vision for a better future. You can read about these organizations on the Intersect website.

Intersect is the member-based organization for Cardano. The Chang upgrade transferred control from the founding entities to the community of ada holders and established an entirely new governance regime. Intersect facilitated the Chang upgrade and established processes and procedures to ensure that Cardano will continue to be developed by best-in-class developers following fundamental research.

Intersect’s efforts are already producing encouraging results. This blog will first present the results, followed by the backstory explaining how the results are the inevitable consequence of the structures, policies, and procedures that Intersect has implemented. 

The charts below were prepared with assistance from Bitergia, an Intersect enterprise member with outstanding abilities in analytics. The first chart  shows the contributors to Cardano core development in 2023:

The next chart shows the contributors in 2024:

IO is still the main contributor, but its contribution is being complemented by an increasing number of community-based contributors, most of whom are enterprise members of Intersect. Development contributions to core Cardano by organizations other than Input | Output have increased by 179% – from 16.45% in 2023 to 45.97% in 2024.

Cardano is moving to a fully open-source model, with unique innovations that ensure sustainable future development, provide adequate returns for developers, address real market needs, and always keep its tradition of valuing quality and reliability over speed out the door.

The story behind the results

The key to the sustainability of Cardano development is the paid open source model. The main components are:

• The code for us initiative allows anyone to commission specific features necessary for the market.
• The maintainer retainer program, funded by the Cardano treasury, supports open-source contributors and ensures that the people who build and maintain critical software are fairly compensated for their work.
• Intersect’s open source committee(OSC) serves as the decision-making body ensuring open-source projects align with sustainability, security, and commercial viability goals.
• Intersect’s open source office(OSO) is responsible for the day-to-day operational management of open-source projects. It ensures that projects receive the necessary support at each stage of the software development lifecycle and provides comprehensive operational and strategic support to the Cardano ecosystem.
• The Intersect budget committee acts on advice from the OSC to fund specific projects from the Cardano treasury.
• The OSO vets contributors through the contribution ladder to ensure high-quality work.
• The incubation program and contribution ladder at Intersect are offered as optional services to contributors. These programs form the foundation of how open-source projects and contributors are nurtured and guided through their development journey within the Cardano ecosystem. They create clear, structured pathways for projects and individuals, ensuring the most impactful and promising efforts receive the support they need to thrive.

The paid open source model is a world-first innovation that will ensure Cardano continues to be a top-tier blockchain that is becoming more decentralized daily. Watch Christian Taylor, head of the open source office at Intersect, explain his vision.

Intersect’s contribution to the Cardano ecosystem is already showing evidence of its potential to drive the adoption of blockchain technology and decentralized governance, replacing the world's financial systems with systems written and controlled by the people for the people.