Welcome to the sixteenth edition of the Intersect Development Report! This week’s update includes many announcements and exciting developments: interim Constitutional Committee elections, applications for global constitutional workshops open, Intersect joins Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation, the members' area is in beta release, and much more!

We’re now members of Hyperledger & Linux Foundation

We are thrilled to announce we have joined Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. This announcement was made during Consensus in Austin, Texas, marking a significant milestone in our journey toward open-source innovation and collaboration.

By joining the Hyperledger Foundation, Intersect joins an esteemed group of developers, enterprises, and organizations committed to building and enhancing blockchain frameworks and tools. We look forward to collaborating with industry giants like IBM, Visa, and American Express to drive the future of decentralized blockchains.

Christian Taylor, Head of the Open Source Office at Intersect had this to say about the membership:

“As a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem, joining Hyperledger Foundation reflects our commitment to shaping the future of the Cardano blockchain with open-source innovation at heart. Together with our members, we journeyed to redefine possibilities, drive collaboration, and advance the boundaries of decentralized and open technology.” 

Read more here

Register your candidacy and join the interim Constitutional Committee

As we move closer to on-chain governance, we’re excited to announce that we are facilitating the elections for the interim Constitutional Committee, and encouraging applications to join it!

The interim CC will play an important role in upholding the interim constitution and enabling the first stage of the Chang upgrade. The interim CC will comprise seven members, each sitting for a one-year term to help maintain security and continuity during the interim period. Along with pioneer entities IOG, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, and Intersect, three remaining seats are open to community members. Those who have been active and contributed to SanchoNet, attended DRep workshops, and participated in the CIP-1694 workshops are particularly encouraged to apply.

Registration is now open, and voting via the Summon Platform will open later in June to elect the three remaining seats. Find out more and register your candidacy today!

Members area beta launch and 2025 membership options

Members were invited to try out the new members area earlier this week! Currently, we’re seeking feedback and usage stats in beta to develop new features and improve UX. In addition, Intersect members can confirm their 2025 membership. In the first beta release, payment is only in fiat, but options to pay in ada are launching soon and take us out of beta. Credit to Intersect member Anvil, who has been developing components of the member's area!

In future releases, we will add support for organizations and enterprises, easy access to Intersect updates, events including town halls, and much more depending on member feedback during the beta. You can get a sneak peek at upcoming features via the members area roadmap, which can be found here.

Alongside the Intersect members area, we have also released the new membership page, which provides more details on tiers and benefits! We’re looking forward to hearing the feedback during beta and building out the members area with members. Check it out here.

May’s Intersect town hall

On the 28th of May, we held this month's Intersect Town Hall which highlighted  Intersect Community Hubs opening worldwide and the opportunities spinning out regionally. We also shared updates on the constitutional journey and how members can get involved!

You can view the recording of the Town Hall meeting here. The next Intersect Town Hall will be held on June 25th, led by Intersect member Swarm. 

Consensus

This week, Intersect was present at Consensus 2024 in Austin, Texas—the world's largest, longest-running, and highly influential gathering, bringing together all sides of the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 community.

Our presence this year was powered by members Genius Yield, Genius X, EMURGO, and Hosky, with RareNetwork organizing a huge Intersect side event that had over 1,000 people on the guestlist!

The event has been a huge success, with talks, workshops, and important sessions centered around the development of technology and the advancement of ecosystems such as Cardano’s.

Delivery assurance

We are pleased to announce that work commenced last week on our contract with Dquadrant for feature and regression testing in preparation for the Chang hard fork. This work will be managed via our Delivery Assurance team, the Technical Steering Committee, and the hard fork working group.

The work includes Plutus V3 cost plan testing and benchmarking, governance action and guardrails testing, and more. The testing augments and complements the quality and integration work carried out by our continuity suppliers, which builds the features required for the Conway era. The outcomes will contribute to the existing testing framework and harness, which will be reused for future hard forks and feature developments.

The Dquadrant team has proven its expertise in previous major releases and hard fork testing. The start of this work marks a major milestone in readiness for the upcoming Chang hard fork.

Community tooling

Stablecoin research grant
A stablecoin research project led by Appold, in partnership with the stablecoin working group, has been awarded a grant to investigate the feasibility, advantages, and challenges of natively onboarding USDT and USDC onto the Cardano blockchain. This research explores the potential benefits, risks, technical considerations, and costs of integrating these stablecoins into the Cardano ecosystem. This initiative is among many across our ecosystem, working towards a healthy and balanced mix of stablecoin options.

Constitutional Workshops
In case you missed it, Intersect is facilitating 50 constitutional workshops worldwide, drafting Cardano's Constitution to ensure it meets the diverse needs of our global community. You can apply and learn more here if you want to become a workshop host. 

To ensure Cardano has a broad geographical spread of workshops, we are calling on our members to participate in evaluating applications. If you have 2-4 hours of capacity between 14 June and 2 July, and would like to be involved in this important phase of the constitutional journey, please fill out this quick form, which will be open until 7 June. Please note that if you have applied to host a constitutional workshop, you cannot participate in the evaluation.

Education and multimedia grants
Daniela Alves and Maria Carmo delivered their second milestone as part of their education and multimedia grant, a great effort to capture the Youth of Portuguese-speaking Countries. The Youth of Portuguese-speaking Countries organization showed interest in new collaborative activities and participating more actively in the Cardano ecosystem. You can watch the recording on their YouTube channel.

Community hubs

Japan
The Japan Community Hub has been very busy showcasing Intersect at various local events. You can find out more about the events hosted last week here. Fast forward to this week, the Japan Community Hub has hosted a Line Live Talk showcasing the work Intersect has been doing.

LATAM
The LATAM Community Hub will host its first virtual Town Hall event this Friday, May 31st. If you want to participate in the discussions, please click here to view the event on X (Twitter).

Africa
We are expanding our global presence by launching our fourth hub - the WADA (Africa) Community Hub. This is a significant step in our journey, and we are thrilled to introduce our new Hub Manager, Josh Fielding, and his colleague, Mercy Fordwoo, who we met this week at Consensus to celebrate the hub's launch. Stay tuned for more updates and opportunities to get involved…

If you're passionate about driving positive change and nurturing community initiatives, your involvement can catalyze impactful projects and contribute to community growth and enrichment. To apply for a Community Hub grant, click here.

Governance tooling

Govtool will soon be available and running again, with a beta release shortly after. The team is adding final touches to enhance the governance tooling, allowing users to immerse themselves fully in the on-chain governance experience. You can delegate voting power, propose governance actions, discuss, and vote on them. We encourage everyone to stay tuned for the beta release and continue testing the current implementation of SanchoGov.tools once it's back online.

SanchoNet Govtool participation dashboard is now available on participation.sanchogov.tools. From this dashboard, everyone can keep track of Govtool usage and participate in its testing.

And here are this week's stats from SanchoNet:

Essential Cardano360

On the 30th of May, Intersect was featured again in Essential Cardano360. The episode included updates from Valeria Devaux on the DRep Pioneer workshop leaders program, Lorenzo Bruno on exciting developments in our governance tooling, and Terence and Christian with news about our open-source developments. Intersect member and DRep Pioneer Workshop Leader Hosky also joined us!

You can view the feature here.

This week's reminders 

In this week's reminders section, we’d like to highlight:

We’re hiring! - we’re looking for a highly motivated and experienced Membership sales and account executive to join our team on a nine-month full-time contract. During this important period of growth and development for Intersect, this role will be pivotal in growing our membership base, mainly through the introduction and membership sign-up of projects and organizations working within the Cardano ecosystem and beyond.

Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading!

And finally, we’re interested in hearing more from you about subjects important to you, such as Cardano’s governance. Your ideas and suggestions are crucial to us. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please get in touch via email, X, or LinkedIn.