Welcome to the twenty-eighth edition of the Intersect Development Report! This exciting bumper edition discusses Chang upgrade, Rare Evo, membership milestones with exciting news for enterprises, committees, and working groups, the Cardano constitution, Intersect leadership, governance and community tooling, and more!

Cardano Chang Update - Essentially Member Reading

The hard fork working group met again this afternoon to review feedback and evidence from the community and ecosystem. Following multiple Q&As and community spaces, the news remains positive, with stake pool operators reaching their Chang readiness threshold (standing at 84% as of today). We’ve received feedback from the community and ready statements from many leading DApps, tools, and wallets. Many exchanges have also shown positive momentum overnight, with metrics continuing to improve.

Following a go/no-go call with the working group, consensus was reached to target September 1 to initiate the hard fork. This adjustment allows Exchanges and DApps a little more time to make their necessary upgrades, ensuring the ecosystem is as ready as it can be for a significant milestone in Cardano’s journey.

This is a significant moment for Cardano as it marks the first time a Cardano upgrade has involved many community members and engineers across key entities in the decision-making process. This shift in governance marks a step change in how we as a community make decisions. With Chang now imminent, the power of on-chain decision-making will be in the hands of the community, empowering each member to play a crucial role in Cardano's journey.

Chang is on the launchpad, with Sunday, September 1, the next targeted date for triggering the upgrade. Just a little longer to wait. We’ll keep you updated on the community's progress!

The hard fork working group is here to help!

As part of our readiness, on August 21, the PreProd network upgrade was submitted (see transaction).

Next week, the hard fork working group will hold two more open Q&As with DApps. Check our Discord and social channels for dates and links.

Please let us know if a specific reason or dependency prevents your DApp or project from upgrading. Contact us on X at @Intersectmbo or hard-fork@intersectmbo.org as soon as possible. The hard fork working group will continue to review feedback daily.

Intersect leadership update

Nigel Hemsley, our COO, has stepped down from his role at Intersect. We warmly thank Nigel for his significant contributions, which have made Intersect successful in 2024. Nigel will always be a valued community member.

We're excited to announce Alex Pestchanker as our new Executive Director, a founding member and former non-executive board member. Alex is a visionary entrepreneur with extensive experience in business and exponential technologies. Since 2021, he has been pivotal in the Cardano ecosystem, co-founding the Latam Cardano Community and serving as CTO of Token Allies DAO.

Alex shared his vision for Intersect: ‘I am honored to step into the role of Executive Director at Intersect, a key institution for the Cardano community, which I deeply value. I am committed to the challenge of transforming Intersect into a truly member-driven organization where our members are at the heart of everything we do. Together, we will build the brighter future we all deserve.’

Rare Evo

It's time to celebrate! As we wrap up our presence at Rare Evo 2024, from our booth, we engaged with current members and the broader Cardano community, resulting in over 100 new Intersect associates and members!

We also had the chance to connect with several community hub managers, including Kavinda from Sri Lanka and Mercy from Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as new hub managers—stay tuned for more updates! Members also hosted and supported keynotes and workshops on Cardano governance, constitutional workshops, the annual budget framework, and participation tools.

Additionally, we conducted interviews with key community members and Intersect staff on various topics, which will be released in the coming weeks. Plus, Our Sri Lanka hub manager, Kavinda, attended Rare Evo, and jumped in!

Membership update
At Rare Evo we connected with 100s of community members, with many of them becoming new members - check it out:

Date period	Associates	Individual Members	Enterprise Members	Total
16th - 17th Aug (Rare Evo event days)	60	31	0	91
16th - 20th Aug (Rare Evo + 3 days)	68	51	4	123
Intersect Totals (21st Aug)	1,963	667	20	2,650

We’ve now welcomed 20 enterprise members!

Enterprise Membership

Our worst-kept secret, we're pleased to announce that Enterprise membership is now available. This tier offers numerous benefits, including the opportunity to apply for positions on Intersect committees and working groups, participate in open-source initiatives, access grants and future work packages, and collaborate with other enterprises, projects, and organizations. Much more will come on benefits as we build this out together with members.

Community hubs

It’s been a busy week across our community hubs, and we’re thrilled to announce that 35% of all individual memberships are now attributed to our hubs! Congratulations to all the hub managers and members for their contributions—keep up the great work!

We also have updates this week from:

Japan community hub
Last week, our Japan hub hosted an X space on August 16, with 206 participants. Don’t worry if you missed it you can watch the recording. They are also organizing meetups in Fukuoka on August 25 (register here) and tomorrow (August 24) in Okayama (register here). We’re proud to highlight that the Japan hub has surpassed 170 individual members—the highest of any country! Congratulations!

Africa community hub
Our WADA (Africa) Hub held a Central Africa in-person town hall in Goma on August 17, with 38 attendees. You can view the post on X and follow the WADA Hub X account to stay updated on their activities and events. Mercy from WADA also attended Rare Evo.

Committees and working groups

Intersect is designed to be steered by its members so that the future of Cardano is community-led. The membership body provides this steering via standing committees, which are designed to be community-led, with community members taking an active role in influencing the future of Cardano. You can learn more about Intersect committees in our knowledgebase.

Upcoming committee elections

Are you an individual or enterprise member? Congratulations, you are eligible to apply for a seat on an Intersect committee! And, of course, you are also eligible to vote on candidates once we close applications. This benefit does not apply to all; associates are not eligible to apply for committee seats or vote in the election and other AMM votes. If you are an associate member and would like to participate, please visit the member portal and upgrade your membership before the deadline (30th September).

You can learn more about the committee elections on our knowledge base, and for members, you can view the Q&A session on Discord

Open source committee - voting testing

Today is the last day to nominate yourself for Intersect’s open source committee (OSC). Next week, voting will open on Friday, August 30, 2024. Members will receive an email with details regarding how to participate in the vote. The voting policy details can be found here. 

Be sure to learn more about the candidates by Attending the open interview/intro sessions on Tuesday, September 3rd, at 1 pm UTC and Wednesday, September 11th, at 12 pm UTC. The voting period will run until Friday, 13th September. 

ICYMI: Open source office hours have moved to Tuesdays at 12 pm UTC, and open source committee meetings have moved to Thursdays at 1 pm UTC. Both of these meetings occur in the same week, every second week.

For those who want to participate, the next OSO hours will be Tuesday, September 3, and the next OSC meeting will be Thursday, September 5.

Core infrastructure roadmap (CIR) working group update

We’re excited to share the latest work from the core infrastructure roadmap working group. The group has developed a comprehensive update outlining key proposals for Cardano’s infrastructure from 2025 onwards. The working group is creating a strategic guide, identifying essential development areas to ensure the Cardano ecosystem's long-term success and scalability.

CIR is updating the guide to a more accessible format on its knowledge base platform. The updated roadmap is being drafted and will be publicly available here, where community members can review and engage with the proposed initiatives. Stay tuned for more details as we refine and share our vision for Cardano’s future infrastructure.

Constitutional update

Rare Evo provided the Civics committee at Intersect a valuable opportunity to host a constitutional workshop, gathering crucial feedback from attendees. Workshops have also been held in Osaka, Johannesburg, and Lagos, with more scheduled in the Netherlands, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Vietnam. Attendance is strong, and we’re grateful to the dedicated hosts and community members contributing to Cardano’s governance.

Check the calendar and sign up for a workshop near you.

Additionally, minor updates were made to the interim constitution after its initial publication on the CC portal, reflected in the Chang hard fork genesis file. These include wording adjustments for consistency with CIP-1694, an increased delegate maximum, and updates to VTCC-01 and PCM-03 in the guardrails appendix. You can read the interim Constitution here.

Community grants

This week, we provide updates on the progress of our grantees as they complete their milestones. Once all of these milestones have been signed off, you can find full details in the grant project space.

The Cardano transaction library (CTL) grant to support new Conway primitives and implement a CIP-95-enabled wallet connector led by MLabs has reached completion. This will benefit CTL users, who will unlock the ability to interact with CIP-1694 primitives via CIP-95 wallet interfaces.

Bloxico is reaching completion on milestone 5 for the constitution committee portal. This milestone is based around admin access and admin procedures for the constitution's initial hosting.

The Poeditor grant to integrate a robust translation management system (TMS) to help the community contributors translate the default English (en-UK) version into various languages is also in the final sign-off stages. Poeditor will be configured to support translations for Govtool and the Constitutional Committee Portal and integrated with the Intersect GitHub account to manage localization files efficiently.

Congratulations to all for your hard work and dedication to making decentralized governance a reality and pushing the boundaries of what is possible on Cardano.

DReps workshops

On August 31, Taichi Yokoyama will conduct an in-person DRep workshop in Tokyo, Japan. The event offers participants insights into the roles and responsibilities of a DRep and the overall governance framework of the Cardano blockchain. Register Here. You can also view a complete list of upcoming workshops here.

Intersect is conducting a five-minute multiple-choice survey to understand the community's thoughts, explore DReps' backgrounds and motivations, identify whom they represent, and uncover any barriers to becoming a DRep. Take the DRep survey

We want to highlight the importance of members' feedback on this vital subject. We'll share the results in a future update, so watch this space!

Governance tooling

Last week in Rare Evo, Intersect hosted a workshop on Cardano’s governance tooling. We collected vital positive feedback about the usability of these tools as well as ideas for improvements. The full presentation can be found here.

Over the past eight months, governance tooling has been tested with over 6,000 users, allowing Intersect to gather feedback and make consistent improvements. With Chang upgrade #1 coming soon, contributing teams are making final touches to prepare GovTool and the CC Portal for the technical bootstrapping phase (post-hard fork).

Special attention is given to keeping the tool CIP-119 compliant, enabling proper DRep metadata management.

Sanchogov.tools allow a user to test full governance, while preview.gov.tools allows testing of governance features in the bootstrapping phase in preparation for Chang upgrade #1.

SWARM town hall updates

Please note that August’s town hall will be a week later than usual - Thursday, August 29 - because so many people are busy at Rare Evo.

But after that, we revert to our usual schedule:

• Town Hall Planning Workgroup, session 1: Thursday September 5. Register here
• Town Hall Planning Workgroup, session 2: Thursday September 12. Register here
• September Town Hall and After Townhall: Thursday, September 26. Register here

Planning workgroup sessions are where you can get involved in shaping the town hall to fit your needs. They are open to all—you don’t need to be part of any other working group to attend. We’d love to see more people join the sessions!

Also, you can sign up to run an after-town-hall session here. After town hall takes place straight after the main town hall event - anyone can run a breakout room on a topic they care about, and the Swarm team can help you plan, document, and facilitate if needed - just ask in the signup form.

This week’s reminders

• Check out the delivery assurance monthly milestone report, which provides a progress update on Cardano continuity suppliers for the previous month. Read the full report on our knowledge base for more details on each supplier and their milestones.
• Our core infrastructure roadmap (CIR) working group now has a public Discord announcement channel. Visit and join this channel, and you can read more about this working group in our knowledge base.

 Important Intersect resources

• Intersect knowledge base - Frequently updated, our knowledge base provides granular detail on our internal governance structure, committees and working groups, and funding opportunities, among many other items.
• Intersect website - The latest news, roadmap, and more.
• GovTool - Take part in testing governance actions on the SanchoNet testnet.
• Discord / Telegram - Join our lively community and interact with committees, working groups, and other members.
• Social - We are continually active on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn, so follow us there to stay updated on our latest news and insights!

 

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.