It’s been another big week at Intersect, with a face-to-face workshop steered by the Civics Committee. The Cardano community made significant strides toward decentralized governance. Let’s dive into the week's topics.

Intersect Ecosystem Process Development Workshop: A Resounding Success!

We're thrilled to share the phenomenal outcome of the recent Ecosystem Process Development Workshop, held on February 19-20 at the PCubed Offices in London.

Thanks to the dedicated participation of Intersect’s Civics Committee members, subject matter experts, representatives from IOG and the Cardano Foundation, and the expert facilitation of PCubed, the workshop proved incredibly productive. Together, we made significant progress in:-

• Developing “First Pass” processes for Intersect's governance mandates.
• Charting a clear path for implementing new and effective systems that enable ecosystem collaboration.
• Sharing invaluable insights and expertise from diverse perspectives.

The energy and collaborative spirit at the event were truly inspiring, and we're confident that the outcomes will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of how we all interact and operate within Intersect. From building an understanding of key ecosystem roles to defining high-level roadmap goals to the "in the trenches" work of maintaining issues and bugs in code bases, – effective processes will drive everything that makes Intersect function as a community-empowering member-based organization. This group will help shape a clearer path for everyone to get things done in the Cardano Ecosystem.

The Open Source Program Office (OSPO) - Cardano Open Source Strategy

The OSPO steers Cardano's open-source strategy. Cardano’s open-source approach serves to incubate faster development and community involvement. It allows for greater innovation through collaboration with the broader ecosystem and ensures Cardano’s open-source software is maintained and fit for purpose.

A series of pilot testing initiatives focusing on legal compliance, collaboration, inclusivity within the ecosystem, and diversity are being organized through the open-source office. These pilot programs aim to glean valuable insights and refine processes based on feedback. This will be the test case to validate the strategy and its execution. Through this pilot, we will validate the Proof of Concept that Cardano is open-source and contribute to developing a dynamic and ever-evolving open-source framework.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can participate, please make sure to join the OSC-feedback channel on our Discord.

OSC Publishes Updates to their Roadmap

The open source committee recently published an update to their Q1 & Q2 2024 roadmap to include timings around the formation of the open source strategy and The OPSO’s first open-source pilots.

Community tooling and funding opportunities

14 contracts for the core technology pertaining to the Cardano network have now been signed, paid, and are currently delivering. This first cohort aims to build out Cardano’s 1694 governance technology, updates to the core technology, and greater integrations. For example, the Wallet Connector Upgrade CIP, wallet integrations and governance functionality, establishing metadata standards, and Cardano Ballot voting analysis for the temperature check on CIP-1694.

All of our cohort 2 grants have also now been awarded. This covers the Proposal Discussion Forum awarded to WeDeliver, the Constitutional Committee Portal awarded to Bloxico, and the DRep Campaign platform awarded to LidoNation. We will keep you updated on their progress over the coming months.

Five awards for the Education and multimedia category are pending the Membership and Community Committee (MCC) review, which we hope to announce next week.

The Open grant category will remain open until the end of March, with a new strategy underway to involve the community in helping Intersect evaluate grants by getting together a working group that will feed into the MCC for ratification.

The Inclusion and Accessibility category will be opening soon, along with the announcement of cohort 4.

Intersect Events - TEAMZ WEB3 / AI SUMMIT 2024

Intersect will attend one of the world's largest and most influential events in the Japanese Web3 industry. The event will occur at the Toranomon Hills Forum in Tokyo on April 13~14, 2024. This year, the main themes will focus on applying blockchain technology to AI. The Summit will serve as a platform to maximize the synergy between these two technologies, bringing together industry pioneers and experts to stimulate discussions and knowledge-sharing. Intersect will collaborate with member organizations in Japan and present the latest developments on the main stage. We’d love to see you there!

Intersect on Essential Cardano 360

In other news, Intersect will be presenting on Essential Cardano 360 next week. Members of the team will talk about what they do at Intersect and highlight areas of the Cardano roadmap that excite them! Tune in on Thursday the 29th Feb at 17:00 UTC.

Community Events

With community-led events occurring across the globe, there are multiple opportunities to collaborate and celebrate together. Over the past week, we’ve seen community events in Portugal and the US.

Community Meetup - Portugal - Feb 2024

CIP-1694 workshop - Indy USA - organized by Intersect and Civics committee member Adam Rusch - Feb 2024

Looking further ahead, Intersect members @adamKDean and @yuta_cryptox are hosting a dedicated governance and Intersect workshop in Tokyo on March 16th! If you’d like to take part, please register your interest.

SanchoNet Update

This week, SanchoNet data reports on a part week given the reset following the release of Cardano node 8.8.0-pre. It shows healthy growth and continued use following the testnet reset. SanchoNet is about introducing the Cardano community to governance features from CIP-1694 in a controlled testnet environment. You can read more about SanchoNet here.

Cexplorer SanchoNet release

We are excited to share that one of the largest and oldest Cardano block explorers, cexplorer.io, has been released onto SanchoNET, enabling easily accessible granular analysis of governance actions on SanchoNET. If you've never used Cexplorer, this video by NOVA Pool gives a great overview to orient yourself.

GovTool Update

Following the SanchoNet reset, the GovTool is inaccessible as our product team is currently upgrading SanchoNet Govtool to incorporate the latest node update with the newest version of DB-sync, you can follow our progress here. SanchoNet GovTool will be open again for a fresh round of testing soon.

And that’s it for this week's update. A progression requires putting one step before the other and pushing toward our shared destination. Together, we can chart the path toward decentralized Governance and a truly self-sufficient Cardano. If you’d like to participate in any of the above subjects, join Intersect today.

Finally, we’re always interested in hearing more from you about any of the subjects important to you around Cardano’s governance. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please get in touch via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn.