Cardano Foundation Launches 2023 Activity Report

The Cardano Foundation, an independent, Swiss-based not-for-profit organization tasked with advancing the public digital infrastructure Cardano, launched its second Activity Report today. The report showcases the Foundation’s work across its three core focus areas of operational resilience, education, and adoption. 

Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, said, "As we continue to work at pace to advance the Cardano infrastructure, this report provides an opportunity to take stock of the scope and scale of what we achieved during the year. The team has delivered exceptional work, especially considering the nimble size of the Cardano Foundation. As we navigate the complexities of this brave new digital age, I call upon enterprises and social systems to join us on our blockchain journey. We invite you to partake in a future that is resilient, equitable, and transparent.”

In keeping with its central mission of bridging Cardano and the world by working to progress Cardano as a public digital utility, the Cardano Foundation has focused intensively on scaling the diversity, quality, and quantity of activities on Cardano. To do that, it must tackle a number of hurdles, from the cost and complexity of implementation and ownership to lack of comfort with blockchain. 

The 2023 Activity Report showcases several new projects:

Increasing operational resilience through initiatives, such as:

- Enhanced network monitoring through a project to build real-time monitoring capabilities of global block propagation, to be able to evaluate the health of the network and gain insights to help stake pool operators (SPOs) to enhance their operations. The Foundation’s solution has enabled the collection of data across five continents.

- The advent of Voltaire, Cardano’s development phase relating to governance, has included the release of the first draft of CIP-1694. This Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP), co-written by the Foundation, introduced a new, more inclusive and equitable on-chain governance model for Cardano, ensuring every ada holder can have a voice in Cardano’s governance.

Enabling real-world education to a variety of stakeholders, such as:

- Successful new partnerships to advance blockchain adoption and showcase the versatility of the Cardano blockchain, including with Brazilian state-owned energy company Petrobras and full-stack apparel ecosystem Merchadise.

- Providing a spectrum of tools and expert resources at no cost, including the Cardano Academy, a free resource housing the Cardano Blockchain Certified Associate (CBCA) course.

- Having identified a need for high quality educational materials about third generation blockchain that are accessible to all, the Foundation began to develop the Cardano Explorer so that legal stakeholders can verify that Cardano does what it should.

Fostering adoption through novel initiatives, such as:

- The launch of Aiken, a new open source programming language, in April 2023. The language provides savings in execution costs of up to 90%, lowering barriers for entry into the ecosystem and supporting new innovations.

- Freely accessible tools developed by the Foundation like the open source Identity Wallet as well as the searchable, data provisioning tool Ledger Sync, both meant to drive adoption and accelerate enterprise onboarding.

- Sustained progress in the Cardano Foundation’s partnership with Switzerland for UNHCR where the Cardano community has already raised 5.2 million ada to support displaced people.

Last year the Foundation’s report included a financial summary. This year the information will be released in a separate report in the second half of 2024, after the annual audit.

The Foundation’s 2023 Activity Report can be found here: https://cardanofoundation.org/en/activity-report/ 

About the Cardano Foundation

The Cardano Foundation is an independent, Swiss-based not-for-profit organization tasked with advancing Cardano as a public digital infrastructure across a wide range of industries. In order to achieve economic escape velocity for Cardano, on-chain activities must include a balanced mix of legacy and blockchain-native use cases. Scaling the diversity, quality, and quantity of activities on Cardano is therefore core to the Foundation’s mission. This goal faces a number of hurdles, from the cost and complexity of implementation and ownership to lack of comfort with blockchain. The Cardano Foundation addresses such gaps with targeted initiatives on operational resilience, education, and adoption.

For more information, visit https://cardanofoundation.org/.