Intersect Development Update #15 - May 24th

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of the Intersect Development Report! This edition includes applications to run a constitutional workshop, a Chang update including CIP-0069, new member resources, community tooling, and the latest from our community hubs. Let’s dive into the details!

Apply to host a constitutional workshop!

We are excited to announce the next step in Cardano’s governance journey—a global consultation process to produce a draft Constitution, created by the community itself, leading up to the Constitution Convention in Buenos Aires in December.

Intersect members - you now have the opportunity to host and run consultation workshops in your local area, wherever you are in the world, funded by dedicated Intersect grants. Read more here and learn how to apply on our knowledge base. Applications will close on June 13th.

Chang upgrade

The developments to Chang are continuing, with our hard-fork working group discussing how best to incorporate CIP-0069 into the scope. The hard-fork working group has raised a formal change request to include CIP-0069 in the Chang upgrade!

As part of the late change request, we have formed a backlog working group to discuss how scope changes are decided in the future. We recommend you check here for working group updates on our knowledge base if you are interested. You can view the Chang timeline and some of the frequently asked questions by the hard-fork working group here.

Delivery assurance

Continuity partner WellTyped, has successfully reached the LSM project's important milestone by demonstrating to the engineering team code paths for creating, opening, and performing batch lookups within LSM run files, including tests and benchmarks.

UTxO-LMDB solution

The Input Output Infrastructure (IOI) team has been working on improvements to allow out-of-memory storage of key data structures used by the Cardano node. Bounding the node's total memory usage will ensure long-term scalability for stake pools, wallets, and other node users.

The solution will move the UTxO, stake address & delegation, and stake distribution from memory to out-of-memory storage, bounding the amount of RAM required and taking advantage of modern SSDs. Engineers at IOI have been developing the first solution using the off-the-shelf Lightning Memory-Mapped Database (the UTxO-LMDB Solution) for around a year.

More updates will be announced in the coming weeks, and volunteers will be sought to assist with development testing and tuning. You can also find out more information here.

Working group updates

The Open Source committee has published a ‘State of the Union’ document, which provides a story on Open Source - issues, strategy pillars, workflow mapping, pilot roadmaps, and more.

Read it here.

New member resources

We’ve created shared resources for Intersect members to create material to support their working groups and local meet-ups! This pack will contain important tools and materials that members need when attending and delivering events and the ability to brand event experiences.

As mentioned, this is a member-exclusive, so if you are not already a member, join us and dive into our discord for access to this pack and other exclusive member benefits.

Community tooling

Local face-to-face events and meet-ups

We have some exciting in-person events taking place over the next few weeks. We will continue adding to the table as new ones are confirmed. If any of these events are taking place close to you, sign up via the lu.ma link.

Lead: Clay Labs Digital Location: Lisbon, Portugal Date: 27th May Sign-up: https://lu.ma/lgyg6z67
Lead: Wilmer Leonardo Varón Location: Caracas, Venezuela Date: 1st June Sign-up: https://lu.ma/aa3yy1i5
Lead: Internet Native - Tevo Saks/Kaisa Keerd Location: Tallinn, Estonia Date: 5th June Sign-up: https://lu.ma/pvuuvqbi
Lead: Baudouin Muvunga Location: Territory of Nyiragongo, Democratic Republic of Congo Date: 29th June Sign-up: https://lu.ma/e9i3bncp

Community hubs

Our community hubs have been moving from strength to strength, with significant contributions from our members on a global scale. The Japan community hub represented Intersect at NexTech Week in Tokyo this week.

You can read more about it here.

In addition, the Japan Hub has also been busy showcasing Intersect at Blockchain EXPO from May 22nd to 24th.

In other Community Hub news, the LATAM Community Hub is gearing up to begin its Intersect events, including a new dedicated regional Town Hall. Follow their new X (Twitter) account for more news. In other news, Sri Lanka’s community hub has officially launched! More to follow… 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.

SanchoNet

Following last week’s SanchoNet respin, with the release of Node 8.11.0-pre, SanchoNet has been testing a not-seen-before governance feature, the bootstrapping phase.

The bootstrapping phase is characterized by enabling only a small set of the full governance functionality. This phase will be activated after the first change hard fork, allowing DReps to register and attract delegation before fully participating in governance.

The bootstrap phase can be exited via an intra-era hard fork, voted for by SPOs and constitutional committees. On the mainnet, this hard fork will be known as the second Chang hard fork, enabling full governance functionality for Cardano. Read more on Cardano’s governance milestones.

And here are this weeks Stats from SanchoNet:

DRep Campaign Platform

This week, Intersect member LIDO Nation delivered a significant milestone in developing the DRep Campaign Platform. After a lively demonstration via the “Show us what you got” call, the LIDO Nation team opened up the project, inviting the community to come, test, and leave feedback.

The DRep Campaign platform is hosted via sancho.1694.io/dreps. Here, DReps can create off-chain profiles linked to their on-chain actions to campaign for delegation from Ada Holders. Furthermore, the team has opened up the code hosted on the IntersectMBO/drep-campaign-platform.

The community is encouraged to leave feedback via the integrated feedback popup or raise an issue on the GitHub repository.

Governance tooling

@ProofOfCardano recognized Govtool as having the highest GitHub activity this week, and for a good reason: GovTool is currently in maintenance and will be available again soon, as the team has been busy updating new features, such as the SanchoNet Govtool participation dashboard, which is now available on participation.sanchogov.tools. From this dashboard, everyone can keep track of Govtool usage and participate in its testing.

Essential Cardano360

The next Essential Cardano360 will be on the 30th of May, and Intersect will be featured again. Please be sure to catch us there with updates from Valeria Devaux on the DRep Pioneer workshop leaders program, Lorenzo Bruno on exciting developments on governance tooling, and Terence and Christian on some exciting news about our open source developments. We will also be joined by Intersect member and DRep Pioneer Workshop Leader Hosky! A lot is packed into our section, so we are excited to promote the episode once it is published!

You can view our previous feature here.

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.

If you are passionate about Cardano and blockchain technology and committed to fostering community engagement, we want to hear from you! Please send your CV and a cover letter explaining why you are the perfect fit for this role to [email protected]. Intersect is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

This week's reminders

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

Consensus—Intersect will attend Consensus 2024, the world's largest, longest-running, and most influential gathering, bringing together all sides of the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 community. Supported by Intersect members Genius Yield, Genius X, EMURGO, and Hosky, if you wish to attend, you can get your tickets here and get 15% off your pass using our code - INTERSECTC24.

May Town Hall—The next Intersect Town Hall will be held on 28th May. To be involved, you can secure your place here.

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.