Landing in your inbox a day early, here’s the twenty-third edition of the Intersect Development Report! This week we have a host of exciting updates to bring to you - from our community hubs to upcoming events we will be present at, to our working group developments and more.

As always, we thank you for reading and staying up to date with all things Intersect.
So without further ado, let’s get straight into this week's report.

Getting ready for Chang - calling on SPOs to upgrade

Cardano node v9.0 has arrived! This release signifies the completion of primary development work for the bootstrap phase of on-chain governance, leaving only minor updates to incorporate Cardano constitution elements. Now begins a period of ecosystem-driven testing and adoption. 

This latest version introduces highly anticipated features, including support for Plutus v1 reference scripts and Plutus script signature support via CIP-69. This milestone is crucial to realizing the decentralized governance envisioned in CIP-1694.

SPO’s - head straight over to our repos to find the latest files here

You can read more about this and view an upgrade timeline here.

Community Hubs

The last week was an eventful one on the community hub front as we were present at Cardano Codex 2024 - an event held in India that brought together Web3 enthusiasts worldwide to discuss what the future holds for Cardano. 

We were pleased to be able to present Intersect and our role in the Cardano ecosystem to over 200 students and while doing so, were able to highlight the incredible work done by our Community hubs, referencing the successful Blockchain EXPO 2024 event.

Overall, being able to present at Cardano Codex 2024 was a fantastic experience which allowed us to continue to maintain our physical presence in the Cardano community and ensure that wherever we reach, we can reaffirm the importance of our hubs for our and Cardano’s future.

Special thanks to Intersect members, Nucast and EMURGO for letting us take part.

In related news, below is a list of hub events happening this week:

Japan

A space will be held on X on the 19th of July at 14:00 UTC, link here. Be involved in the discussion all about Intersect and DAOs.

CoinCeylon (Sri Lanka)

There was a successful in-person launch event for the Sir Lanka hub held on 16th July!

The event was a gathering of business leaders, the tech community and university representatives, a host of media stations and press, as well as the deputy ambassador of Japan from the Japanese embassy in Sri Lanka. The first TV coverage has already been aired, you can see it here.

You can also watch a video of the launch here.

WADA (Africa)

A town hall for this hub was held on the 18th of July at 16:00 UTC.

Upcoming events

Leading on from the news of community hubs, here are some of the other events which Intersect will be present at over the coming months:

Blockchain Rio -  this will be on the 24th-25th of July in Rio de Janeiro with the LATAM hub being present. At this event, the Brazil hub will be launched as part of the LATAM Community Hub. Along with the hub launch, we will have a booth and a keynote speech from our very own Alex Pestchanker. 

There will be a DRep workshop in Rio on the 26th of July following the Blockchain Rio event facilitated by Daniela Alves, in partnership with GovChainLab and the Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade do Rio de Janeiro (ITS-RJ). The registration link is here.

In addition to this news, we will also have a virtual DRep workshop which will be held on 21st July. You can register for this here.

Argentina Digital Nation - this will be an event held on 31st July in Buenos Aires. At the event will be a keynote for Alex Pestchanker along with a community hub present to promote intersect

RareEvo - we will be present in Las Vegas on 15-17 August to be involved in this event, with a panel, and 2 hours of workshops split with both CF and EMURGO.

Intersect Town Hall correction

In a previous development report, we had mentioned that July's Intersect Town Hall would be held on Tuesday 30th July. But there's been a change - the actual date is Thurs 25th July, 16:00 UTC.

Hosted by Intersect member, Swarm, Town Halls will always be on the 4th Thursday of the month: so 25th July, 22nd August, 26th September, 24th October, and 28th November - all at 16:00 UTC. Put those dates in your diary!

The Zoom sign-up is here.

Make sure you come and join us to share your updates, make connections, and come together as a community. These Town Halls have proven to be vital spaces for collaboration, discussion and innovation when it comes to all things Cardano.

Community tooling

We are excited to share the latest updates on our ongoing grant projects. This week, we have significant progress to report:

Vesper wallet's Conway compatibility progress: The team has taken the first step by upgrading their tooling to support the serialization of Conway transactions. Click here for the milestone acceptance form.

"Governance Matters": Mellod Designs produced 3 more episodes each covering:

• Cardano's Interim Constitution Explained
• Cardano Survives a Distributed Denial of Service Attack
• Cardano's Voltaire Era: DReps and the Future of Blockchain Governance

Minimum Attack Vector (MAV) Dashboard: Cerkoryn has successfully delivered his prototype of the MAV Dashboard, which is currently being developed to provide real-time governance action data presented through intuitive donut charts. Click here for the milestone acceptance form.

You can follow all our current open grants here.

Core Infrastructure Roadmap working group - now on Discord!

Our Core Infrastructure Roadmap working group now has a public Discord announcement channel! Visit and join this Discord channel here, and you can read more about this working group here on our knowledge base.

And if you haven’t joined our Discord yet, don’t miss out on everything that is going on. This is your go-to place to stay up to date with the latest happenings at Intersect, as well as your place to network and discuss with like-minded people in the Cardano community.

Open Source Office - YouTube

Our Open Source Office’s YouTube channel recently added two new videos talking about all things open source at Intersect. First, an explanation of the support services provided by the Open Source Office. It’s a great place for you to learn more about how the OS team is dedicated to helping open-source projects thrive and succeed.

In the second video, the team dive into detailed insights and practical tips for anyone involved in open-source projects or looking to kickstart their own initiatives.

You can subscribe to the YouTube channel here.

Member survey

Thank you to all members who have shared their feedback via our members survey!  We’d love to hear from more of you, so if you can spare roughly 10 minutes to provide your thoughts on your current experience at Intersect, we’d massively appreciate it!

Note: maintenance on our members area

Quick note; due to scheduled maintenance this weekend, you may experience some issues when using our members area, including membership renewals and other applications. We expect functionality to return in full on Monday, July 22nd.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and if you experience any issues, please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly at [email protected]

This week's reminders 

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

• The next edition of the biweekly committee report will be released next week and will contain all the relevant information about our committee and working groups for this period. Here you can view the last committee report.

Important member resources

• Intersect Knowledge Base - Frequently updated, our knowledge base provides granular detail on our internal governance structure, committees & 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 and LinkedIn, so follow us there to stay updated on our latest news and insights!
• Town Hall - If you missed our June Town Hall, please check out the recording.

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.