Dear Cardano Community🫂, I need your help. 🙏 I’m building an escrow layer on Cardano. The idea: make escrow a LEGO piece that developers and businesses can plug into their products. Before I spend the next 6–12 months building it out, I want to know: Would you actually use it? If so, what for? 🤔 The long-term vision is a full SaaS platform with an API, SDK, payment rails, on- and off-ramps, and flexible escrow flows for both human and agentic transactions. There are a huge number of potential applications: ✅ Auctions and marketplaces ✅ Freelancer and job platforms ✅Car, boat and property sales ✅Import and export ✅Insurance and claims ✅Conditional payments ✅Agent-to-agent transactions ✅Dispute resolution ✅High-value peer-to-peer transactions, And plenty more Rather than having every project build its own escrow infrastructure, I want this to be infrastructure they can simply integrate. But I don’t want to spend a year building based purely on assumptions. If you were building a product that needed escrow, what would you need from this? What workflows would you have? What payment methods? What dispute scenarios? What edge cases am I missing? This is the point where I want to gather as much real-world feedback as possible and piece the requirements together before going too far down the build path.

Finding investors feels a lot like dating. 😅 Day 15 at @draper_u included dinner with @Andytang from Draper Associates/Draper Dragon and plenty of conversations with investors. Building the product is one skill. Finding the right people who believe in it is another. As a developer, networking is definitely another muscle I need to build. What part of fundraising pushed you furthest outside your comfort zone? For me, it's now networking with investors.

🎙️@santicarmuega from @txpipe_tools explained Tx3 and for Cardano. API layer will enable dev onboarding, AI interactions, and intent-based DeFi. Similar to @near_intents Just say what you want, and it happens. No jumping from DApp to DApp.

Our C4💥proposal explained. I had a conversation with some dedicated Cardano peeps at a Meetup in London, hosted by @DiscoverCardano today, about the Cardano Content Creators Consortium proposal. This is a recording & breakdown of the stream and presentation 👇

The Cardano Summit proposal didn't make it through. The one year that I did plan on going.

I had a chat with @santicarmuega about the difficult developer experience on Cardano and the open-source layer they're building, called Tx3, which simplifies the complexities by introducing a simple web2-friendly API that any developer or AI Agent can interact with. It enables intent-based interactions and protocol composability! Very exciting stuff. *This is a paid promotion

I've updated all the documentation and references to my Cardano Node setup on my HP Elite Desktop. Docs will step you through setting up Ubuntu, applying some security, installing and config the Cadano node, and using Mithril to sync. Goes along with the vid and audio. Enjoy.

30,000+ people in Singapore for one crypto event. @token2049 is one of those weeks where you realise how big this industry actually is outside the usual online bubbles. @nateacton, VP of Global Marketing at @emurgo_io, gives a quick explanation of what the event is like on the ground, why it matters, and why so many builders, investors, and ecosystems show up. Would Cardano benefit from a stronger presence at these major global events? Also, Emurgo should do something about that DRep delegation nudge in Yoroi. I know SecondFi is the focus now and I hope some changes are made there too. *Not a paid promotion

Did anyone else manage to get in on potatoes before the price skyrocketed?

Will we see Project Catalyst come back this year? After reviewing so many of these Intersect budget requests, I really feel that many of them should be included in the Catalyst bundle rather than as TWs. That way, we have further guardrails on the requests. Yes, Catalyst isn't perfect, but it was heading in a good direction. Better every round. Furthermore, the amount being requested atm is well above the NCL, which could mean no more withdrawals after this budgeting and request season, leaving no budget for Catalyst until mid 202. I can't see DReps passing an increased limit for the NCL at the moment either. Thoughts? Prayers?

3.74M ADA for Mithril to keep moving under community funding. Teragone Factory is asking for 6 months of work on faster node sync, trustless state verification, IPFS artifact storage, recursive SNARK proofs, certificate optimisation and one-command SPO onboarding. The upside: Mithril is real infrastructure. The concern: nearly 3.74M ADA for 6 months with no direct revenue return. Core infrastructure worth funding, or too expensive for the scope? *Not a paid promotion

Cardano’s staking economics could be about to change significantly. The Incentives Working Group is releasing an Ekklesia ballot covering multiple staking and delegation CIPs after more than a year of research and simulations. This impacts: - pool fees - delegation - pledge leverage - sybil resistance A lot of Cardano’s long-term decentralisation probably depends on getting these incentive models right. *Not a paid promotion

1.52M ADA for a new revenue-based finance protocol on Cardano. @__prismaevents wants to build Hub-Network Liquidity, using Revenue Participation Certificates to fund real-world ventures and return revenue back to funders. The upside: real economic activity, not another token loop. The concern: gateway, certificates, demand signals, revenue allocation and redemption all need to work before the model is proven. Ambitious, yes. But is this the right treasury bet now? *Not a paid promotion

2.4M ADA for durian traceability. Interesting idea, but feels more like a Catalyst project. Build it. Prove it. Then scale it. At current treasury prices, timing matters. THIS IS NOT A PAID PROMOTION

Cardano finality could go from ~12 minutes to 2-5 minutes if Peras lands. The part most people miss is the cost. A faster, busier network means heavier nodes. Smaller pools are already running tight, and if history expiry and operator tooling don't ship alongside the protocol, those operators wear the bill. @Tweagio's plan is history expiry plus archival nodes. The storage curve flattens for ordinary operators while full history stays available elsewhere. Worth a yes vote, or are the operator-cost guarantees still too soft?

STRIKE lending activity is heating up on Surf. Over 800K ADA borrowed against $STRIKE collateral. Utilisation is now above 80%. That matters because high utilisation can push better supply rates. ADA supply APY is now sitting close to 7%. Liquidity actually moving. @surfcardano THIS IS NOT A PAID PROMOTION

The @Cardano_cf just abstained on both live Cardano Summit 2026 treasury votes. That matters. As a major DRep and the proposer behind the Summit, CF stepping back leaves the decision more clearly with the wider governance community. I think that’s the right move here. Should proposers abstain from voting on their own treasury proposals? *Not a paid promotion

A Cardano node running directly in the browser sounds insane. But @hlabs_tech is trying to make it real. The proposal is basically exploring whether Cardano users could verify the chain state locally inside a browser extension instead of blindly trusting APIs. That’s a pretty important direction if Cardano wants better self-custody and lighter infrastructure. Still a lot of hard problems to solve here around relays, performance and conformance. Worth watching closely. @MicheleHarmonic *Not a paid promotion