General Info

Seed Phrase Security

Wallet Deep Dives

Governance is the backbone of any DAO. Decision-making, voting, and decision enforcement can be made on-chain by Governance DAO Tools. When setting up your DAO, you can choose the governance method you want. Governance DAO tools allow DAOs to set up a fully functional on-chain governance platform without writing code.

These tools allow DAO administrators to set up their governance method according to their needs. They handle all the on-chain and off-chain parameters of your DAO. You can use the platform of the tool to set your DAO up. This process is usually filling out some forms about what your DAO is, the governance token you use, and the governance rules you want. Then your members can start using the web app to participate in your DAO. These tools are very easy to set up but they can be limited in terms of customization.

Governance tools that provide smart contracts to set up governance like Agora Protocol are difficult to set up but they offer much higher customization potential.

This category of tools are to help a DAO manage their treasury and process their payments.

Multi-Signature Wallets

One of the popular tools for treasury management is multi-signature wallets. The name wallet can be misleading because multi-signature or multi-sig wallets resemble safes more than wallets. These wallets require more than one key in order to access assets in them like bank safes.

A DAO is a decentralized organization but if their assets are kept in a regular wallet address, that is centralized. Any person in possession of keys to that address is in full control of the entire DAOs treasury. Multisig wallets offer decentralization of this power among certain members of the community and they also offer the ability to lock assets before or after a certain date.

Project Management Tools

Another type of DAO tools falls into this category are Project Management Tools. these tools track tasks done by members and process payments automatically according to tasks done by the community of a DAO.

Here are the Treasury Management and Payments DAO Tools we have researched:

DAOs are made possible by smart contracts. A DAO in control of its smart contracts can unlock all potential benefits of blockchain technology. Cardano Smart Contract development is a difficult and time-consuming skill to master due to the usage of Plutus. The Smart Contract Development Tools can make developing your own smart contracts easier, or provide smart contract templates for you to edit to your specific needs.

Below you'll find our research on the Cardano ecosystem covering

• Cardano wallet reviews and comparisons

• DAO Tools building on Cardano if you want to make a DAO in Cardano

• DeFi dApps

• Cross-chain solutions like bridges and oracles

• Project Catalyst, the innovation engine of Cardano

Wallets

Cardano wallets are the most essential way to be in the Cardano Ecosystem. A user keeps their assets in them and they use their wallets to connect to different tools on the blockchain like dApps.

We have reviewed the most used Cardano light wallets and here are all of them.

• Cardano Wallets

DAO Tools

DAO tools are software applications built on blockchain technology that facilitate the creation and management of DAOs. DAOs are organizations that are fully decentralized and autonomous, with decisions made through a consensus process on the blockchain. DAO tools can include platforms for creating DAOs (like Summon Platform or Clarity Protocol), and blockchain platforms (like Ethereum or Cardano).

Cardano DAO Tools

Decentralized Finance

Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, is a revolutionary movement in the financial industry that leverages blockchain technology to disintermediate traditional financial intermediaries. DeFi tools are the various applications, platforms, and protocols that facilitate this new form of finance. They are designed to recreate and improve upon the financial systems we have today but in a decentralized, open, and transparent manner.

For more detail: Cardano Decentralized Finance Tools

Cross-Chain Solutions

Cross-chain is the interconnection of two or more entirely different blockchains. It allows the transfer of assets and data between different blockchains.

For more detail: Cardano Cross-Chain Solutions

Project Catalyst

Catalyst is a $50M+ open innovation fund. Anybody with an idea to further the goals of Cardano may apply for funding and pursue their idea. Read about the tools that make it go round and how to get involved here: The Tools of Project Catalyst

What is Cross-Chain

Cross-chain refers to the interoperability between different blockchain networks, allowing assets and data to be transferred seamlessly from one blockchain to another. This is crucial for enhancing the utility and scalability of blockchain applications. Various technologies like atomic swaps, oracles, sidechains, and blockchain bridges facilitate cross-chain transactions.

See our articles that cover cross-chain concepts in detail:

Atomic Swaps and Atomic Swap on Cardano

Blockchain Bridges

Blockchain Oracles

Sidechains

Cross-chain in Cardano

Bridges

There are several bridges currently available on Cardano fulfilling a range of services. See below full articles covering each:

Milkomeda

Milkomeda Protocol

Indigo Protocol

Wanchain

Celer and NuFi Bridges

Some tools are available yet not under further development:

MicroChains Network

Oracles

Charli3 is the standalone Oracle that is currently available for Cardano builders. See the article for an indepth look.

Charli3

Yet there are other projects that are currently under development to deploy oracles on Cardano:

Orcfax and Chainlink Oracles

Membership and Reputation Tools allow individuals to show their skills on-chain and DAOs to find the right people. They also offer the ability to allow certain individuals with specific tokens or NFTs to access certain DAO resources.

The ability to control certain token or NFT holders access can be very beneficial for DAOs and prevent scam attacks.

The on-chain skill proof can be used like a CV for people to show their skills in a more trustworthy way.

Here are the Cardano DAO Tools we have deep dives on:

Author: Emir Olgun

Date: 18 October 2023

Introduction

We in the littlefish Foundation have conducted one of the most comprehensive researches about Cross-Chain capabilities in Cardano blockchain. This report will present What is Cross-Chain, Cross-Chain Concepts, and Cross-Chain Services that are currently operational and ongoing projects.

What is Cross-Chain

Cross-chain refers to the interoperability between different blockchain networks, allowing assets and data to be transferred seamlessly from one blockchain to another. This is crucial for enhancing the utility and scalability of blockchain applications. Various technologies like atomic swaps, oracles, sidechains, and blockchain bridges facilitate cross-chain transactions. The goal is to create a more interconnected and efficient ecosystem, where one is not limited by the capabilities or assets and services of a single blockchain. For some of these concepts we have written documents as they are complex technologies.

Cross-Chain Services on Cardano

We also have done research on all the Cardano cross-chain tools we found. Some of these projects are ready to be used, some are still in development and one tool called Microchains was functional but is dead.

Cross-Chain Bridges

These are the operational cross-chain bridges on Cardano:

Here are cross-chain bridges that are not operational:

Cardano Oracles

Here are the operational Cardano oracles:

Here are projects that announced they are working on Cardano but not yet deployed an oracle:

Sidechains

Writers Remarks

As of October 2023, there are not many services for Cardano cross-chain but with new services expected to come online, it looks promising. There are currently couple of available cross-chain bridges, one oracle, one atomic swap, and one expected sidechain. Even though the only oracle solution on Cardano, Charli3, does not offer much services, it has a strong and promising technical infrastructure and it definately has the potential to become dominant oracle service for Cardano.

Project Catalyst is Cardano blockchain’s driving force. It is a community controlled decentralized fund that provides funding to projects that build on the Cardano blockchain.

As of October 2023, there have been 10 funding rounds, with more than 1460 proposals approved, with a total of $64M. The latest fund had a budget of 50M ADA, or around $12.5M. All this, and it only started back in 2020.

Funded proposals include a wide variety of projects: hardcore blockchain infrastructure, community spaces, decentralized applications, media channels to spread Cardano, DAO tools, and a whole lot more.

Participating in Catalyst

That’s only the official process. There’s a whole lot more underneath it all in the multitudes of communities that have popped up around Project Catalyst.

Why this report?

This report aims to give anybody a broad overview of what Project Catalyst is, provide the main resources to dive into it, and give an overview of the tools you can use to dive deep into the ecosystem.

In this report, you’ll find

• resources to learn about Project Catalyst

• tools to interact with Project Catalyst

• communication channels

• a deeper dive on Lidonation’s Catalyst explorer, the best tool to explore Catalyst

The Tools to Use

Ok, so you’re interested in getting involved, looking to learn about Project Catalyst and the thousands of projects it is supporting. So what do you do? Where do you go?

The Official Website

If you are new, this is the place to start. This flashy website will introduce what Project Catalyst is all about, what the process is, and how to get started.

An overview of what you can do here:

• learn the basics,

• find how to get involved as a proposer, a voter, or a reviewer,

• read blog posts by the Catalyst team,

• search and view through all the proposals starting from Fund 1.

Lidonation Catalyst Explorer: The #1 tool for all things Project Catalyst

Catalyst Explorer is a comprehensive set of tools for navigating the thousands of proposals in Project Catalyst.

It has so many features, it’s difficult to cover but here’s a glance of what you can do:

Who should use this tool?

Potential Proposers

Project Catalyst is very competitive. If you want to get your project funded, you need to do the work. Jump into the Explorer and look for patterns on what gets funded. What type of proposals are looked down upon? Which challenges are more competitive?

Looking to find a team, co-founder, a job

Catalyst is the house of many great minds. If you’re looking for a team to join that aligns with your personal vision, with what you want to achieve, this is a great tool to find those people.

Investigators

Being a decentralized innovation fund means there will be a lot of people looking to take advantage. There are many projects that don’t get completed, or waste away the money, or promise but deliver very little.

It’s critical the system creates antibodies to resist against these types of projects. If you’re looking to become such an antibody then this is the tool for any Coffeezilla types looking to find those bad apples.

Voters

Use the voter tool to find the best projects to vote for. The tool allows you to search based on Quick Pitches with videos, proposals from teams with completed proposals, opensource projects, and a bunch of other interesting filtering capabilities to help you find the hidden gems.

A short list of tools and resources

Use this as a reference, copy&paste it to your Discord server, add and expand it as you wish!

Official

Communication Channels

Honorable Mention Community Tool

These are a set of tools for older funds that helped users write reviews, vote, challenge reviews and more. They are deprecated (no longer usable) in Fund 10 and beyond, since the systems have changed quite a bit.

But for open source devs, these tools are available on github:

DAOs usually use tokens to raise initial investments and share their governance with their community. These tokens are used in DAOs governance and have voting power on proposals. Some DAOs also give proposal power to people with more than a specific amount of tokens.

The tools in this category make it easy to create and distribute tokens for DAOs. The distribution of tokens can be done by airdrops or vending machine methods.

• Airdrop: This method distributes tokens created to a list of addresses provided by the DAO.

• Vending Machine: Members collect tokens from a dApp themselves.

DAOs can also mint their tokens however they choose. For example,

• A DAO can mint all tokens at once

• They can mint tokens gradually

• Tokens can be minted when someone claims them.

With the advancement of the blockchain technology more and more people start to invest and use crypto currencies. If users do not want to keep their assets in exchange markets, like Binance or FTX etc. they use digital or hardware wallets. Generally in exchanges there is some certain security along with the user’s own responsibilities, using strong password, activating 2FA. With the wallets, users should also make sure to keep their account secure. This security is further implemented with the usage of seed phrases.

A seed phrase, or a recovery phrase, is a 12, 18, or 24 word phrase in a certain order that can be used to access a crypto wallet. If you forget your password of your digital wallet or lose your hardware wallet you can still access your wallet with the help of these seed phrases. You can think of these seed phrases as the master key in the hotels.

If you also lose or forget your seed phrase you will lose access to your wallet and whatever crypto you own in it forever. With the same logic, whoever knows your seed phrases can access your funds. So it is really important to keep these secure.

Different ways you can store these phrases from least secure to most secure are;

• Using a service like Google Keep, etc.

• Writing down to a notepad app locking the app

• Writing down to paper and securing it safely

• Engraving on a metal plate and securing it safely

As you may have noticed offline methods are more secure than the online ones since they are hack-proof. To further increase the security of these you can do any of these things;

• Using Ghost Ink (words will be readable only under UV light)

• Keeping the paper or plate under lock

• Using substitution cipher (or keyword cipher) cryptography method for the phrases

But of course there are risks to offline methods as well, like losing the plate you have engraved or burning of the paper in a fire. Even though there are minimal probabilities for these to occur, it never is zero. Our final suggestion would be, never keep your phrases in one location, rather store them in different places away from each other.

What are DeFi Tools?

DeFi tools are essentially a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps) that can perform financial functions such as lending, borrowing, trading, investment, insurance, and more, without the need for a centralized authority.

Types of DeFi Tools

1. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs): These platforms allow users to trade cryptocurrencies directly with each other, without the need for an intermediary. Examples include Uniswap, SushiSwap, and Balancer.

2. Lending and Borrowing Platforms: These platforms allow users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies. Interest rates are usually determined by supply and demand dynamics within the platform. Examples include Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO.

3. Stablecoins: These are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable value relative to a specific asset or a pool of assets. Stablecoins are often used in DeFi to reduce volatility. Examples include DJED, DAI, USDT, and USDC.

4. Yield Farming and Liquidity Mining: These are more advanced DeFi practices where users provide liquidity to a platform, often in return for governance tokens, with the aim of earning a return on their investment.

5. Derivatives Platforms: These platforms allow users to trade derivatives of cryptocurrencies. Derivatives are financial contracts that derive their value from an underlying asset. Examples include Synthetix and dYdX.

6. Insurance Platforms: These platforms provide coverage for various risks in the DeFi space, such as smart contract bugs or exchange hacks. Examples include Nexus Mutual and Cover Protocol.

7. Asset Management Tools: These tools help users manage their investments in DeFi, providing services like portfolio tracking, risk management, and automated investment strategies. Examples include Yearn.finance and Zapper.

The Cardano DeFi Tools we have deep dives on:

• Indigo Protocol

Indigo Protocol is an autonomous synthetics protocol built on Cardano. They give their users the opportunity to be exposed to the price of real-world assets in the blockchain environment.

• Djed

Djed is Cardano's native overcollateralized stablecoin, developed by IOG and powered by COTI.

• Liqwid

Liqwid is a decentralized and non-custodial liquidity protocol, built on Cardano’s Plutus smart contract platform that provides an efficient and secure way for users to participate as lenders or borrowers.

DAO tools are software applications built on blockchain technology that facilitate the creation and management of DAOs. DAOs are organizations that are fully decentralized and autonomous, with decisions made through a consensus process on the blockchain. DAO tools can include platforms for creating DAOs (like Summon Platform or Clarity Protocol).

Cardano ecosystem currently seems to focus on Governance and Smart Contract Development tools. The reason behind this is, the Cardano ecosystem is fairly new and the main problem the ecosystem has encountered is the entry barrier for new people. These tools aim to bring down the entry barrier for new people to come in. The other reason is developing smart contracts for the Cardano blockchain is hard to master, people with technical backgrounds need to invest their time to learn and deploy Cardano smart contracts. Tools like Smart Contract Development tools help DAOs to deploy their own smart contracts easily.

For more information about what a DAO tool is and why they are important, you can read:

DAO Tools

These are our DAO Tool categories and how many deep dives we have in each category:

These are all the DAO Tool deep dives we have: