Cardano Project Catalyst Selects 12 Projects for Pilot Fund

Cardano’s Project Catalyst has selected 12 projects out of 117 applications for its 2026 pilot funding program, which features a 2 million ADA grant pool and ties most payments to actual network usage. According to an announcement, the selections mark the program's first since October 2025 following a review process involving 52 community curators and 35 panelists.

Funding Structure and Adoption Metrics

Under the pilot's revised structure, selected teams receive 40% of their approved grant after completing onboarding. Another 40% depends on meeting adoption targets, while the final 20% relies on sustained network activity measured approximately two months after the adoption window closes. The program measures adoption through qualifying Cardano network fees generated by external users, with results published on a public dashboard under its Proof of Adoption standard.

Selected teams have up to three months to launch their integrations on the Cardano mainnet. Three top-performing projects may qualify for bonuses of up to 50% of their grants.

Selected Projects Across Sectors

The approved projects span stablecoin payments, decentralized finance, tokenized assets, healthcare, and supply chain tracking. In the payments sector, initiatives include SyncAI’s anyqr for QR-code merchant payments using USDCx, PagFinance for Brazilian real settlements via PIX, Cexplorer’s Pay for merchant checkout, and VIA Labs for cross-chain token swaps.

Decentralized finance proposals include House of Titans' ATLAS perpetual platform, Liqwid Labs' Pyth price feed integrations for lending, Dano Finance’s single-transaction collateral switching feature, and L4VA Technologies' AI-assisted vault strategies. Asset-focused proposals feature Anvil’s Wayup, GreenSun Tech’s OriLife, Aline Health’s medical travel identity system, and Nucast’s digital identity tracking for industrial robots and shipments.

Key facts

• Project Catalyst selected 12 projects from 117 applications for the 2026 pilot funding program.
• The grant pool totals 2 million ADA, funded by the Cardano Foundation.
• Grants disburse 40% upon onboarding, 40% tied to adoption targets, and 20% based on sustained network activity.
• Selected teams have up to three months to launch integrations on the Cardano mainnet.