Catalyst Fund 2-7 Analysis

Preface

The information contained in this website is meant to improve the transparency and accountability of all Catalyst funded proposals and stakeholders by providing information to the community. It is NOT meant to call out any individual projects, proposers, groups, or suggest anyone is doing anything dishonest. I know many of the people here personally and many others by reputation, and strongly believe most proposers funded by Catalyst are acting in good faith. We already have several excellent products, tools, services, and communities formed through Catalyst that will likely keep getting better over time. By providing data to the community it allows us all to demonstrate that we are transparent, are working towards our goals, and gives a reason to continue being funded. So if anyone sees anything that raises concerns, let’s drop our pitchforks and first start some healthy dialogues instead. All of Cardano benefits when we are working together in a collaborative and supportive environment.

I would also like to mention that this analysis was performed on Fund 2 – Fund 7 Catalyst funded proposals using the data compiled and distributed by Project Catalyst. As the data is updated periodically, there can be some timing differences between projects being closed out and that being reflected in the data set. It was also analyzed manually using pivot tables and excel formulas. We tried to group projects together using key words in the proposal name as well as the research tool that LIDO Nation created. This means that there may be some mistakes or things we got wrong, and we apologize in advance if there are. If you notice something incorrect, please let us know so we can fix it. We hope that over time with your help, it will become more and more accurate.

General Summary

The total number of funded proposals For Fund 2 – Fund 7 was 572, with almost half of that coming from Fund 7. The number of funded proposals started from 8 in Fund 2, to 262 in Fund 7, basically doubling after every round. The total amount funded was $12.8M, with almost half of that coming from Fund 7. Total amount funded started at $0.2M in Fund 2 to $6.4M in Fund 7, basically doubling after every round.

The average (mean) amount funded per proposal was about $22K (total fund amount divided by # of funded proposers) with a standard deviation of 61,034. The top 40 proposers for Funds 2-7 account for 50% of the total amount funded (6.4M/12.8M). The highest amount funded for a single proposal was $147K (Paperless Cross-Border Trade). The team that got the most funding was WADA with at 671K for 31 different proposals. The second most was dcSpark at $514K for 13 different proposals. The project that got the most funding was Liqwid at $384K for 7 different proposals. If you take the top 40 funded proposers and include WADA.

Out of the 572 proposals, only 54 are self-identified as completed. 4 out of the 8 total proposals from Fund 2 are still not completed yet.

Summary Table

Fund 2 – Fund 7 Funded Proposals Statistics:
Total Funded Proposals	572
Total Proposals Completed	55
Total Amount Requested	12,791,852
Avg Amount Requested/Proposal	22,363
Standard Deviation	61,034
Highest funded/requested Proposer	514,000
Total Proposers	293
Proposers requesting 100K or more	34

The Summary Table Tab was created by running a pivot table on the Catalyst Funds 2-7 Data using Fund (columns), Requested (sum of values), and Primary Proposer – Guarantor (rows). This allowed us to list each proposer in order from highest to lowest and show the total requested for each proposer for each round 2-7. They were then sorted from highest to lowest. We then searched through the proposal names to determine which projects they are associated with as well as utilizing the tool created by LIDO Nation. We wrote in the main projects we believe the proposers are associated with for the top 40 but did not do it for all as it is time confusing and the information is less useful once we drop out of the top 40.

As shown, if you sum the total funding for the top 40 proposers and Divide by the total amount requested, the top 40 make up 50% of all funds received in Funds 2-7. The mean funded amount for all proposers is 43,658 with a standard deviation of 61,034, which can be interpreted as the data being quite spread out. If all funded proposers received similar amounts then this would give a low standard deviation so since it is about 50% greater than the mean, it is indicative that we have a wide range of values amongst funded proposers.

We created a summary table to highlight WADA, as we believe that was the highest funded project, but there are quite a few proposers for various amounts. So to determine the total it was easier to create a separate table. To create the table we used the tool created by LIDO Nation to search all proposers that proposed a project with WADA. We then searched those names in the table to sum of the total amount obtained for that project.

Top 10 Proposers

The Top 10 Proposers Table was created using the data from the Summary Table. The Summary Table Tab was created by running a pivot table on the Catalyst Funds 2-7 Data using Fund (columns), Requested (sum of values), and Primary Proposer – Guarantor (rows). This allowed us to list each proposer in order from highest to lowest and show the total requested for each proposer for each round 2-7. They were then sorted from highest to lowest and the top 10 were used to create this table. We then noted the number of projects funded and completed in the Catalyst data and included it in the table. As you can see, the top 10 proposers account for 22% of all funding awarded for Funds 2-7.

Top 10 Projects

The Top 10 Projects was a little more difficult to create then the Top 10 Proposers as it was very difficult to define project or team. There are many people involved in Catalyst working for their own projects, working on projects with other teams, or working on multiple projects themselves. So this data should be taken with a grain of salt and we will work to try and update this based on feedback received. As mentioned, we created the pivot table to show amounts funded by each proposer and then we searched through the proposal names to determine which projects they are associated with as well as utilizing the tool created by LIDO Nation to search names and note which projects they seem to be associated with.

Full spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1boIANpC-FESqGUaPxaArlGzqfR2cv7sku2TiJXFccQY/edit#gid=2018745373