As Fund6 of Project Catalyst with a 4 Million $ budget starts, that's a good idea to analyze the winners of the previous Fund. Not only you can learn from the winners, but it's also useful to know what's going on in the Cardano ecosystem in general.

For people new to Cardano it's still not so easy to figure out the process, even the voting results are not so easy to find. Moreover, it's so much information so it's easy to get lost, and we can't expect that people will read every proposal. In past (and I'm in Project Catalyst since the Focus group, since Fund1) I read all the proposals and there were periods when I read all the communication in the telegram. Even though it didn't help my proposals, it was still interesting. All my proposals were not supported in Fund5. It was sad that in the category "F5: Catalyst value onboarding" there was enough budget, but probably more people voted against it (I can't see their results). But anyway, I think it's better not to give up, and come with another proposal in Fund6, and then maybe in the future funds.

One more reason to study the winners is that after checking the project - you might decide to contribute. Sometimes you contribute as a tester, and sometimes as a part-time (or even a full-time job). Such opportunities will only increase with future Funds.

So here are Voting results for Catalyst’s Fund5 (link to PDF)

And here are the winning proposals. Firstly I thought to comment on some of them, but this would keep this article too long, so I decided to limit to the proposal and proposer names, link and budget. Proposals are presented by categories.

I. Developer Ecosystem Category

1. Testnet Cardanoscan Explorer https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352606-48088

   Proposer: Ashish Cardanoscan

   Budget: $7500

2. Cardano Rust SDK update for Alonzo https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352480-48088

   Proposer: sebastiengllmt, nicoarqueros

   Budget:$50,000

3. C# SDK for Blockfrost API https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352764-48088

   Proposer: Five Binaries (Blockfrost.io)

   Budget:$9,000

4. Elixir SDK https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350635-48088

   Proposer: Richard Nystrom

   Budget:$12,000

5. Cardano JS API https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350707-48088

   Proposer: RAY Network

   Budget: $15,000

6. Cardano Wallet Flutter SDK https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352623-48088

   Proposer: Richard Easterling

   Budget: $10,000

7. Metadata oracle endpoint in Yoroi https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352229-48088

   Proposer: Five Binaries

   Budget: $1,200

8. Websocket link for Blockfrost API https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352757-48088

   Proposer: Five Binaries

   Budget:$18,000

9. NFT Key https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352020-48088

   Proposer: CardanoDan, Chris

   Budget: $50,000

10. Cardano IPFS chronicles https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352787-48088

    Proposer: Five Binaries

    Budget: $10,080

11. Glow Formal verification https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352760-48088

    Proposer: Alexander Smart , François-René Rideau , Gauthier Lamothe

    Budget: $60,000

12. Free Commerce payment gateway https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350766-48088

    Proposer: Jeronimo Backes

    Budget: $52,500

13. Localize Yoroi for Slovak market https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352235-48088

    Proposer: Five Binaries

    Budget: $2,500

14. End-to-End No-code Cardano Apps https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352756-48088

    Proposer: Marian Filipovici

    Budget: $25,400

15. Localize Yoroi for Czech market https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352236-48088

    Proposer: Five Binaries

    Budget: $2,500

16. Arnot - iOS SDK https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350625-48088

    Proposer: fragkiskos.katsimpas , Greg

    Budget: $12,980

17. NFT Guaranteed Storage https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350731-48088

    Proposer: Kiriakos [SPEC]

    Budget: $14,550

18. Quality-Assurance-DAO https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351678-48088

    Proposer: Stephen Whitenstall

    Budget: $5

19. NFT-DAO EZ-Pay API wallet connector https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352126-48088

    Proposer: NFT-DAO (the whole team)

    Budget: $69,945

20. Artificial Intelligence/ML API https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351501-48088

    Proposer: Francisco

    Budget: $80,000

21. Step-by-Step Guide: Off-Chain Code https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350599-48088

    Proposer: quinn

    Budget: $5,000

22. NFT-DAO EZ-On Interop NFTs https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352132-48088

    Proposer: NFT-DAO (the whole team)

    Budget: $8,200

23. NFT-DAO EZ-Name https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352159-48088

    Proposer: NFT-DAO (the whole team)

    Budget: $59,842

24. Tokenizing GitHub Pull request https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350780-48088

    Proposer: Max

    Budget: $12,000

II. DApps & Integrations

1. Cardano Connector (Metamask-like) https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352482-48088

   Proposer: sebastiengllmt, Robert Kornacki, nicoarqueros

   Budget: $30,000

2. The Quest for ADA https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351663-48088

   Proposer: Marcin Kugla, aikkahn, Christian Hayungs

   Budget: $100,000

3. nft-maker.io -> Full NFT platform https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351653-48088

   Proposer: Patrick Tobler

   Budget: $40,000

4. DaPassword - a password manager https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350773-48088

   Proposer: Jeronimo Backes

   Budget: $54,600

5. iGIVit - The Future of Giving https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351711-48088

   Proposer: David Poulin, Ludovic

   Budget: $20,416

III. Distributed decision making

1. NFT-DAO EZ-Honor contribution token https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352773-48088

   Proposer: NFT-DAO (the whole team)

   Budget: $29,000

2. Catalyst Community Tools https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350981-48088

   Proposer: Philip Khoo, Victor Corcino, Lucio Baglione, Adagov.org

   Budget: $4,600

3. Catalyst Site: Project tracking https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350699-48088

   Proposer: lovegrovegeorge, Jakob Dickhaut, Ben Stokes

   Budget: $8,400

4. Open Ideas and Data For Cooperation https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351825-48088

   Proposer: Adagov.org

   Budget: $33,470

5. Tutorial for Community Advisors https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350904-48088

   Proposer: Dominik Tilman

   Budget: $10,850

6. IdeaScale Improvements https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352809-48088

   Proposer: Erik Siebert , Rob Hoehn

   Budget: $10,000

IV. Proposer outreach

1. Developer Evangelist Japan https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352484-48088

   Proposer: sebastiengllmt , Robert Kornacki , nicoarqueros

   Budget: $19,000

2. Catalyst Site: Collaborators list https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350653-48088

   Proposer: lovegrovegeorge, Jakob Dickhaut, Ben Stokes

   Budget: $11,600

3. FREE MONEY Direct Marketing https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352114-48088

   Proposer: rich

   Budget: $43,827

4. WADA Media Funnel for Proposers https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352499-48088

   Proposer: WADA , Megan Hess

   Budget: $12,000

5. Hands-On Marketing in Addis Ababa https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351941-48088

   Proposer: Jonathan W., Nebiyu, mearaftadewos and 2 more

   Budget: $4,570

6. ALDEA Wiki - Cardano Encyclopedia https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352436-48088

   Proposer: Matias Falcone

   Budget: $5,960

V. Catalyst value onboarding

1. Inner-View with KEWW Video Series https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350672-48088

   Proposer: Ken Adams, Chad Dickson

   Budget: $8,900

2. WADA Uni Students Catalyst Registry https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352611-48088

   Proposer: WADA , jaycidiq

   Budget: $11,000

3. PCDiscord - Bot to Assign Roles https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352779-48088

   Proposer: Tevo , Q U A S A R

   Budget: $500

4. ALDEA Catalyst Spanish Support Site https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352422-48088

   Proposer: Matias Falcone

   Budget: $9,080

5. Barriers to Entry = Proposals https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352744-48088

   Proposer: James Dunseith

   Budget: $10,000

6. Catalyst Site:Improve proposal data https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350686-48088

   Proposer: lovegrovegeorge , Jakob Dickhaut , Ben Stokes

   Budget: $8,400

7. PCDiscord Miro board for Onboarding https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352801-48088

   Proposer: Tevo , Q U A S A R

   Budget: $900

8. Catalyst Site: Education resources https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350675-48088

   Proposer: lovegrovegeorge , Jakob Dickhaut , Ben Stokes

   Budget: $5,200

9. PCDiscord - Bot to create channels https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352780-48088

   Proposer: Tevo , Q U A S A R

   Budget: $479

10. Charles Hoskinson in Russian https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350835-48088

    Proposer: Evgeniy Sereda

    Budget: $6,500

VI. Metadata challenge

1. Control your data - privacy ledger https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350680-48088

   Proposer: Michiel Van Roey , Shawn Jensen , Ipek Sahiner, Luke Bragg

   Budget: $19,200

2. Graph DB Sidechain with Fluree https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352531-48088

   Proposer: Dmitri Safine [DDAY] , Michael Yagi , bplatz

   Budget: $12,500

3. Oracle Performance Metrics

   Budget: $3,000

4. Blockchain Authentication Mechanism https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352005-48088

   Proposer: gargiulo.gianni

   Budget: $6,000

5. C64 NFTs Minter(on-chain+identity) https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352588-48088

   Proposer: Caso

   Budget: $6,500

VII. Grow Africa, Grow Cardano

1. Africa Opensource Pharma & Medicine https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352738-48088

   Proposer: Andre.Chagwedera, startupsnyc, kusters.rem

   Budget: $45,000

2. No-Code For Creative Africa https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351502-48088

   Proposer: tobrien, WADA

   Budget: $20,000

3. Introducing Empowa https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352666-48088

   Proposer: Phil Lewis , Glen Jordan , Marie-Odile Zanders and 1 more

   Budget: $60,000

4. Cardano Student Clubs in Ethiopia https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351822-48088

   Proposer: Nebiyu , Jonathan W. , mearaftadewos and 1 more

   Budget: $19,350

5. ADA news in African languages https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352267-48088

   Proposer: Rik, Renemacarthur, Unofficialbydesign and 2 more

   Budget: $42,720

6. Networking events https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351854-48088

   Proposer: nathansamson, Nebiyu, Jonathan W. and 1 more

   Budget: $24,000

7. Paper wallet terminal for in a shop https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350836-48088

   Proposer: Maarten Menheere

   Budget: $12,000

8. Cashout and Buy ADA in Ethiopia https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/350836-48088

   Proposer: mearaftadewos , Nebiyu , Jonathan W. and 1 more

   Budget: $9,000

VIII. Scale-UP Cardano's DeFi Ecosystem

1. Liqwid Protocol Security Audit https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352039-48088

   Proposer: Liqwid Labs, MLabs Consulting

   Budget: $119,000

2. Liqwid x Credmark R&D on Loan Risks https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352081-48088

   Proposer: Liqwid Labs, Neil Zumwalde, MLabs Consulting

   Budget: $25,000

3. MinSwap - Multi-pool DEX https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352679-48088

   Proposer: Long Nguyen

   Budget: $37,500

4. Dandelion: Cardano API market https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352562-48088

   Proposer: rcmorano [PEACE]

   Budget: $24,300

5. Smart Contract Audit Token SCAT DAO https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/351387-48088

   Proposer: Eric Helms

   Budget: $35,000

    

In Challange setting, the following proposals won: NFT Business models, Atala PRISM DID Mass-Scale Adoption, Disaster: When all is at stake, Scale-UP Cardanos Community Hubs, Improve and Grow Auditability

One more proposal was funded with leftover funds:

1. ErgoDex Plutus Port https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352410-48088

   Proposer: Ilya Oskin

   Budget: 91000