Focus Areas

List of different focus areas relevant for the Cardano ecosystem that contributors will focus on whilst supporting the ecosystem

Infrastructure contributors could spend their time supporting and improving the Cardano ecosystem in the following focus areas. This list will not be exhaustive but gives a good idea of where contributors could spend their time.

Community

• Technical discussion events - Host events and sessions on different ideas, problems and topics to facilitate open discussion in the community. Topics could be around development on Cardano, scaling, best practices or standard.

• Community support - Support the community in answering questions, helping newcomers and providing technical expertise about how the developer ecosystem or stake pool operation.

• Proposer support - Support developer ecosystem or stake pool operation related proposers with suggestions on how to improve their proposals or technical support where necessary.

• Communication moderation - Help moderate existing Cardano communication channels to support developers and projects building or operating on Cardano.

Stake pool node operation

• Identify and prioritise problems - Contributors should gather problems from the community about the issues faced when operating a stake pool and help in prioritising those problems to then explore how they can be resolved.

• Analyse on-chain blockchain and node operation data - Research, analysis and reports can be made about the on-chain data for the Cardano blockchain and node operation data in an attempt to identify patterns, trends, issues or potential areas for improvement.

• Build and maintain SPO tools and software - Support the development of tools and software that make it easier to run a stake pool node or that make it easier to access Cardano data such as for oracle.s or data indexers.

Development ecosystem

• Identify and prioritise problems - Contributors should gather problems from the developer community on what areas need improvement to make it easier to develop on Cardano. These problems can be prioritised based off the most important needs of the developer community.

• Build and maintain developer tools and software - Infrastructure contributors can help with the development of scripts, libraries and SDKs that solve some of the issues faced by developers in the ecosystem. Much of this work would also be community initiatives that Cardano contributors can support in helping those teams to maintain the libraries and providing support for the community.

• Maintain and improve ecosystem infrastructure tools and software - Infrastructure contributors can help with the creation or improvement of infrastructure that makes it easier to operate or build on Cardano. This could include layer two infrastructure such as rollups (e.g. zero knowledge rollups, optimistic rollups), sharding, sidechains and state channels. It can also include domain specific infrastructure that would benefit the wider ecosystem.

Resources

• Documentation - Create and maintain documentation and education resources that help the community more easily understand the Cardano ecosystem and the tools and libraries available to projects and developers and for running a stake pool node.

• Education resources - Creation and aggregation of videos, podcasts or educational materials made by the community or Infrastructure contributors that help new developers or stake pool operators learn about the ecosystem.

• Translation support - Translation support on key resources for the Cardano ecosystem that help to increase the ease of access for international community members and developers

Distribute effort

• Delegate tasks to community - Identify impactful tasks to be executed that can be delegated to community members from any funds Cardano contributors manage in their own treasury.

• Distribute funds for community efforts - Identify existing work in the community that should be compensated so that efforts that benefit the ecosystem are rewarded. These efforts could be around libraries, tools, SDKs or other initiatives that help the stake pool operation or developer ecosystem as some example areas.

CIP process

• Create and improve CIP suggestions - Contributors can participate and get involved in the creation and improvement of CIP suggestions made to improve the Cardano blockchain. Contributors should have an increasing understanding of the issues faced in the developer ecosystem that help to prioritise and guide suggestions towards which CIPs could be created or prioritised.

• Moderate CIP process - Contributors can help with the moderation of submissions into the CIP process to ensure they follow the guidelines set by the community.

Cardano parameters

• Moderate governance decisions - Contributors should help to moderate governance efforts for parameter changes by ensuring the right information is included and available so that community members are well informed when they are invited to participate.

• Gather and present information - Conduct research and analysis to help improve the information that is used for governance decisions so voters are well informed on the implications of decisions being made for any parameter changes.

• Upgrade development & policies - Cardano contributors can help with research and analysis on ensuring any upgrade procedures and processes meet high quality thresholds and are kept up to date. Any upgrade work would need high levels of effort to verify and audit any suggested changes to the Cardano blockchain.