Executive Summary
| Success Criteria | Aim | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Developers Engaged | 250 | 989 |
| Viable Projects | 50 | pending |
| Developers Retained | 100 | pending |
Key Terms
Definition of 6 key terms is required to clarify the success criteria and outcomes.
- Team - A team is a group that forms around an idea. We registered teams at the end of the hackathon programme after the hackathons had been completed and they’d started to work on their ideas.
- Project (viability) - Projects are distinguished as groups that develop into organisations working on a viable go-to-market pathway. Included with that roadmap are tangible assets such as a prototype, partnerships and/ or additional funding.
- Developer - Someone that is experienced in writing and/ or architecting code (themselves). For the context of this program, their experience building on Cardano is counted separately.
- Engagement - Initial activity such as enrolling as a participant, attending calls, and/ or joining a team. For the reporting of outcomes, developer enrolments is counted by enrolling as a participant only.
- Completed - In this context, completion of the hackathon programme is counted by team registrations.
- Retention - Consistent activity within the Cardano ecosystem, evidenced in this context by further development of their existing Cardano-based projects.
Total Engagements
The globe shows 1214 as this includes hub enrolments. Minus the 28 hub enrolments leaves 1186 participant enrolments. Data cleaning to remove potential duplicates reduced this further to 1119 as the final count of how many participants enrolled at the start of the program.
Developers Engaged
Of the total filtered enrolments, 130 enrolled as non-developers, leaving 989 developer enrolments that registered with beginner to advanced skill levels. The table below shows a summary:
| Skill Level | Enrolments |
|---|---|
| Beginner | 411 |
| Intermediate | 447 |
| Advanced | 131 |
| Non-developer | 130 |
Total Completed
The completion of the programme was marked by the registrations of teams, which occurred between December 15th and 19th, 2025, two and a half months after the first programme calls started. 468 team members registered as part of one of the 110 teams. This was a relatively short window with little notice given in advance, and therefore a strong indicator of high levels of engagement. Further info on teams is available in potentialise.wada.org . A high-level overview of areas of focus can be found here.
Developers Completed
From the 110 teams, with 4.25 team members on average, there were 216 developers, inferred from role names and descriptions.
Summary
This table compares the figures to the original forecast made in September 2025, available here.
| Parameter | Aim | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-ups | 2500 | NA |
| Participants enrolled | 1250 | 1119 |
| Developers enrolled | 500 | 989 |
| Participants completed | 625 | 468 |
| Developers completed | 250 | 216 |
| Avg. team size | 5 | 4.25 |
| Teams completed | 125 | 110 |
| Capacity Per-Event | 40 | 39 |
| Events organised | 16 | 12 |
| Viable projects | 50 | pending |
| Developers retained | 100 | pending |
Next Steps (Retention)
1. Immediate Bridge: Hub-Led Proposals
During the Summit, hub leads proposed two practical ways to sustain momentum while Wada and Prisma clarify the next phase of funding:
- Hub organisational development
- Clarifying roles and responsibilities
- Strengthening organisational design
- Increasing readiness and coordination for a potential Round 2
- Team “currency” identification (impact measurement)
- Defining the core value each project creates
- Making impact measurable and visible
These proposals provide a constructive engagement pathway over the coming months.
2. Sustained Participation
There is no further retention insight to glean from existing data. In order to see retention, there needs to be new data generated, which can happen via any of the following touchpoints:
- Timelining writes
- Documentation writes
- Future event organising
- Commits in project repositories
- Updates to team registrations (visible on the globe )
In order to drive participation, we require clarity on:
- A clear and credible pathway to future funding
- Transparent communication of network-level intent and expectations
- A visible link between contribution and opportunity
If teams understand that continued participation directly connects to future resourcing, motivation and continuity are significantly strengthened.
3. Clarifying the Funding Equation
To make this tangible, we recommend that Wada clarify:
- How much funding is being targeted
- When it is expected to be available
- How it will be distributed (hub and team contribution indicators)
Funding distribution can then draw on the evaluation process piloted during CATS, leveraging the contribution perspectives listed above.
Prisma is working towards developing a protocol to aggregate these signals from the level of on-the-ground teams to hubs, to hub-network level visibility, offering funding partners a single financial instrument that represents the value across the network as a whole. In the meantime we require an interim step and rely on clear communication to be able to coordinate.