We are uniFires. A small group of Cardano & Polkadot Ambassadors, Builders and doers interested in facilitating knowledge sharing and open source collaboration between the busiest and most experienced and committed builders in our ecosystems.
Our ecosystems’ have flirted consistently since the beginning of our journey in 2024. As Cardano’s on-chain governance comes online, its community is met with the same big decisions Polkadot community grapples with. We have lots to learn from one another! We share pain and excitement in learning and growing. Since then, we hosted a series of workshops and sessions, started to study and train builders about each others ecosystems, have found many friends across the camps and started to explore what works and what doesnt.
Based from our initial experiments and experiences, our vision ahead is simple. Provide the sparks necessary to kindle relationships, knowledge sharing and active collaborations between our ecosystems’ committed minds and stakeholders. We do not care about the price - We care about the systems being built and their potential to change the world as we know it, also, we don’t care that much about the random get-rich-quick token holders, we work with strongly committed builders, with those who are here for a real vision.
And here’s the plan. We level up and continue to evolve our initial uniFires V1 experiment, into a more formalised structure and operations with uniFires going into a V2. Our main goals are:
Improve Project Management:
Setup improved uniFires project management interoperable within team working in both ecosystem on-chain processes, including Web2 + Web3 components
Meetings:
Facilitate ecosystem introductions between Cardano & Polkadot builders, host meetings, sessions, workshops, spaces to share knowledge and insights across the both ecosystems
Participate in ecosystem events, online/offline, build relations with key contributors to gain insights and enable time to study relevant material to level up ecosystem knowledge, insights and active presence
Moderation
Moderating the uniFires public Discord server, engage in conversations on social media (X, Reddit etc)
Governance
Define and launch, in coordination with Project Management, an effective governance participation of uniFires in both ecosystems, as DRep/Voting Representative collective
Child initiatives
Actively spark, facilitate and maintain builder collaborations and initiatives across the Cardano & Polkadot ecosystems
Sort of a Cardano X Blockchain lobby (but in good)
We submitted a proposal and delivered in ProjectCatalyst.io’s Fund 11. We have submitted a follow up proposal for uniFire’s V2 in F13, currently in the review+moderation stage. Voting to begin November 28, 2024, results by December 16. We would like both ecosystems to contribute financially since we are in service and duty to both ecosystems equally. With additional collaborators, we will expand our efforts and inflame the governance and adoption discussions of the Polkadot x Cardano ecosystems’ drawing attention to the problems we care deeply about and starting initiatives everyone benefits from.
Also, adding some insights and context on previous work here.
This is not a detailed report, but aims to overall capture and highlight most relevant things which seem fair to be shared.
Past
Unofficial uniFires start: Q3 2023
When some Cardano & Polkadot folks came together to think about ecosystem collaborations. Building up a small team, submitting a proposal to kick off at Cardano Project Catalyst Fund 11.
Official uniFires start: January 2024
Through a funded proposal in Cardano - Project Catalyst, we enabled some initial and experimental setup. We launched 3 Workgroups, each led by one Cardano and one Polkadot community member.
Hosting a bunch of workshops, sessions and meetings in Q1 & Q2 2024, some are recorded, but most of the team meetings were held without recording.
Overall:
Getting to know the Cardano and Polkadot builder communities, studying, learning and introducing each other to our ecosystems, building up knowledge and relations while figuring out what could be some follow up steps and initiatives to further increase ecosystem and builder collaborations.
Stake Pool Operators/Validators
Started a group of Cardano & Polkadot Stake Pool Operators/Validators, who support each other to run pools on each other’s protocols.
Polkadotters finished to set up their SPO on Cardano, want to support, then delegate to:
Substrate
Collaborating with the IOG - Partner Chain team, who launched the Cardano Partnerchain node V1, built on substrate. Organising a session & inviting Cardano & Polkadot builders.
Supporting substrate builders to integrate open source tooling on substrate to the Cardano ecosystem via submitting proposals to fund integrations at Cardano’s Project Catalyst.
Governance
Deeply studying Polkadot OpenGov, since Cardano is in the progress to build the same Governance systems with CIP1694 as polkadot has with OpenGov. (PoS + Liquid democracy) Damn relevant to Cardano to learn from best practices and mistakes made and to include learnings in our gov roadmaps at Cardano.
Hosting a series of meetings with Polkadot doers, voters, Decentralised Voices cohort #1 members, deepen understanding on OpenGov and identify initiatives which can help to adapt/adopt valuable learnings, tooling, experiences
Mesh adapting Saxemberg Voting Guidelines
SIDAN Lab adapting Saxember Voting Guidelines
Coordinating with SIDAN Lab to build a Cardano Gov Discord bot, inspired by the discord bot for OpenGov from ChaosDAO
Training Cardano DRep’s, introducing best practices learned from highly effective Polkadot voters, such as Saxemberg, ChaosDAO, etc.
Governance Events & Panels
Felix co-hosted a physical workshop on Blockchain Governance over multiple days in Geneva, inviting Jeeper from OpenGovWatch who introduced OpenGov to governance enthusiasts from different ecosystems.
Coordinated with Roman & Sacha, the organisers of Polkadot Sub0 on a Governance panel with Cardano X Polkadot folks. Supporting and coordinating with Sheldon and Hinson to join the panel.
x.com , which seems to got a nice direct follow up with
Cardano <> Polkadot bridge
An initial proposal to conduct a feasibility study on a Cardano Polkadot light client bridge in Cardano Project Catalyst did not get approved. However, I continued to figure out how to get there. Meeting Seun from Hyperbridge who is interested in getting a Cardano - Hyperbridge setup. Planning to start on that in Q1, 2025.
Recordings of the uniFires public calls and meetings
We recorded some of our sessions, however, not everything has been recorded.
Here’s what has been recorded:
X Spaces:
July 20, 2024 - Decoding decentralized governance (Chinese & English)
July 10, 2024 - Governance learnings & insights with Bill Laboon
We are now in a position where we can look back on our initial efforts and define how to proceed. Our goal is to iteratively improve uniFires, closing everything so far as uniFires 1.0, and ramping up to uniFires 2.0.
We are submitting uniFires 2.0 proposals at both ecosystems, Cardano and Polkadot since we serve both ecosystems equally.
Our Cardano proposal has been submitted, check it out at IdeaScale
The respective Polkadot proposal is in draft, but you can check out the intro already at:
Next up
Continue to work on all above initiatives, and to further drum hard on Cardano X Polkadot collaborations, currently drafting the first UniFires polkadot proposal, getting everything to a uniFires 2.0.
Yup, and that’s pretty much it for so far. Hope that gives some good idea on what we are up to.
More to come, we improve as we grow and we hope to have your support in bringing our ecosystems closer to each other.