Weekly Cardano Digest #85

Cardano activates $223M in on-chain governance, enables cross-chain swaps with NEAR, and brings DeFi to institutions through TapTools.

Author

Lucas Macchiavelli
August 04, 2025

Hey Cardanians! Welcome aboard the Weekly Cardano Digest #85!

We've filtered through all the noise to distill crucial updates into a breezy, 5-minute read. No need for you to sift through endless info — we've got you covered. Ready to delve into this week's top Cardano news? Let’s dive in.

Here are the topics of the week:

  • 🌉 Cardano is coming to NEAR Intents

  • 🗳️ 39 Proposals, $223M in ADA: Cardano Launches Smart Treasury Voting

  • 📊 $1B Firm WAVE Integrates TapTools API to Track Cardano DeFi

  • Weekly Development Report

  • & More!

🌉 Cardano is coming to NEAR Intents

A major new integration is underway: Cardano is coming to NEAR Intents,  opening the door to seamless, cross-chain swaps of $ADA with over 100 supported tokens on the NEAR Protocol.

 The NEAR community recently spotted a test contract labeled cardano.omft.near, confirming that ADA<>NEAR swaps are already in development.

This collaboration aims to eliminate the need for centralized exchanges by enabling smart contract–based swaps across ecosystems,  a significant step for both interoperability and user sovereignty.

Even Charles Hoskinson confirmed the partnership, stating:

“Glad to be working with NEAR.”

Once live, this integration will allow Cardano users to swap ADA directly for major assets like ETH, SOL, USDC, and more,  all powered by NEAR Intents.

🗳️ 39 Proposals, $223M in ADA: Cardano Launches Smart Treasury Voting

Cardano has officially begun the process of releasing over $223 million USD (275M+ ADA) from its treasury,  funding 39 ecosystem proposals designed to boost infrastructure, tooling, governance, marketing, and open-source development.

 This milestone follows the community’s approval of the Ecosystem Budget Proposal, and now puts the power directly in the hands of ADA holders and their Delegated Representatives (DReps) to vote through gov.tools.

Once a proposal is approved, ADA is automatically disbursed via smart contracts, ensuring decentralized, auditable, and trustless treasury management, a first of its kind in the industry.

Intersect, the member-based organization coordinating the process, calls it “real-world decentralized coordination”,  turning governance ideals into operational realities.

📊 $1B Firm WAVE Integrates TapTools API to Track Cardano DeFi

WAVE Digital Assets, an SEC-registered investment firm managing over $1 billion, has integrated the TapTools API into its portfolio management system, Haruko,  bringing native support for Cardano DeFi into their institutional workflows.

💡 Why it matters:
Cardano’s fragmented tooling and lack of institutional-grade analytics made it difficult for WAVE to track their ADA-based positions at scale. Building a custom data pipeline would have consumed internal engineering resources.

🔧 The solution:
By leveraging TapTools' real-time API, WAVE can now:
▪️ Track token balances and LP positions
▪️ View market prices and P&L attribution in one place
▪️ Eliminate manual tracking and reduce overhead by up to 90%

This marks a major validation for Cardano’s data infrastructure, as TapTools emerges as the go-to analytics provider for serious institutional players.

🧠 WAVE’s quant team now has full visibility into their Cardano exposure,  automated, clean, and cost-efficient.

Interesting Stories

Essential Cardano’s weekly development report

🎊 A Message from Lucas

What a week it’s been.  Being in Buenos Aires for the recent Midnight workshop was something truly special. I can’t share much just yet, but I can say this — the energy, the minds in the room, such an amazing experience.

As always, thanks for being part of this journey.
See you next week.

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