Episode 114: Awesome POSM and Jellyfish Visualizations for the Cardano Community with Christian, Tex, and Johnny

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Jul 10, 2025

Christian Taylor, the Head of the Open Source Office at Intersect, joins Tex McCutcheon and Johnny Kelly to discuss enhancing open source community health within the Cardano blockchain. They delve into the innovative 'paid open source model' to motivate contributors and governance complexities that ensure transparency. The team explores how AI can analyze blockchain trends with unique visualizations like the 'jellyfish' diagram. They highlight the importance of community engagement and reflect on personal growth, showcasing the human side of tech.

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INSIGHT

Cardano's Research-Driven Governance

Cardano is a highly research-focused blockchain using peer-reviewed academic rigor for development.
Its governance allows ADA holders to participate in treasury and policy decisions via voting and a constitution.

ADVICE

Build Decentralized Open Source Model

Enable community ownership by transferring repositories to a neutral foundation like Intersect.
Build onboarding guides and contribution ladders to grow a decentralized open source ecosystem.

INSIGHT

Measuring Project Maturity Effectively

Project maturity can be weighted by documentation quality and interaction ratio metrics.
Centralized contributions decreased as supplier companies contracted directly with Intersect, increasing ecosystem participation.

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Thank you to the folks at Sustain for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast!

CHAOSScast – Episode 114

In this episode of CHAOSScast, hosts Georg Link and Nicole Huesman engage in a deep discussion with Christian Taylor, Terence (Tex) McCutcheon, and Johnny Kelly about measuring and enhancing open source community health through innovative methods. Christian and his team share their experiences in implementing the 'paid open source model' within the Cardano blockchain community, designed to retain and motivate contributors. The panel discusses a variety of topics, including governance models, the integration of AI for report generation, and the challenges of balancing open source principles with corporate interests. They also explore specific tools and metrics used to evaluate project health and community engagement, providing an illuminating look into the future of open source development. Hit the download button now!

[00:01:40] Our guests give a brief introduction.

[00:04:37] Christian provides a non-technical intro to Cardano, a top blockchain focused on peer reviewed, academic rigor.

[00:06:07] Johnny explains Cardano’s high decentralization via SPOs, DReps, and

community tools like GovTool, and Christian outlines how open source ties in.

[00:09:39] Christian talks about open source governance and Intersect and explains Intersect serves like the Linux Foundation for Cardano, holding code, facilitating contribution ladders, and launching an incubation program.

[00:13:06] Georg gives a summary for those who are new: Cardano’s treasury is funded via blockchain transaction fees. This funding supports open source development, tools, documentation, and maintainers, and Christian elaborates more about this.

[00:15:39] Johnny details governance and funding decisions and Christian emphasizes the transparency and checks and balance system.

[00:17:08] Nicole raises concerns about aligning paid models with open source ethos and Christian discusses Intersect’s neutral, community-owned governance structure and internal checks and Johnny shares a link about the current members and the elective process within Intersect.

[00:20:37] Christian shares using Bitergia and CHAOSS metrics to build out Cardano’s open source health dashboard. Focus areas were response times, geographic contributions, contribution ladders, and project maturity.

[00:26:03] Tex shares their dashboard is public and useful for spotting high-impact projects. He aims to improve documentation standards and repo governance practices.

[00:31:05] Georg gives a brief description of the “jellyfish diagrams” that show how developers connect across projects.

[00:33:26] Christian shares their approach to using AI in metrics reporting and Tex emphasizes AI assists analysis but doesn’t replace human validation.

[00:37:10] Nicole asks if the paid open source model is being shared externally. Christian confirms they presented the model at open source summits, validated it with leading experts, stress-tested with community input, and outlines a six month pilot of the model.

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