As with any breakthrough technology and ecosystem, there is always a bleeding edge where all the mistakes are being made and where somebody is suffering. I've watched a few situations develop and resolve in the Cardano community (Catalyst) that gives me a large degree of optimism about this ecosystem in particular.

I suspect the overall healthy state of this is largely down to the clear mission-focused communication from founder Charles Hoskinson which is helping permeate the culture within the organisation (IOG) and community.

At the moment there is a particularly sharp point of pain being felt by the small Stake Pool operators of the network. Their chances of launching and running an economically viable business are being damaged by a poorly designed feature of the primary wallet used for choosing a pool to delegate their ADA holdings to.

ADA holders earn rewards by staking their ADA with particular Stake pools... the amount of rewards they earn is determined by the health of the pool. The user interface of the wallet from which most people delegate their stake is showing incorrect data and telling delegators that the majority of small pools have no chance of earning rewards for them.

I took part in a recent stream from SPOCRA, the Stake Pool Operator Collective Representation Assembly, that highlights this issue.

My hope is that IOG responds quickly to resolve this technical problem as I have seen them do in other problem areas in the past.