Blockjock (James Meidinger)

Have every confidence in the group handling this proposal and am very glad to see a revised version submitted.

Due to the drop in value of ada, which directly impacts everyone who depends on treasury either to keep the things we have currently being maintained or new things we are building. This needs to pass or we potentially see some leave the space completely and some suffer so badly that they may never be the same. We have supported a large percentage of builders (currently approved) and there are others who deserve our support, this isnt the time to drop the ball.

Important infrastructure but additional clarity around execution, ownership, and funding scope was desired.

Important middleware for application builders and enterprise integrations.

Commerce is important, but concerns around structure, ownership, and ecosystem alignment prevented support.

Here is the tightened 2-paragraph version in the new format:

Disclaimer: I serve as a proposed independent administrator and multisig signer for this deployment. I am not Strike management, not the protocol operator, and not the recipient of treasury funds. My role would be limited to treasury stewardship: custody oversight, reporting verification, risk monitoring, drawdown review, wind-down participation, and ensuring treasury-owned assets are returned according to the proposal terms. Treasury capital should be productive, but stewardship must remain independent. Conclusion: Pass. Vote: YES. Strike has already demonstrated meaningful usage with over $1.1B in cumulative volume, over 1M trades, over $3.2M in LP profits, over $1.1M in protocol revenue, and a major share of Cardano-native trading activity. This proposal is not a grant; it is a temporary productive deployment of treasury-owned capital into Cardano-native liquidity infrastructure intended to deepen markets, increase trading activity, generate treasury yield, and strengthen Cardano’s derivatives layer.

The strongest feature is structure: treasury assets remain ecosystem-owned, are deployed temporarily, generate potential yield, and are subject to return, reporting, drawdown triggers, independent assurance, and wind-down controls. Stablecoin utilization is strong because the proposal converts ADA into USDM to provide stablecoin-denominated liquidity, reducing short-term ADA volatility exposure while supporting market depth. The core risk is not constitutional intent but market performance: modeled returns are not guaranteed, ADA appreciation could outperform the deployment, and success depends on continued volume, liquidity demand, and trader growth. Take-and-run risk is low due to independent multisig administration, named administrators, no unilateral Strike control, public reporting, and wind-down authority. The end-user benefit is simple: traders get deeper markets, LPs get larger opportunities, Cardano keeps more activity on-chain, and the treasury tests whether ecosystem-owned capital can become productive without becoming a permanent grant.

I verified the core budget inputs before drafting: the Eternl proposal is listed as ₳1,680,000 for 12 months of operations, maintenance, and improvements

Wallets are critical infrastructure. But critical infrastructure should eventually stand on its own financially.

Eternl’s proposal is not flashy, but it addresses a real issue.

Wallet infrastructure is expensive, and someone has to pay for it.

The important distinction here is that Eternl is not simply asking for permanent support. It is asking for a bridge toward user-funded sustainability.

Conclusion: Conditional pass, sustainability-dependent
Vote: YES, with clear reporting expectations

Eternl is one of Cardano’s most important access points.

Without wallets, users cannot easily stake, vote, use DeFi, connect hardware wallets, or interact with applications.

This proposal requests ₳1,680,000 to fund roughly 12 months of operations while Eternl transitions toward a paid Pro subscription model.

That transition matters.

Most operational proposals ask:

“Please keep funding us.”

Eternl is closer to asking:

“Help us bridge the gap until users can fund us directly.”

That is a materially better framing.

Previous proposal history: I did not find a prior approved or rejected standalone Eternl treasury withdrawal matching this current request. This appears to be Eternl’s current direct treasury ask for operations and sustainability, not a continuation of an already approved recurring treasury program.

Ask vs current NCL: The active NCL is 350M ADA. Verified enacted withdrawals under this NCL total approximately ₳207.26M. Eternl’s ask is ₳1.68M.

If approved, the projected enacted-plus-Eternl total becomes approximately ₳208.94M, leaving about ₳141.06M of NCL capacity before accounting for other pending or approved-but-not-yet-enacted proposals.

Financially, the ask is modest relative to the remaining verified NCL capacity. It represents less than 0.5% of the total NCL and about 1.18% of verified remaining capacity before this proposal.

The ask is not the issue.

The issue is whether ongoing wallet operations should be treasury-funded without a clear exit path.

Eternl helps answer that concern by proposing a sustainability model where users who derive value from the wallet increasingly pay for the wallet.

Stablecoin utilization: This is one of the strongest parts of the proposal.

Eternl explicitly commits to converting funding into stablecoins, using a public treasury monitoring wallet, providing periodic reporting, and creating repayment commitments.

That is exactly the kind of financial discipline treasury-funded operators should show.

For a 12-month operational runway, stablecoin conversion is not optional polish. It is a delivery-readiness signal.

It protects salaries, backend costs, support, audits, and maintenance work from ADA downside volatility.

Hoping a volatile asset remains at a certain price is not financial management.

The risk is that the Pro model may not gain enough adoption.

If subscription uptake is weak, this could become another recurring operational funding request. That would be a problem, because the treasury cannot become the permanent operating budget for every infrastructure provider.

That is why reporting matters.

Eternl should be expected to report Pro adoption, revenue progress, expense management, repayment progress, and whether future treasury dependence is declining.

The end-user case is clear.

Users get continued wallet support, governance tooling, hardware wallet support, mobile and browser access, and maintained dApp compatibility.

DReps benefit because Eternl provides one of the stronger governance user experiences in Cardano.

Developers benefit from maintained wallet APIs and ecosystem integrations.

This proposal is supportable because Eternl is critical infrastructure, the ask is financially reasonable, and the team is presenting a path away from treasury dependence.

But the condition is simple:

If the Pro model works, this should be the last treasury request of this type.

If it fails, the ecosystem will need to decide whether wallet operations are a permanent public good or a market service users should fund directly.

There is a clear path for Hydra to succeed and it is a tech that has the potential to clearly separate Cardano from other chains, the issue is:

1. how much does 5 million ada get us in the next year
2. if its just to keep the lights on (im sure it isnt as most large companies like IO understand Non Cyclical Treasury Management) then we have larger problems
3. there are other solutions like Sundaes gummiworm and also Delta defis advances with the Hydra dex

so for me as a drep I don't see the outlay of ada from community treasury as a immediate need, maybe the IO team can give more detail as to why this is a poor assumption on my part

Please review my original rationale from the previous proposal that did not go thru for context as to why I am voting for this one. I am pleased that it was resubmitted and also took into account why it did not go thru based on the NO rationales. Either way the core dependency from this proposal rests with another IO proposal that went thru, it is a piece that dovetails with theirs and will be very useful once we go thru the hardfork.

This one is relatively easy for me, I was at the last one and even though it was steered a little to heavy by Joel Telpner as chair of the event (not sure if he had been given this role or just handled the Executive function topic portion) surrounding the executive function topic. This along with other topics which included each table coming up with problem statements and clearly defining what seemed to be a major problem and what in our minds as a collective that wasn't. I did find it very informative and if your were there you would clearly see what the overarching feeling from most in the room was needed right then.

There was a management team there collecting all of the data from the event as we wrote everything down as we worked thru what we thought were the major problems that we faced and how we intended on working together to fix them. I did review Yutas rationale for no vote and I think he would best served to talk to Murasaki and other Japanese representatives and dreps and then review his NO and also rewrite his rationale as it clearly doesn't capture what happened in the room that day.

To be clear not everything produces fruit right away but it was one of the more enlightening day long workshops I have been a part of and I am using parts and pieces from that for multiple different strategies, based on both open discussion and internal discussions while talking separately with others during the day. This needs to be funded as it does have value, it has proven to be productive and for those voting no and it still is held, I would suggest going this year and being present for the event, arm chair quarterbacking from the sideline isn't going to cut it when attempting to rationalize your no vote.

Header

This proposal is not really about agriculture. It’s about turning real-world trust and economic activity into Cardano-native infrastructure.

1. Constitutional Gate (2.4(a)(d))

Assessment: PASS (High Ambition, Real-World Utility Focused)

Strong alignment with:
Adoption
Utility
Long-term sustainability
Clear:
milestones
governance structure
audit requirements
Treasury usage justified as:
infrastructure for real-world economic coordination

1. Decision Declaration

Vote: YES (High Potential, Execution Intensive)
This is one of the strongest real-world adoption proposals reviewed so far, but execution risk remains substantial due to scale and coordination complexity.

1. Context Framing

The proposal builds a:

Cardano-anchored agricultural trust layer

Using:

Veridian DID identity
Satellite oracle infrastructure
On-chain farm verification
Stablecoin payment rails
Compliance + traceability systems

Core thesis:

“Verify once, use many times.”

Instead of:

every lender
insurer
buyer
certifier

rebuilding onboarding independently.

1. Core Evaluation
   4A. Strategic Alignment

This aligns directly with:

Real-world adoption
Emerging market utility
Institutional and government integration

Strong alignment with:

Vision 2030 utility goals
Identity infrastructure
Stablecoin payment expansion

Most importantly:

This is usage tied to actual economic activity—not speculative loops

4B. Economic / Market Impact
Near-Term
500,000 registered farmers
2M on-chain transactions
Stablecoin loan/payment rails
2030 Projection
3M farmers
112.5M annual transactions
$900M TVL
16–20M ADA annual protocol revenue

Critical Insight:
This is one of the few proposals attempting to create:

recurring real-world transaction demand
outside traditional crypto-native behavior
4C. Execution & Accountability

Major Strengths:

Existing operational base:
Project Swaminathan already live on Cardano Mainnet
10,500 registrations completed
Named implementation partners:
Syngenta Foundation India
Seedstars SIGMA
Zengate
Andamio
Multi-country rollout:
India
Cambodia
Kenya

Notable Strength:
This is not greenfield R&D:

Many core components already operational
4D. Risk Assessment

Primary Risks:

Massive coordination complexity across:
governments
NGOs
financial institutions
field operators
Aggressive scaling assumptions
Dependence on partner execution

Secondary Risks:

Political/regulatory changes
Field adoption variability
Oracle/data quality challenges

Mitigation:

Existing live pilot infrastructure
Milestone gating (5M / 2M / 3M ADA)
Independent audits at M2 + M3
Multi-country diversification
4E. End-User Impact
Farmers
Digital identity
Credit access
Payment rails
Compliance portability
Financial Institutions
Verified underwriting data
Reduced onboarding costs
Buyers / Supply Chains
Traceability + compliance
Cardano Ecosystem
Massive increase in:
real-world transactions
stablecoin/payment usage
5. Governance Quality Signal

This proposal demonstrates unusually strong governance maturity:

Named milestones
Mixed-evidence acceptance model
Public KPI dashboard
Independent assurance
Explicit constitutional mapping

Strong separation between:

builders
administrators
oversight entities
6. Decision Justification

This decision is based on:

Existing operational proof rather than theoretical architecture
Strong alignment with real-world utility and adoption
Potential to create persistent transaction demand beyond speculation
7. Conditions to Change Vote
Failure to demonstrate:
scaling beyond pilot phase
operational adoption across countries
Weak stablecoin/payment rail execution
Breakdown in:
audit transparency
milestone reporting
8. Forward Impact
If successful

Cardano gains:

One of the largest real-world identity + payment networks in blockchain
Persistent transaction demand
Stablecoin and DID utility at scale
If unsuccessful
Treasury funds absorbed into:
fragmented pilot systems
difficult-to-scale operational overhead
9. Stablecoin Utilization

Assessment: STRONG

This is one of the best stablecoin utility integrations reviewed so far.

The proposal explicitly includes:

Stablecoin loan rails
Wallet settlement infrastructure
Farmer-to-buyer payments
On-chain repayment monitoring

Important distinction:

Treasury funds:
infrastructure + rails
NOT:
loan capital itself

This is structurally sound.

1. End-User Lens

This matters because:

Farmers gain:
identity
financing access
payment infrastructure
Cardano gains:
real-world utility
real transaction demand
non-speculative usage growth
Assessment Summary
Category: Real-World Utility / Identity / Payment Infrastructure
Strength: Existing operational base + real-world demand path
Weakness: Extremely coordination-heavy execution
Risk Level: Medium–High
Conviction: Positive, contingent on scaling execution
Key Distinction

This proposal is fundamentally different from most treasury asks:

It is attempting to onboard an existing real-world economic network onto Cardano

Not:

creating synthetic demand
or recycling crypto-native liquidity
Blunt Take

Most “real-world adoption” proposals:

promise future users

This one:

already has distribution

That alone materially changes the evaluation.

Rationale — Tweag Core Infrastructure (Peras + Resilience Stack)
Header

You don’t scale safely by adding throughput alone—you scale by making the system provably correct under stress.

1. Constitutional Gate (2.4(a)(d))

Assessment: PASS (High Complexity, High Importance)

Strong alignment with long-term sustainability, scalability, and resilience
Clearly defined work packages (17 across 9 infrastructure areas)
Includes milestone-based delivery, audits, and oversight via Intersect
Treasury usage justified as core protocol and safety infrastructure

1. Decision Declaration

Vote: YES (Critical Infrastructure, High Execution Complexity)
This is required to safely deliver Peras, Leios, and future scaling—but demands disciplined oversight.

1. Context Framing

This proposal funds core protocol and resilience infrastructure across:

Peras (faster finality ~2 min vs ~12 min)
Testing, validation, and adversarial simulation frameworks
Node efficiency + storage sustainability (History Expiry)
Network observability + debugging tools

Core issue:

Scaling upgrades (Leios, Peras) do not deliver value unless they are production-safe and operationally sustainable

1. Core Evaluation
   4A. Strategic Alignment
   Direct alignment with:
   L1 scalability (Peras + Leios readiness)
   Network resilience
   Decentralization sustainability
   Enables:
   Safe scaling
   SPO viability
   Long-term protocol health

This is deep infrastructure, not user-facing but absolutely required.

4B. Economic / Market Impact

Positive:

Faster finality → better UX for:
DeFi
payments
History Expiry:
Reduces SPO cost burden
Preserves decentralization
Testing frameworks:
Reduce catastrophic failure risk

Critical Insight:

This protects the economic layer from failure rather than directly generating growth

4C. Execution & Accountability

Strengths:

17 interdependent work packages:
Not fragmented, designed as a pipeline
Clear ownership:
Tweag (deep protocol experience since 2018)
Strong delivery structure:
Intersect-administered contracts
Third-party assurance
Public dashboards + updates

Notable Strength:

Explicit focus on:
testing, validation, and failure scenarios
→ Rare in most ecosystems
4D. Risk Assessment

Primary Risks:

High complexity across:
consensus
testing frameworks
node architecture
Interdependency risk:
failure in one area impacts others
Long timeline:
2 years (2026–2028)

Secondary Risks:

Budget size (~₳39.8M)
Coordination with:
IOG
ecosystem upgrades
Delays tied to:
hard fork windows

Mitigation:

Milestone-based contracts
Independent assurance
Phased delivery (Peras v1 → v2)
4E. End-User Impact

Builders:

Better debugging tools
More reliable infrastructure

Users:

Faster finality
Fewer failed or lost transactions

SPOs:

Lower storage requirements
More sustainable node operation

Capital Providers:

Reduced systemic risk
5. Governance Quality Signal
Strong governance alignment:
Uses Intersect + oversight committees
Transparent structure:
Open-source deliverables
Public reporting

However:

Complexity reduces visibility for average voters
→ Requires trust in technical execution

1. Decision Justification

This decision is based on:

Critical role in making Peras + Leios viable in production
Strong emphasis on testing, safety, and resilience
Lack of viable alternative providers at this level of expertise
7. Conditions to Change Vote
Failure to deliver:
Peras mainnet readiness
measurable improvements in finality
Lack of transparency in:
milestone reporting
Missed timelines tied to:
hard fork coordination
8. Forward Impact

If successful:

Cardano achieves:
faster finality
safer scaling
sustainable node economics

If unsuccessful:

Scaling upgrades:
delayed
risky
potentially destabilizing
9. Stablecoin Utilization
No explicit treasury hedging strategy
Full exposure to ADA volatility across 2-year delivery window

Assessment:

Weak
Significant given:
size of budget
duration

Long-duration infrastructure funding should not rely on ADA price stability

1. End-User Lens
   Transactions finalize faster
   Network is more reliable
   System is less likely to fail under load
   Assessment Summary
   Category: Core Protocol / Resilience Layer
   Strength: Essential for safe scaling
   Weakness: High complexity, large budget
   Risk Level: Medium–High
   Conviction: Positive (with strong oversight requirement)
   Key Distinction (Important)

This proposal is:

Safety + resilience for scaling

Not:

Growth
Adoption
Capital inflow
Blunt Take
Without this:
Scaling upgrades become risky
With this:
Scaling becomes safe but expensive

Rationale — Leios Consensus Upgrade
Header
If L2s unlock access, Leios ensures the base layer does not become the bottleneck again.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass, strategic core upgrade
The proposal supports long-term sustainability, scalability, and core protocol evolution. It includes defined milestones for release candidate work, validation, and hard-fork readiness.
The structure includes milestone-based disbursement, oversight, formal methods, testnet validation, and adversarial testing.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — Foundational, long-term critical.
Leios is required for Cardano to meet future throughput needs and support a sustainable fee-based economic model.
Core Rationale
Cardano’s long-term growth targets require a major increase in transaction capacity. Leios aims to improve throughput by enhancing Ouroboros Praos rather than replacing it.
The key value is that L2s may create new activity, but Leios helps ensure L1 can absorb, settle, and monetize that activity without becoming a bottleneck.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal aligns with Cardano’s 2030 roadmap, long-term scalability, DeFi expansion, real-world usage, and fee-based sustainability.
This is not optional research. It is base-layer economic survival infrastructure.
Economic Impact
Leios enables higher transaction capacity, supports growth in network fees, and reduces the risk of congestion-driven cost spikes.
Its strongest economic argument is that it helps Cardano scale usage while preserving L1 settlement value. Without this, new activity from L2s or applications could outgrow the base layer’s ability to process and capture value efficiently.
Execution Risk
Key risks include consensus-level complexity, hard-fork coordination, parameter uncertainty at scale, and ecosystem readiness across infrastructure, wallets, and tooling.
These risks are partly mitigated by testnet iteration, formal specification work, red-teaming, adversarial validation, and gradual parameter rollout.
Accountability
The proposal includes a clear 3-phase structure: release candidate, high-confidence validation, and hard-fork readiness.
It also acknowledges external dependencies, including hard-fork governance and ecosystem readiness. That is important because it separates delivery from activation and avoids overpromising mainnet deployment.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to include a clear stablecoin treasury management strategy.
That is a weakness given the long delivery timeline and high engineering cost. Multi-phase protocol upgrades require stable purchasing power for staffing, testing, formal methods, and coordination work.
The proposer should consider converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins, and the treasury disbursement process should support staged stablecoin conversion where predictable delivery budgets are needed.
Long-term protocol upgrades should not rely on favorable ADA price conditions. Hoping a volatile asset remains at a certain price is not a strategy.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means more capacity for applications and less risk of congestion.
For users, this means the network can handle more activity without fees spiking or performance degrading.
For capital providers, it improves confidence that Cardano can scale with demand.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if the release candidate fails, throughput gains are not demonstrated, hard-fork coordination breaks down, ecosystem readiness is not achieved, or security assumptions cannot be validated under load.

Rationale — CIP-159 + Multi-Asset Treasury + Babel Fees
Header

Users should not need to buy ADA before using Cardano. Treasury management should not depend entirely on ADA price stability.

Constitutional Gate

Assessment: Pass, high strategic alignment

The proposal supports adoption, sustainability, fee abstraction, user experience, and treasury modernization.

It includes clear workstreams, milestone structure, CIP pathways, governance integration, and platform-level economic justification.

Decision Declaration

Vote: YES — High leverage, system-level impact.

This proposal reduces user friction while introducing better treasury design.

Core Rationale

This proposal combines 3 coordinated upgrades: CIP-159 account address enhancement, Multi-Asset Treasury design, and Babel Fees.

Together, they address 2 major problems: users needing ADA before they can transact, and the treasury being structurally exposed to ADA volatility.

Strategic Alignment

The proposal aligns with adoption growth, treasury sustainability, cross-chain onboarding, stablecoin usage, wallet revenue models, and broader economic-layer evolution.

It helps Cardano operate more like a usable financial platform instead of requiring every user and treasury function to route through ADA first.

Economic Impact

CIP-159 can unlock micro-fees, direct deposits, L2 reserve mechanics, and cheaper DeFi interactions.

Multi-Asset Treasury design introduces the foundation for stable-value budgeting, asset diversification, and stronger treasury management.

Babel Fees reduce onboarding friction by allowing fees to be paid in native assets rather than requiring users to acquire ADA first.

Execution Risk

Key risks include dependency on related CIPs, ledger-level changes, community debate around treasury design, and limited initial Babel Fee provider support.

Adoption will also depend on wallet integration, bridge support, and practical implementation by ecosystem applications.

These risks are mitigated by phased delivery, CIP governance, and extensible architecture.

Accountability

The proposal has 3 clearly scoped workstreams with logical dependencies and governance pathways.

The main limitation is that Multi-Asset Treasury is still in the design phase, while Babel Fees may begin with a limited provider set.

Stablecoin Utilization

Assessment: Strong

This proposal directly supports stablecoin utilization by enabling the treasury to hold assets beyond ADA, including stablecoins.

That is a major improvement in treasury discipline. Stable-value budgeting allows funding programs, grants, operations, and vendor payments to be protected from ADA downside volatility.

For proposers, this creates a pathway to receive or convert funds in a way that protects delivery budgets.

For treasury disbursement, it creates the foundation for staged stablecoin allocation, diversified reserves, and predictable purchasing power.

Relying on ADA to remain at a certain price is not a treasury strategy. This proposal directly addresses that problem.

End-User Lens

For users, this means they may be able to use Cardano without first buying ADA.

For builders, it enables cheaper products, better wallet flows, and new fee models.

For the treasury, it creates a path toward stable budgeting and more disciplined capital management.

Conditions to Change Vote

This rationale would materially change if CIP-159 implementation fails, the Multi-Asset Treasury design breaks down, Babel Fees are not adopted by wallets, or the final design does not meaningfully reduce user onboarding friction and treasury volatility exposure.

Rationale — Developer Experience Initiative
Header
You do not get users without apps. You do not get apps without developers.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass
The proposal supports ecosystem growth, developer expansion, and long-term competitiveness.
It includes clear deliverables, milestone-based delivery, and a measurable target of 30% developer growth improvement. Treasury use is justified as adoption-enabling infrastructure.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — High leverage, low cost, critical gap.
This is one of the stronger ROI proposals relative to its size.
Core Rationale
Cardano remains harder to build on than many competing ecosystems. Tooling is fragmented, onboarding is slow, and developer growth is not where it needs to be.
This proposal addresses that gap through practical DevX improvements: faster project setup, reusable contract libraries, portal unification, bounties, and developer measurement.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal aligns with adoption, ecosystem growth, DeFi expansion, builder retention, and long-term competitiveness.
Developer experience is not optional tooling. It is the beginning of the ecosystem flywheel.
Economic Impact
More developers can lead to more applications, more users, more transactions, and more protocol revenue.
The proposal is relatively low cost at ₳3.6M and targets a high-leverage constraint: builder onboarding.
Execution Risk
Key risks include weak ecosystem coordination, poor adoption of new tools, continued tooling fragmentation, and hiring or contributor delays.
These risks are mitigated by bounty incentives, collaboration with Intersect and TxPipe, direct developer feedback, and an open contribution model.
Accountability
The proposal includes 5 clear deliverables: bounty-driven improvements, cardano-init, a reusable contracts library, Developer Portal unification, and a measurement hackathon.
The measurable 30% developer growth target gives this proposal a clear success benchmark.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to include an explicit stablecoin treasury strategy.
This is a neutral but still missed optimization. Bounty payouts, contributor payments, and delivery costs would benefit from stable budgeting.
The proposer should consider converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins to protect execution against downside volatility.
The treasury disbursement process should also support stablecoin conversion where predictable payout amounts are needed.
Hoping ADA remains at a certain price is not a strategy.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means faster onboarding, better tooling, reusable contracts, and lower friction to launch.
For users, this means more applications and better product quality.
For capital providers, a stronger developer base creates more places to deploy capital.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if developer onboarding does not improve, tooling is not adopted, DevX remains fragmented, or ecosystem coordination breaks down.

Rationale — Plutus Platform Expansion
Header
If the smart contract layer is expensive, hard to use, or unreliable, nothing built on top of it scales.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass
The proposal supports sustainable ecosystem growth through developer enablement, smart contract efficiency, security, and tooling improvements.
It includes defined workstreams, milestones, audits, formal verification, and milestone tracking. Treasury use is justified as core protocol infrastructure investment.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — Foundational, high necessity.
This is base-layer infrastructure work needed for Cardano to remain competitive.
Core Rationale
This proposal funds improvements to Plutus capabilities, cost efficiency, formal correctness, security guarantees, and developer tooling.
Plutus determines what can be built on Cardano, how quickly it can be built, and how expensive it is to operate. Improving this layer directly improves the entire builder and user experience.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal aligns with developer growth, DeFi expansion, node diversity, smart contract reliability, and better builder onboarding.
This is not an optional enhancement. It is layer-1 competitiveness work.
Economic Impact
The economic impact is indirect but foundational.
Lower execution costs can make more applications viable, improve DeFi capital efficiency, increase transaction activity, and support greater TVL growth over time.
There is no direct revenue model, but cheaper execution can lead to more usage, more fees, and stronger ecosystem activity.
Execution Risk
Key risks include exploratory deliverables, hard fork dependency, formal methods complexity, and potential developer adoption lag.
These risks are mitigated by time-boxed research outputs, clear fallback deliverables, multi-team collaboration, and structured workstreams.
Accountability
The proposal includes three defined workstreams: language and primitives, formal verification and audits, and developer tooling.
The use of formal specification, property-based testing, and independent audit work adds a strong accountability and quality layer. The IO and VacuumLabs co-venture model also reduces single-team dependency.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to include an explicit stablecoin treasury management strategy.
That is a neutral to weak point. Infrastructure work has staffing, audit, and delivery costs that benefit from predictable purchasing power. Converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins would help protect delivery capacity against ADA downside volatility.
The treasury disbursement process should also consider staged stablecoin conversion for milestone-based operating expenses.
Infrastructure funding should not rely on market timing. Hoping ADA remains at a certain price is not a treasury strategy.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means easier onboarding, better tooling, lower contract costs, and faster iteration.
For users, this means cheaper transactions, more reliable applications, and a broader dApp ecosystem.
For capital providers, stronger smart contract safety reduces perceived technical risk.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if the proposal fails to deliver measurable execution cost improvements, developer onboarding does not improve, new tooling is not adopted, or hard fork readiness milestones are missed.

Rationale — High Assurance Toolkit
Header
Security is Cardano’s brand. This proposal helps turn that promise into a developer default.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass
The proposal supports sustainable ecosystem growth through security, developer trust, and high-assurance infrastructure.
It includes defined outputs, milestones, audits, ecosystem integrations, and consortium-based delivery. Treasury use is justified as core assurance infrastructure.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — Strategic, identity-defining infrastructure.
This strengthens one of Cardano’s core value propositions: correctness, reliability, and security.
Core Rationale
This proposal expands Blaster for automated formal verification at the DApp level and supports CBDE as a one-click developer environment.
The main value is accessibility. Formal verification is one of Cardano’s strongest differentiators, but today it remains too difficult for many developers to use. This proposal moves verification from expert-only tooling toward practical developer workflow.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal aligns with Cardano’s security-first positioning, institutional readiness, developer growth, and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
It also supports high-assurance DeFi by making safer contract development easier across languages and tools.
Economic Impact
The impact is indirect but important.
Better verification reduces exploit risk, protects TVL, improves institutional confidence, and lowers the cost of secure development.
Security does not directly generate yield, but it prevents loss. That matters when real capital is expected to use Cardano applications.
Execution Risk
Key risks include developer adoption, coordination across multiple teams, and the complexity of scaling verification from scripts to full DApps.
These risks are partly mitigated by multi-language integrations, VS Code support, CBDE, vulnerability templates, and developer-first tooling.
Accountability
The proposal has two clear workstreams: Blaster expansion and CBDE.
Deliverables include DApp-level verification, vulnerability libraries, VS Code integration, equivalence checking, and broader language support across Aiken, Pebble, Scalus, and Futura.
The consortium model also spreads delivery responsibility across specialized teams.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to include a clear stablecoin strategy for treasury disbursement.
That is a weakness. Long-duration infrastructure work requires predictable purchasing power for staffing, tooling, audits, and delivery continuity.
The proposer should consider converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins, and the treasury disbursement process should support staged stablecoin conversion where operating expenses need price stability.
Security infrastructure should not be exposed unnecessarily to ADA downside volatility. Hoping a volatile asset remains at a certain price is not treasury management.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means formal verification becomes easier to use without needing deep formal methods expertise.
For users, this means safer applications and lower risk of exploit-driven losses.
For capital providers, stronger assurance improves confidence when deploying real money into Cardano DeFi.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if developer adoption remains weak, major language integrations are not completed, delivered tools are difficult to use, or the project fails to make formal verification meaningfully more accessible.

Rationale — Cardano Core Maintenance
Header

You cannot build a high-performance system on an unstable base. But core maintenance still requires clear accountability.

Constitutional Gate

Assessment: Conditional Pass

The proposal supports ecosystem sustainability, continuity, security, and reliability. It covers essential operational responsibilities including node stability, bug fixing, DevOps, monitoring, incident response, documentation, release management, and QA.

The concern is structure. This is a continuous spend model, not a clean milestone-based delivery model, which makes output, efficiency, and value harder to measure.

Decision Declaration

Vote: YES — Necessary, with ongoing scrutiny required.

This is required to keep Cardano operational, but it creates a precedent that must be tightly monitored.

Core Rationale

Every other treasury-funded initiative depends on the base network functioning properly. Core maintenance is not a growth proposal by itself. It is continuity infrastructure.

The proposal helps preserve uptime, security, release quality, developer confidence, and user trust. Without that foundation, higher-level infrastructure, DeFi, governance, and enterprise adoption are all weakened.

Strategic Alignment

The proposal aligns with network uptime, reliability, security, and ecosystem continuity.

It enables the rest of the roadmap to function, but should be understood as base-layer maintenance rather than direct growth investment.

Economic Impact

The economic value is defensive.

It helps prevent downtime, security incidents, broken releases, and loss of trust. It also supports consistent transaction flow and developer confidence.

The limitation is that it does not directly generate revenue, increase TVL, or create a new market. This is cost-center infrastructure.

Execution Risk

The main risk is that the treasury becomes a recurring operational backstop without enough competitive pressure or measurable performance standards.

Additional risks include cost creep, weak benchmarking, and reduced incentive to optimize internal operations over time.

These risks are partly mitigated by Intersect oversight, public reporting, third-party assurance, and the possibility of future competitive maintenance providers.

Accountability

The proposal includes oversight, reporting, governance structure, third-party assurance, and on-chain tracking.

The weakness is that continuous maintenance is harder to evaluate than milestone-based delivery. Future reporting should clearly measure uptime, performance, incident response, release quality, and cost efficiency.

Stablecoin Utilization

The proposal does not appear to include a stablecoin conversion strategy for the operational budget.

That is a meaningful weakness given the size of the request. A large maintenance allocation should not depend on ADA maintaining a favorable price throughout the delivery period.

The proposer should consider stablecoin hedging or staged conversion to protect staffing, infrastructure, DevOps, QA, and incident response budgets.

The treasury disbursement process should also support budget smoothing where predictable purchasing power is required. Hoping a volatile asset remains at a certain price is not a treasury strategy.

End-User Lens

For builders, this means a stable environment to deploy and maintain applications.

For users, this means the network stays online, apps continue to work, and transactions remain reliable.

For capital providers, it preserves confidence that core infrastructure will not fail.

Conditions to Change Vote

This rationale would materially change if reporting lacks transparency, measurable performance does not improve, incident response weakens, costs continue rising without justification, or viable competitive maintenance providers emerge and are not considered.

Rationale — Pogun: Capital Without Compromise
Header

Bitcoin liquidity is the largest unlocked market in crypto. Pogun is a direct attempt to bring that capital into Cardano and make it productive.

Constitutional Gate

Assessment: Conditional Pass

The proposal aligns with ecosystem growth, sustainability, and long-term utility. It includes KPIs, milestones, repayment mechanics, audits, reporting, and refund protections.

The main concern is execution risk, especially around BitVM, bridge delivery, and multi-layer product complexity.

Decision Declaration

Vote: YES — High conviction, with execution risk acknowledged.

This is closer to a treasury-backed investment proposal than a traditional grant. The upside is meaningful if delivery is successful.

Core Rationale

Pogun proposes a Bitcoin DeFi system on Cardano built around non-liquidation credit markets, yield infrastructure, and a trust-minimized BTC bridge.

The strongest argument is that it brings external BTC liquidity into Cardano rather than recycling existing ADA liquidity. This could expand Cardano’s DeFi base, improve TVL, and create new credit markets.

Strategic Alignment

The proposal supports BTCfi expansion, institutional adoption, cross-chain liquidity, and treasury sustainability.

It also aligns with Cardano’s broader need to attract external capital and build productive financial infrastructure.

Economic Impact

Pogun targets up to $450M in base-case TVL and includes a treasury return model through 20% EBITDA repayment plus a 5% perpetual return.

That structure shifts the proposal from simple spending toward an investment-style model with potential recurring upside for the treasury.

Execution Risk

The risk is material.

Key risks include BitVM feasibility, BTC bridge execution, timeline slippage, and adoption assumptions.

Those risks are partly mitigated through phased funding, milestone gates, audits, independent verification, and refund clauses.

Accountability

The proposal includes milestone-gated disbursement, independent verification, audits, refund protections, and on-chain revenue visibility.

These controls do not eliminate execution risk, but they make the proposal more governable.

Stablecoin Utilization

The proposer should define how received ADA will be managed against downside volatility. Converting an appropriate portion into stablecoins would help protect operating runway, audit costs, development budgets, and milestone delivery.

The treasury disbursement process should also consider staged or rules-based stablecoin conversion where predictable purchasing power is required.

Relying on ADA to remain at a certain price is not a treasury strategy.

End-User Lens

For users, this could allow Bitcoin holders to access credit and yield without selling BTC or relying on liquidation-heavy lending structures.

For builders, it introduces new primitives around BTC liquidity, credit markets, and yield infrastructure.

For capital providers, it creates potential exposure to fixed-rate credit and transferable debt instruments.

Rationale — Project Cayley / Blockfrost Infrastructure
Header
Infrastructure does not scale quietly. If data access centralizes, everything built on top of it follows.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass, with structural concern
The proposal supports ecosystem sustainability, scaling readiness, and infrastructure resilience. It includes defined deliverables, SLA targets, oversight, audits, and a treasury contract structure.
The structural concern is that part of the request functions as operational subsidy for an existing service rather than purely new infrastructure investment.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — Necessary infrastructure, with subsidy risk noted.
This is a defensive but important investment to reduce data-layer centralization before Cardano scales further.
Core Rationale
Project Cayley proposes decentralized slice indexing, expanded multi-chain data access across Cardano, Bitcoin, and Midnight, and continued support for Blockfrost’s free-tier infrastructure.
The central issue is that a large share of free-tier API traffic depends on a single provider. That creates a centralization risk that may look convenient today but becomes fragile as Cardano scales.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal aligns with Leios readiness, infrastructure decentralization, builder enablement, and broader ecosystem resilience.
It also creates a potential path for more SPOs and operators to participate as data providers, reducing reliance on one infrastructure path.
Economic Impact
The strongest economic value is indirect.
Lower indexing costs can reduce the cost of building on Cardano, improve developer onboarding, and support more reliable application infrastructure.
The limitation is that the proposal does not directly generate revenue or TVL. Its value is as an enablement layer.
Execution Risk
Key risks include long-term treasury subsidy expectations, limited competitive pressure if Blockfrost remains dominant, and uncertainty around adoption of decentralized slice indexing.
These risks are partly mitigated by the decentralized design, SLA requirements, open infrastructure approach, and oversight structure.
Accountability
The proposal includes defined milestones, indexer and API deliverables, BTC support, a 99.9% uptime SLA, Intersect contract oversight, and audit requirements.
These controls are appropriate, but decentralization outcomes should be measured clearly over time.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to define a stablecoin hedging or disbursement strategy.
That is a weakness. Infrastructure operations have predictable expenses, and converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins would help protect runway, uptime commitments, staffing, and service continuity.
The treasury disbursement process should also consider staged stablecoin conversion where ongoing operational costs require predictable purchasing power.
Relying on ADA price stability is not a treasury strategy.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means cheaper and easier access to blockchain data.
For SPOs and operators, it creates a potential role in decentralized data infrastructure.
For users, it means more reliable applications and less dependence on a single company for critical data access.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if the subsidy becomes open-ended, decentralization outcomes are not measurable, reliance on a single provider does not decrease, or operational costs become a recurring treasury dependency without a transition plan.

Rationale — L2 Scaling Stack
Header
Without L2s, Cardano is not seriously considered for the applications it needs to win.
Constitutional Gate
Assessment: Pass, high priority
The proposal supports sustainable growth, scalability, developer retention, and ecosystem competitiveness.
It includes defined workstreams, milestone gating, oversight, and structured disbursement. Treasury use is justified as critical infrastructure needed for Cardano to remain viable in the current market.
Decision Declaration
Vote: YES — Critical, time-sensitive infrastructure.
This is not optional optimization. It is market access infrastructure.
Core Rationale
Cardano’s current limitations around finality, fees, and throughput make it difficult to compete in DeFi, gaming, AI agent payments, and consumer-grade applications.
This proposal addresses that gap through a portfolio approach: Hydra production hardening, Midgard mainnet rollout, and an L2-agnostic data availability layer.
Strategic Alignment
The proposal directly supports adoption, throughput expansion, developer retention, and high-performance application development.
It also gives builders a credible path to remain on Cardano instead of moving to faster execution environments.
Economic Impact
The economic impact is significant.
Hydra can support near-zero fees and fast settlement for specific use cases. Midgard targets much higher throughput and introduces potential sequencer revenue that can flow back toward the treasury.
That makes this proposal stronger than a pure infrastructure spend. It includes a potential revenue-aligned model tied to actual L2 activity.
Execution Risk
Key risks include Midgard decentralization complexity, data availability architecture decisions, execution timing, and possible fragmentation across L2 solutions.
These risks are partly mitigated by the portfolio approach, existing production demand, real builders already waiting on the stack, and milestone-based delivery.
Accountability
The proposal includes 3 clear workstreams: data availability, Hydra hardening, and Midgard mainnet readiness.
It also includes structured oversight, milestone gating, and identifiable production dependencies from projects such as Delta DeFi and Masumi.
Stablecoin Utilization
The proposal does not appear to include a clear stablecoin treasury management strategy.
That is a weakness, especially because this is multi-phase, time-sensitive infrastructure work. Delivery budgets, staffing, audits, and operational expenses should not depend on ADA maintaining a favorable price.
The proposer should consider converting an appropriate portion of received ADA into stablecoins, and treasury disbursement should support staged stablecoin conversion where predictable purchasing power is needed.
Infrastructure critical to Cardano’s competitiveness should not be exposed unnecessarily to market volatility. Hoping a volatile asset remains at a certain price is not a strategy.
End-User Lens
For builders, this means they can build faster, cheaper, higher-throughput applications without leaving Cardano.
For users, this means faster transactions, lower fees, and a better app experience.
For capital providers, higher throughput creates more viable DeFi activity and stronger yield opportunities.
Conditions to Change Vote
This rationale would materially change if Midgard mainnet readiness fails, the DA layer is poorly executed, early production users leave due to delays, or L2 activity does not create a credible path back to L1 and treasury value.

I have sat back and watched the large concentration of my peers vote very early with a NO vote, it is obvious that the proposal may need to be rewritten listening to dreps and community and evolving the language. If you look at some of the rationales they range from "Hell No" to "Regrettably I am voting No" to an abstain based on really a political move so that it doesn't affect them in the long term. to a few yes's....very few. I will be voting abstain based on my clear conflict as a Cardano Foundation delegation recipient but would like to express that there is a clear solution to find compromise in my mind, I hope that both the CF and Emurgo team writing the proposal find those compromises so we can have the Foundation Summit this year and for years to come.

In my mind this is a Enterprise Infrastructure Investment

Reduces platform risk → introduces node diversity and removes reliance on single infrastructure paths
Improves data integrity → enables direct, verifiable access to chain state without third-party dependencies
Accelerates development velocity → lowers onboarding friction with familiar tooling (TypeScript-style environment)
Protects integrations → ensures core libraries stay maintained through protocol upgrades
Prevents ecosystem fragmentation → avoids duplicated effort and incompatible tooling stacks
Supports scalable operations → enables more resilient, production-ready application architectures
Strengthens long-term ROI of treasury spend → funds foundational infrastructure rather than short-lived initiatives

In short-This proposal invests in core infrastructure that reduces operational risk, improves developer throughput, and makes Cardano a more reliable platform for building and scaling real-world applications.

Houston we have clear and common sense clearance for lift off:-) The current info action is meant to help everyone make a educated decision when it comes to onchain governance, whats working, what isnt and what needs help.

Quoting here from the info action "To ensure fair comparison and rigorous due diligence, the Budget Template requires vendors to submit structured data in three key areas. This structure allows DReps and the Community to compare "apples to apples" rather than relying on persuasive writing"

Love this part Under "Budget Template" for all proposers

1. Strategic Alignment & KPI Targeting

Vendor Requirement: Vendors cannot simply state they are "good for Cardano." Anchored to a strategic framework

1. Work Package-Based Budgeting

Vendor Requirement: Budgets must be structured around Work Packages, with each Work Package clearly describing the scope of work, and key objectives, Expected Value (ROI) with associated Metrics, and a budget breakdown by cost category.

3.Identity & Commitment Verification

Vendor Requirement: Vendors must provide verifiable individual or legal entity details (Registration Number, Country of Incorporation) and a Transaction Hash proving the payment of the 1,000 ada treasury donation.

Thesis

I support this treasury withdrawal because it addresses a clear ecosystem weakness: insufficient ADA-stablecoin liquidity, which contributes to poor trade execution, higher slippage, and weaker DeFi usability across Cardano. A community-governed liquidity program with measurable deployment rules is a legitimate treasury use when it is narrowly scoped, transparent, and designed to improve market function rather than reward insiders.

Constitutional and governance basis

This proposal is more credible because it is framed around community oversight, constrained mandate, and transparent administration rather than discretionary control by any 1 dominant institution. Treasury resources should be deployed for ecosystem-wide public benefit in a way that is reviewable, auditable, and accountable to governance. A structure that reduces dependence on IOG, Emurgo, Cardano Foundation, or any similar concentrated center of influence is directionally consistent with community stewardship and healthier long-term governance.

Expected benefits

Deeper ADA-stable coin liquidity should reduce slippage and improve execution quality for users.

Better execution should help attract greater trading activity and improve overall market efficiency.

A gradual and adaptive rollout lowers the risk of disruptive market shocks from oversized deployment.

A transparent liquidity program gives the community a measurable way to evaluate whether treasury capital is improving real on-chain conditions.

If managed properly, productive deployment can support ecosystem growth while building a path for treasury return rather than acting as a pure subsidy.

Key strengths

The mandate is narrow and understandable, focused on ADA-stable coin pairs rather than broad discretionary market making.

The proposal emphasizes measurable outcomes, transparency, and adaptation to market conditions.

The deployment logic is incremental, which is materially better than immediate large-scale allocation.

The governance framing gives the community a more direct role in capital stewardship.

Amuru has done nothing but provide real value in pushing our chain forward, this particular proposal is critical, quoting here "There’s no more doubt that Amaru contributes to the decentralization and resilience of the Cardano ecosystem." This is a understatement and we need more developers like this providing things that actually, functionally make our entire blockchain better.

There needs to be a clean NCL on the table and we need it before the next fiscal year starts, this NCl does that and allows for much needed infra to paid for and built

◇ Voted YES on increasing Plutus transaction and block memory limits because it reduces friction for teams building real products on Cardano and improves the commercial viability of the ecosystem. To be clear this is a very well vetted proposal reviewed by the technical steering committee and it has fail safes in place to insure that it can be rolled back

◇ Builder productivity and cost efficiency
◇ Higher memory headroom lowers the engineering tax of squeezing contracts into conservative limits, reducing refactor cycles, audit churn, and time to ship.

◇ Improved user experience and conversion
◇ More capacity enables richer transaction flows and fewer split transactions, which typically means fewer failures, less user drop off, and lower support burden for dApps and wallets.

◇ Scalability headroom for growth
◇ Increasing these limits raises the ceiling for Plutus throughput as activity increases, helping builders scale without immediately hitting protocol constraints that force product compromises.

◇ Ecosystem competitiveness and partner readiness
◇ Smoother execution budgets make it easier for teams to commit to performance expectations with liquidity partners, integrators, and enterprise pilots, strengthening Cardano’s ability to attract and retain serious builders.

◇ Risk managed and reversible
◇ The change is staged and can be reverted via governance if network health metrics regress, making this a controlled upgrade rather than a permanent bet

Max was a amazing human and is truly missed by everyone is this community, it is only fitting he be immortalized with this designation, RIP my friend

This is what's called preparing for success and means a great deal to those currently grinding away behind a key board like myself to increase overall mkt activity and thereby increasing transaction volume onchain. This appears to be a good number for our Ncl and eco at the moment, considering the amount of work that is currently being done and what still lies ahead, its only prudent to keep the ball rolling in the right direction. There of course is always room to reevaluate each fiscal year but what I actually anticipate is that the Ncl will not be as much of a topic, as the over all revenue generation from proposals like the critical infrastructure and the liquidity fund coming online this year. This by itself will be a huge win for our blockchain and a huge win for the ada holder, here is to the future of Cardano!

This is part of the Liquidity funds overall strategy which was already overwhelmingly approved in the BIA, you can look to my past vote for rationale as it has already been supplied there

Voting Rationale – YES

Budget Info Action: DeltaDeFi

I am voting YES to signal support for the direction of this proposal, not to pre-approve any Treasury withdrawal.

DeltaDeFi represents a serious, technically grounded attempt to advance Hydra-based trading infrastructure on Cardano, paired with strong governance safeguards and process discipline appropriate for an Info Action: phased funding intent, stop-work and fund-return mechanisms, public KPIs, dashboards, and a clear separation between signaling support and any future TW. This is a responsible use of the permissionless governance framework to test whether this direction warrants further refinement before funds are requested.

This YES vote does not imply that the proposal is complete or risk-free. Key areas such as Hydra trust assumptions, decentralization milestones, KPI attribution, and adoption sensitivity still require clearer articulation. Signaling support at the Info Action stage enables those issues to be addressed transparently prior to any Treasury Withdrawal consideration.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

I do receive limited compensation in my capacity as a multisig signer, solely to fulfill an operational governance role designed to prevent a single point of failure in Treasury-related transactions.

I currently hold no equity, tokens, revenue share, or upside participation in DeltaDeFi or SIDAN Lab, and I do not benefit financially from the success or failure of the protocol itself. Compensation is strictly for administrative and risk-mitigation duties and is not contingent on proposal approval, funding outcomes, or project performance.

Any future Treasury Withdrawal proposal would be evaluated independently and on its own merits, consistent with my approach to all governance actions.

This vote is cast in support of governance learning, infrastructure experimentation, and responsible process, not preferential treatment of any team.

Without clear goals and a defined strategy to reach them, any effort is likely to fail. A strong Vision and Mission strategy establishes measurable KPIs, which in turn create clear direction and accountability around what we are trying to achieve. More importantly, it provides a shared operating guide for everyone involved across Intersect, the executive function, IOG, the Cardano Foundation, and Emurgo. It shows how to align effectively with the broader community rather than working in silos. We are now moving toward an organized, well managed governance structure, supported by a coordinated and professional group focused on connecting commercial entities and delivering enterprise grade solutions that generate real revenue in the real world.

Carrying on from the info action, please refer to my rationale in the info action

w/o this extension the Critical infrastructure proposal will not get ratified in time, it does not ask for a increase in cap but only a extension of time. The one issue that needs to be resolved is the CC vote, if a new CC member is not in place by a specific time the critical infra along with this extension will be moot till next year

From the moment I started working with Matt on USDM, we both saw this moment as inevitable. We weren’t sure the founding entities would ever come together to make it real, and that was fine. With or without them, we were committed to doing whatever was necessary to help this ecosystem grow. Even after Matt’s passing, the team kept pushing forward in the spirit of what he intended.

We need scalable stable coins, institutional-grade custody, analytics, bridges, and oracles. These are the components that open liquidity, attract enterprises, and give developers the confidence to build without hesitation. This is not a theory. This is the minimum architecture required for any blockchain that expects to compete.

The only area where I would caution the community is expectation. Liquidity alone does not guarantee success. Algorand is a reminder of that. What we need is an ecosystem that grows alongside the liquidity, supported by native stable coins, lending and borrowing protocols, synthetics, algorithmic models, and DEXs capable of handling real flow.

This feels like the beginning I’ve been waiting for, going all the way back to the early days of smart contracts and naming a Lobster as our first act of the Basho era. Maybe now the timing is finally right. But it will take more than the founding entities to make Cardano viable for enterprise and commercial use. It will take everyone building, supporting, and relying on this chain to bring the full vision to life.

This is more a solidarity vote then anything, it does look as though it wont pass sadly, but the fact were sitting on minimum viable governance a year on, speaks to wider problem. This at least should spark a conversation amongst the community that the sheer amt of work thats done by dreps/CC and committee seat members, is not a small thing. We ignore tis at our peril, the total amount of people currently doing this is very small, you dont want it to get smaller JS

Rationale for YES Vote on Cardano Constitution v2.3 (One note in rationale included at the bottom of page)

After reviewing the proposed updates from v1.0 and v2.0 to v2.3, I am voting YES in support of this constitutional revision.

Cardano’s governance framework is evolving from aspirational guidance to an enforceable, transparent, and verifiable system. The removal of non-binding “expectations” and “encouragement” clauses streamlines the Constitution to focus on rules that can be applied objectively and consistently (1). This shift promotes operational efficiency and accountability, aligning with the long-term goal of creating a governance model that functions with clarity and measurable outcomes.

The consolidation of budget and reporting requirements into the Treasury Withdrawal process simplifies oversight while strengthening auditability and transparency across all withdrawals, not only large ones. This is a critical step toward building institutional trust and demonstrating fiscal responsibility at scale.

Additionally, the standardization of terminology, immutability of proposals, and preservation of builder privacy strike the right balance between transparency and decentralization. Governance should empower participants to act responsibly while protecting contributors from unnecessary exposure.

In my view, these changes represent a mature evolution of Cardano’s constitutional design — one that replaces ambiguity with structure, and sentiment with process. Version 2.3 is a practical foundation for credible, data-driven governance capable of scaling alongside Cardano’s growth.

Vote: ✅ YES
Reasoning: Supports clarity, accountability, efficiency, and the transition from ideals to enforceable governance.

(1) Th eidea that it isnt enforceable is well understood amongst those of us who work and live here, however I do believe in a code of conduct that does require Dreps to live within a set of rules that maintains civility, keeps a moral compass which insures that everything we do is meant to improve the lives of those users who rely on us. We are here to improve every aspect of Cardano life, while attemtpting to live in a "Cant be Evil" world, which currently, technically isnt actually possible. This means its on us to do the right thing for the right reasons everytime.

GovTool is the backbone of Cardano governance — open-source, community-owned, and the lowest barrier for ADA holders to register, delegate, propose, and vote.

🔹 Keeps governance open and decentralized, not captured by private tools
🔹 Direct treasury withdrawals with oversight = real progress in treasury maturity
🔹 Clear budget, milestone-based, unused funds return to treasury
🔹 Expands DRep functionality + liquid democracy features
🔹 Built as a public good, maintained by an open consortium

Voting YES means strengthening the one toolset that guarantees participation stays accessible to everyone.

One caveat though, this tool should show progress towards ease of use, lowering the barrier to understanding and using this tool in every iteration in th future. It should incorporate those things other tools are using, that give added utility to the user or it risks being made irrelevant. Keep Up:-)

Im not sure what this is actually asking for, the vote for the 2030 vision has laready been submitted, voted on and ratified by the dreps. Is there someting Im missing? It has most the identifiable marks that Prod comm and its 2030 vision mandates, but is separate from the Prod comm proposal. I will be voting no on this proposal as it doesnt include ant mention of the authors that I can find and seems to be in essence copying what the Product Committee has already issued.

Rationale for Voting YES on the Stablecoin Liquidity Reserve Proposal
As someone who has spent years building within Cardano and advocating for responsible, forward-thinking governance, I believe this proposal represents a watershed moment for our ecosystem. It’s more than a budget, it's a blueprint for sustainable growth, institutional readiness, and user-focused DeFi infrastructure.
Why This Matters for Cardano
Cardano has made incredible strides in decentralization, governance, and protocol-layer innovation. Indigo and Djed gave us our first real liquidity here on Cardano with Synthetics and Algos, finally legitimizing Cardanos blockchain with new stable coin liquidity (see future iteration section for more). But one of its most critical missing components is deep, resilient stablecoin liquidity, Cardano’s current DeFi TVL sits around $375M (1), significantly lower than Ethereum or Solana. Stablecoin liquidity is even more limited at just ~$39M, making up only 9–10% of total TVL (2). That imbalance leads to slippage, weak peg defense, and low institutional traction (3) * Links for these statements at bottom of rationale. Without it, we face persistent barriers to user onboarding, real-world adoption, and financial use cases. This proposal directly addresses that by creating a Decentralized Sovereign Liquidity Reserve, “seeded” with 50M ADA, governed by a 9-person interim committee, and overseen by a tDAO composed of dReps.
This is not a short-term yield farm. It’s a long-term ecosystem investment strategy with enforceable community oversight, clear execution phases, and full transparency. The smart contract holding the funds will be public, auditable, and tied to monthly reporting, setting a new standard for accountability in on-chain treasury deployment.
Strategic Impact
This initiative delivers product-market fit infrastructure for Cardano. It mirrors what worked on other chains,while remaining true to our decentralized governance principles.
Product-Market Fit Improvements:
Structured 2-phase rollout reduces risk and increases transparency

DAO-led oversight with real veto power ensures decentralization

Protocol RFP model creates competitive, merit-based fund allocation

Stablecoin-first strategy makes Cardano attractive to TradFi, RWAs, and DeFi users

Legal structure protects the fund, dReps, and committee members, future-proofing the entire operation

Retention & Growth Levers:
85% of DeFi yield compounds into the ecosystem, growing liquidity over time

15% flows back monthly to the Treasury, supporting future governance decisions

KPI-driven performance (slippage reduction, revenue targets) creates a culture of measurable impact

Legal clarity builds confidence for institutional players and compliant DeFi developers

Open-source contract design encourages future replication and experimentation

Future Iteration & Ecosystem Inclusion
This fund is not static. It’s designed to evolve. The interim committee is explicitly temporary, tDAO elections will follow, allowing new voices and experts from across the community to guide future fund strategy. This democratized structure ensures alignment with Cardano’s long-term vision of decentralized governance.
Importantly, while this first phase focuses on fiat-backed stablecoins, the framework is flexible. It can be iterated to include decentralized and crypto-native stables (e.g., iUSD, DJED, or rLUSD equivalents), once market depth and reliability are proven. This modularity is crucial for balancing centralization risk with capital efficiency.
It also includes a RWA readiness clause, opening the door for future integrations of real-world assets like tokenized treasuries, real estate, or invoices, assets that require stable payment rails to function effectively.
This proposal also supports public goods beyond DeFi. It funds the development and open-sourcing of governance and treasury smart contracts, legal frameworks for DAO structures, and community-defined best practices for asset management, all of which can be reused by future Catalyst proposals, DAOs, and Cardano-native protocols.
Closing Thought
I’m voting yes because this is exactly the kind of high-leverage, responsibly structured, community-governed proposal that we need right now. It reflects everything I believe in: transparent governance, on-chain accountability, treasury sustainability, direct community involvement and the ability to evolve over time.
This is how we bridge Cardano’s foundational strengths into mainstream adoption, by building infrastructure that creates value today, while preparing for what’s next.
Let’s set the precedent.

Links for each portion quoted in rationale

1. https://defillama.com/chain/cardano?utm_source=chatgpt.com
2. https://coincentral.com/whats-draining-cardano-defi-hoskinson-points-to-one-core-problem/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
3. https://anzensofficial.medium.com/stablecoin-liquidity-the-key-to-cardanos-defi-growth-e52dba5e2a9c

I do feel as though this proposal mirrors a few others already funded but it does come from a very good team and I do not doubt their competency level. With that said I will be abstaining on this proposal and wish the team all success in this and future endeavors.

Considering the level of involvement from notables in our ecosystem and Snek teams success with past listings, this seems a no brainer to me. They are also paying back the loan with interest, which currently is unheard of in grant funding to date, as far as I am aware. Snek team has proven time and time again in their dedication to Cardano and all of its end users, myself included. I humbly give my near 1/2 million ada vote to support this absolute need for our eco and believe I am speaking for my delegators when I say, Here is to the long term success of our blockchain and the teams working to that end.

W/o it we cant move on to next phase fo decentralized governance

I don’t usually leave rationales on my votes, but I’ll make an exception for Dave and his team. Dave leads with purpose, ensuring more people are introduced to Cardano in an exceptional way.

Proposals like this are tough to measure — KPIs can only tell part of the story. Sure, rising end-user counts, active wallets, and growing social engagement across Cardano dapps help, but it’s still hard to quantify.

In the end, you have to trust the person to follow through. For me this is a calculated risk and one that deserves a chance to see where it goes.

N/A

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