Christopher Erckert | Dotare

Cardano's TypeScript ecosystem runs on HLabs infrastructure whether most people realize it or not. Mesh, Lucid Evolution, and Midgard all depend on it. Keeping that foundation maintained through a hard fork is not optional. Pebble on top of that is a genuine onboarding lever for the millions of TypeScript and Solidity developers who would otherwise face an unnecessary learning curve just to write their first contract. Both parts of this proposal are worth funding.

This proposal tackles the concrete reasons developers do not stick around: fragmented tooling, poor documentation, and a slow path from zero to working project. Unified onboarding, a setup CLI, a contracts library, and ecosystem bounties are practical fixes to known problems. Small ask relative to the impact if it works.

Blockfrost has carried the cost of free developer access to Cardano data since day one. That is not sustainable as a private subsidy and the treasury should share it. Project Cayley also solves a real scaling problem. As Leios increases throughput, full chain indexing becomes increasingly expensive and concentrates infrastructure around fewer providers. Sliced indexing keeps data serving decentralized and affordable.

Every proposal being voted on this cycle depends on what this one funds. Bug fixes, security reviews, release management, incident response, performance monitoring, the full operational layer that keeps Cardano running. None of it is optional and none of it stops when the feature work does.

Cardano's 2030 targets are unreachable without more throughput. Leios delivers 10 to 65x current capacity by building on Praos rather than replacing it, preserving the security guarantees the network is known for. This proposal takes it from public testnet to a mainnet-ready release candidate. That is the work that needs to happen and this funds it.

Bitcoin is a $1.5T asset sitting largely idle. Pogun gives it a productive home on Cardano. Borrow against it, earn on it, bridge it with genuine trust-minimized security. This is the kind of external capital Cardano needs to grow TVL materially. The treasury return structure, 20% of EBITDA until repaid then 5% in perpetuity, makes this an investment not a grant. That alone sets a standard worth supporting.

Plutus is the foundation every Cardano smart contract is built on. This proposal makes it cheaper to run, more formally verified, and easier to develop on. Lower execution costs benefit every user and protocol today. Better tooling brings more developers in. Stronger formal specification becomes increasingly critical as node diversity grows.

Cardano's security reputation is its biggest selling point — this makes it accessible. Automated formal verification has been locked behind specialist expertise; this proposal puts it in every developer's IDE. Safer DApps means more confident users, more TVL, and a stronger case for institutional adoption.

LayerZero for cross-chain messaging, Circle's USDCx for stablecoin liquidity, Pyth for reliable price feeds, and now Fireblocks to bring institutional capital in through infrastructure they already trust. Letting these lapse would strand assets and users at the door. This is how ecosystems compound.

Eternl is a quality product with a proven track record, but this is a for-profit company with a clear monetization path already in motion (Pro plans, transaction fees). At this stage, treasury funding amounts to subsidizing private product development in a competitive wallet market. This is a better fit for private investment.

The Scalus platform vision is compelling and the team has a strong delivery record, but the core of this proposal is a significant investment in another Cardano node implementation. We'd prefer to see how those efforts mature before committing to additional nodes in the ecosystem. We remain open to revisiting as the node diversity landscape becomes clearer.

IOG's research track record and the university consortium give reasonable confidence here. The post-quantum and consensus work protect Cardano's uptime and cryptographic resilience and brand. That said, at ₳32.9M this is a significant ask, and the community should hold IOG to strict milestone accountability.

The proposal frames an in-browser validating node as a critical decentralization investment. But Cardano already operates one of the most decentralized networks in the industry by meaningful measures: a large, globally distributed SPO set, multiple node client implementations in active development, and a governance model that is live and participatory. The marginal decentralization gain from a browser light node — whose own success metric is just 3 integrations — does not constitute an urgent need that justifies 4.6M ADA from a treasury under active spending constraint.

EMURGO is the primary commercial beneficiary of this sponsorship — institutional relationships, media access, and brand positioning in their home market — while contributing 0% of the cost. Where a founding entity has direct commercial upside from treasury-funded marketing, they should co-fund at least 50%. Until that standard is met, this vote is No.

EMURGO contributes 0% of the $792,900 cost while retaining the commercial and reputational benefits of executing a flagship sponsorship in their home market. The same principle applies here as to the top-up: a founding entity with direct commercial upside from treasury-funded marketing should co-fund at least 50%. Until that standard is met, this vote is No.

If OriLife's core protocol components — Bio-ID fingerprinting, VeData batching, PhoenixKey DID — were proposed as fully open-source, patent-free public infrastructure with no single-entity commercial control, there would be a meaningful public goods case to evaluate. As structured, the appropriate path is private investment, a Vietnamese government procurement contract, or a Project Catalyst grant at a scale commensurate with ecosystem-wide benefit rather than a direct treasury withdrawal.

ZK rollups are the stronger long-term architecture, but a production-ready ZK rollup verifier on Cardano L1 does not exist today and is not on a near-term delivery timeline. The choice in this cycle is between an optimistic rollup and no permissionless L2 at all. Delta DeFi and Masumi are building production systems on Hydra right now. Voting No to wait for ZK leaves active ecosystem builders without the infrastructure they have already committed to. This vote supports what is available and viable today while the ecosystem works toward stronger primitives.

The Cardano treasury already funds Intersect MBO, which was explicitly chartered to handle open source coordination, maintainer support, and contributor programs. This proposal acknowledges Intersect exists, states it was "not well suited" to the task, and proposes replacing it with a new independent entity — also funded by the treasury. Creating a parallel structure does not fix the problems identified; it duplicates governance overhead while leaving the root causes unaddressed. The appropriate response to Intersect underperforming is to reform Intersect or redirect its mandate, not to fund a competitor entity with 12M ADA.

Appreciate the decision to split the events, but voting no for now — would love to see the budget better aligned with ADA's current value and stronger matching contributions from the Cardano Foundation, particularly if attendance isn't subsidized for existing community members.

This removes the need to hold ADA before transacting, lowers DeFi costs, and starts the work to stabilize Treasury funding. Milestone-based with unspent funds returned.

The Cardano Summit generates ticket and sponsorship revenue and should be self-sustaining without additional treasury funding. While we support a TOKEN2049 presence as strategically valuable, we would expect CF and EMURGO to co-fund at least 50% of that activation from their own resources — not draw the full cost from the treasury.

As early-stage dApp builders, we're abstaining and deferring to more experienced ecosystem developers who are better positioned to evaluate the technical merit of this proposal.

We are voting YES on this proposal, as the integrations outlined are strategically important for Cardano’s ecosystem growth. However, we would have preferred clearer definitions or example groups of what constitutes tier-one partners—particularly for stablecoins, analytics platforms, bridges, and oracles.

For instance, explicitly listing which stablecoins qualify as tier-one (e.g., USDC, USDT, PYUSD, etc.) would strengthen the success criteria by clarifying that achieving deployment from any member of that predefined group meets the intended objective. Clearer categorization would improve accountability and alignment for all stakeholders while still allowing flexibility in partner selection.

I support this proposal in principle as securing key generic top-level domains (gTLDs) is a strategic move to protect and fortify the Cardano brand globally.

We should compensate governance as long as we can govern compensation.

Supporting a refined and simplified update.

This funding keeps Cardano’s on-chain decision-making accessible, secure, and user-friendly, supporting updates, community feedback integration, and feature improvements essential for Voltaire’s success.

Support for the stablecoin liquidity budget has shifted now that there’s clear alignment between capital deployment and treasury growth. The plan no longer centers on simply holding stablecoins but on actively using them to generate yield that flows back into the treasury—enhancing both liquidity and long-term sustainability for Cardano.

Lucid is a critical library for Cardano dApp development. Ongoing maintenance. Especially under Intersect’s administration it ensures long-term reliability, security, and support for ecosystem builders. We like many other builders rely on Lucid.

While there are other tools out there, this is an investment in continued innovation for governance infrastructure. Supporting diverse approaches strengthens the whole ecosystem.

While I support the growth of DeFi on Cardano, I believe treasury funds should not be used to artificially bootstrap liquidity. Sustainable liquidity comes from real demand, utility, and user participation.

Cardano’s ecosystem is still evolving. As DeFi protocols mature and Bitcoin integration expands, I expect liquidity to increase naturally without the need for short-term subsidies.

I’m voting in favor of a limited annual budget to responsibly close out the year, given how much time has already been spent on governance setup and voting. This approach reflects practical timing — not reduced ambition — and allows us to maintain focus and accountability.

At the same time, I’m fully supportive of paying a premium for the talented development houses that have driven Cardano’s progress to date. Their continued work is essential to sustaining momentum and should be prioritized accordingly.

Looking ahead, I strongly support efforts to establish a more efficient and timely budgeting process that avoids this kind of mid-year constraint in the future.