Maureen

DAO of grant recipients voting on grants is a room full of people with a shared interest in the money flowing.
This was funded last year, and I can not surface a clean independent accounting of what those 34 funded companies actually delivered against their KPIs, or how many became the profitable and self-sustaining projects the model exists to produce.
So I am afraid I am going to have to pass on this one.

When a team has already spent their own capital and built a user base before asking for ours, that tells me most of what I need to know about whether they will deliver.

The structure is the part I like most. This is a loan, not a grant. Twenty-five percent of all fees flow back to the treasury until the full amount is repaid, then five percent continues in perpetuity. So the treasury either gets its ADA back with an ongoing revenue stream, or the platform underperforms and we learn that cheaply through milestone-gated releases rather than one lump sum.
Ticketing is one of the few blockchain applications that makes plain sense to a normal person. CIP-68 tickets that can be verified, transferred, and checked at the door solve real fraud and scalping problems, and they put Cardano in front of event-goers who will never read a whitepaper..
I would like to see the repayment tracked transparently on-chain so we can all watch it perform against the milestones. But the fundamentals are sound and I think the amount being asked is fair.
It’s a yes from me.

I liked this proposal when I first looked at it, but then a deeper look at what the money actually buys, most of it buys Dano building Dano. Two of the four work packages are their own products, wrapped in a standard that currently has one author and one adopter, both named Dano Finance. An open standard nobody else has adopted is not ecosystem infrastructure yet. It is a company roadmap which dano should fund themselves.
The KPIs also do not justify the size of the ask. A million ADA for a leverage order book that targets one million dollars in rolling monthly volume, and another million for an SDK whose success bar is a single external integration started or completed.
I like this team. I want them to build these things. I want them to build them, prove the standard attracts one adopter that is not themselves, and then come ask. For now it’s a no from me.

Open source funding is a real problem and Christian has a real track record.
But strip away the 90 pages of whitepapers and here is the structure: one man, through his own consulting company, holds sole authority over ₳4M from the moment of withdrawal. Both councils are advisory with no veto. The charity that is supposed to make this decentralized does not exist yet and is not due until Month 6.
So the pitch is essentially: DAOs are too political, therefore give everything to me. That is not a decentralized OSPO. That is a trust fall with treasury money.

And the safety net, replacing him via Info Action, is non-binding on-chain. If things go wrong, our enforcement mechanism is his goodwill. He may well have plenty of it. I am not sure voting treasury funds on may is a good idea.

I love the ambition. Cardano DeFi absolutely needs to grow. But growth bought with treasury incentives tends to leave the moment the incentives do, and we would be poorer and no deeper for it.

Blockfrost is one of those things people only remember exists when it breaks. Which is exactly how infrastructure should work.
Project Cayley actually solves a real scaling problem. Right now, if you want to participate seriously in data-serving infrastructure, you basically need to index the whole damn chain even if you only care about a slice of it. That gets worse with Leios. It becomes expensive, stupid, and centralizing. Richer operators survive, smaller ones get politely escorted out of decentralization.

Cayley’s sliced indexing is the smart part. Let operators choose which parts of the chain they index instead of forcing everyone to eat the entire buffet just to get one plate of rice. Lower infra costs, more operators, better decentralization. Revolutionary concept: don’t make things unnecessarily miserable.
Now let’s talk about the part people will scream about: the $900k operational subsidy.

Honestly? Fair.

For years, Blockfrost has been subsidizing the ecosystem by carrying the free tier themselves while everyone happily consumed it like it was grown naturally on trees. We love decentralization until the invoice arrives. If the ecosystem depends on a public good, the ecosystem should help pay for it. Pretending otherwise is just freeloading with philosophical branding.

And no, I do not think “but it’s a company” is a serious argument by itself. If a private company is providing public infrastructure at ecosystem scale, the question is not whether they are a company. The question is whether the value delivered justifies treasury participation. In this case, yes.

The budget is also sane. ₳7.92M for both next-gen indexing architecture and maintaining critical free-tier infrastructure is far less offensive than some proposals asking for venture-capital money to fund speculative ego projects and a dream journal. This one has clear deliverables, uptime SLAs, milestone-based disbursement, refunds for undisbursed funds, and actual measurable outcomes. Beautiful. Adults are in the room.
My only caution is this: treasury should not become Blockfrost’s permanent landlord. Subsidizing transition and ecosystem-critical continuity is fine. Creating endless dependency is not. Cayley needs to genuinely decentralize access and reduce long-term concentration, not become a prettier justification for the same dependency problem.
But today, this is still a yes.

I’m voting yes because after actually doing my research, I found that a lot of the “Midgard has delivered nothing” narrative is simply not accurate.
They have delivered meaningful work already.
Through previous Catalyst funding, they completed major foundational milestones including architecture specifications, protocol smart contract specifications, state management contracts, node infrastructure, and functional prototype progress. There is active open-source development, real technical work, and clear evidence that this is not a project starting from zero. The issue, in my view, is less about delivery and more about communication. Because Midgard is still pre-mainnet and not yet publicly battle-tested, many people understandably look at the treasury ask and feel like they are being asked to fund promises rather than proven infrastructure. I think a large part of that perception comes from the fact that much of the progress is buried in technical repos, milestone trackers, and builder conversations rather than being clearly communicated to the wider governance community.
This proposal is also bigger than just Midgard alone. It includes shared L2 infrastructure, Hydra production hardening for projects already building on Cardano, and Midgard’s path to mainnet. That broader context matters. Cardano needs serious L2 infrastructure if we want to remain competitive for DeFi, gaming, AI micropayments, and other high-performance use cases. Hydra and Midgard solve different problems and both are important for ecosystem growth.
I believe this is the right strategic direction for the ecosystem, and I do not think treasury should wait until everything is already finished before supporting critical infrastructure.
For me, this is a yes vote because I see real prior work, real ecosystem need, and strong long-term value for Cardano. My hope is that if funded, the team improves communication and transparency significantly. When public treasury funds are involved, technical delivery alone is not enough. The community also needs visibility and clear accountability.

The revenue return model is also genuinely novel for Cardano governance. 20% EBITDA until repaid, then 5% in perpetuity. If it works, the treasury gets its money back plus a permanent income stream. That's a different conversation from every other proposal.
But here's what bothers me:
The timeline is aggressive to the point of being uncomfortable. Credit market Q2 2026, yield layer Q3, bridge mainnet Q4. They're asking you to fund a BitVM bridge — one of the hardest unsolved engineering problems in crypto on a 6 month timeline. BitVM itself only became practically implementable recently. Building a production custom implementation in that window while simultaneously shipping two other products is either visionary or a setup for missed milestones.
Another problem is complexity. This is not one product. It is three major products stapled together while also trying to become a new treasury investment model for Cardano. Credit market. Yield app. BitVM bridge. Institutional onboarding. Revenue return mechanism. Governance framework. Reporting infrastructure. Basically “we are building a bank, a bridge, and a political philosophy at the same time.” That is where my blood pressure rises.
Execution risk here is not high. It is Olympic.

Especially the bridge. Every time someone says “trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge” I instinctively reach for holy water. Bridges are where optimism goes to die. BitVM is promising, yes, but it is still a brutal engineering battlefield, not some solved problem with a ribbon on it. Betting treasury money on bridge feasibility plus adoption plus institutional trust plus operational perfection is… ambitious in the way jumping off a roof with confidence is ambitious.

I also hate when proposals use giant TAM numbers like emotional support animals. Yes, Bitcoin is huge. Yes, lending is huge. Yes, institutions exist. Amazing. None of that proves product-market fit on Cardano specifically. It proves PowerPoint works. Cardano has seen enough “this will bring billions in TVL” promises to qualify for group therapy.
So my no is simple:

I do not believe treasury should be taking this level of execution and bridge-risk at this size, at this stage. The proposal is intellectually strong but operationally too ambitious and too dependent on multiple difficult assumptions succeeding at once. The repayment model is attractive but not enough to offset the uncertainty around delivery, profitability, and institutional adoption. Treasury should fund infrastructure with clear necessity and proven dependency first, not act as first-loss capital for highly complex commercial DeFi ventures.

In 2025, CF presented DReps with a responsible financial roadmap. $1.2M budget for 2026, trending toward break-even by 2028. It was clean, it was credible, it got approved. What arrived in 2026 was a $2.5M ask for the Summit alone four times the projected net cost with no explanation of what happened to the trajectory they sold us. The roadmap didn't evolve. It just quietly disappeared.
Then there's the revenue accounting. The 2025 roadmap projected $600k in Summit revenue for 2026 50% growth, their own number. The proposal credits $313k. Nobody explained what happened to the other $287k in projected growth, or why the financial planning we approved bears so little resemblance to the financial planning we're being asked to approve now.
The Intersect timing argument doesn't hold either. CF says August payments are too late for an October event. They also say they started planning in February. That's eight months. At some point the calendar stopped being the problem.
And then there's TOKEN2049, $700k for a booth and a 15-minute keynote at someone else's event, bundled into the same proposal as the Summit. These are two separate initiatives, two separate organizations, two separate budgets, and two separate accountability chains. Submitting them as one governance action means DReps cannot approve one without approving the other. That's a package deal nobody asked for.
I'm not convinced the value case has been made. I want Cardano to have a world-class Summit. But this proposal asks DReps to forget what we were promised last year and approve a number that was never part of the plan. That's a no from me and I say that with the full expectation that a stronger, more transparent proposal is possible.

I support this. Because Cardano does not need more decorative optimism. It needs infrastructure, maintenance, and fewer single points of failure. This proposal is funding real work with measurable outcomes and actual accountability. Pebble should absolutely be watched closely for adoption, but overall this is the kind of treasury spending that strengthens the ecosystem instead of just producing another conference panel about potential.

I'm voting no because this feels like we're choosing the easy fix over the right fix, and I'd rather see us solve the actual problem, which is ensuring we can maintain a full committee of seven qualified members, rather than just deciding we can make do with fewer.

A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.

If seven members were the right number for good governance, then seven is still the right number. Reducing it to five doesn’t magically keep the same quality. It just means fewer perspectives, less debate, weaker collective judgment and a thinner security margin. Going from needing three compromised members to two is not “basically the same.” That’s a real drop in safety.
Plus, and maybe this is just me being cynical, but lowering the minimum feels like it reduces the urgency to fill vacancies. If the committee can keep chugging along at five, where's the institutional pressure to get back up to seven? We're basically building in acceptance of understaffing, which seems like exactly the wrong message to send about the importance of constitutional oversight. And once you start shrinking standards for convenience, it’s very hard to stop.

If we want better apps on Cardano, we should stop making developers fight unnecessary constraints.
More capacity with no meaningful downside is an easy decision.
This improves throughput, reduces developer pain, and helps the ecosystem scale responsibly.
My vote is Yes.

A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.

My vote is YES.

This proposal simply increases the Plutus memory limits per transaction and per block. Nothing else changes. No economic parameters, no consensus rules, no hidden tradeoffs. It just gives scripts more headroom to run.

Right now, developers regularly hit memory ceilings and are forced to split logic across multiple transactions or add unnecessary workarounds. That wastes time, increases fees, and makes apps harder to build and maintain. These limits are artificial bottlenecks, not security features.
The increase is modest and controlled. About 16 to 18 percent. It stays fully within the guardrails. It was benchmarked. It was tested on Preview and PreProd. Performance and propagation targets remain safe. There is no evidence of risk to node operators or decentralization.
So this is not a philosophical decision. It is a practical one.

This proposal requests 500,000 ADA to set up the legal structure, contracts, and audit for the DeFi Liquidity program on Cardano. It’s not the full 50 million ADA budget. That sequencing makes sense to me. Build the rails first, then run the train. It wasn't easy but I vote yes.

A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.

I’ll be honest. I previously voted NO on this whole liquidity idea.
At the time, it felt big, complicated, and easy to mess up. Plus the committee members had conflicts of interest...they still do anyway. Treasury money deserves skepticism. Blind trust is how communities lose funds.
But looking at this specific withdrawal, the approach is measured and responsible. Small amount first. Clear scope. Multisig control. Audits. Milestones. That’s how adults handle money. I am genuinely impressed.
And there’s something else.
If we keep saying no to every attempt the community makes to manage its own capital, then we’re basically asking the founding entities to keep doing everything for us. Mom and dad forever. And that’s dependency.
At some point we either step up and take responsibility, or we admit we can’t run our own house. So I’d rather trust the people doing the work, and let the community try. Maybe this is one of those moments where we prove we can actually take care of ourselves. Maybe we should have a little faith and back it with accountability. I am voting yes on this.

This decision has no technical or financial impact. It does not change protocol rules, parameters, or treasury funds. Max played a real role in governance and constitutional work. Naming the fork after him is a reasonable way to recognize that work and preserve that history. I say Let's do it.

A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.

I first met Max in Nairobi. He was full of joy and life. Just one of those people with pure, pushful energy who pulled everyone along. At some point he was walking around with a tiny piece of paper asking people to sign their names for something. I honestly don’t even remember what it was for. I just remember thinking, “yeah, sure, whatever this guy is doing, I’m in,” and signing it. That was his spirit. He cared. And he moved things forward.. or at least he tried to.
Cardano has a long-standing tradition of naming upgrades after people who made meaningful contributions to the ecosystem. I believe Max was one of those people.
May his legacy live on.

This proposal sets the treasury spending limit for the next period. The limit is 350 million ADA from February 2026 to July 2027.
At roughly $0.30 per ADA, that equals about $105 million. This is fiscally responsible, unless ada crashes even further then we're screwed i guess.

A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.

This is the maximum the entire ecosystem can withdraw during that time. Every actual withdrawal will still require separate governance approval.
The number is based on last year’s real treasury inflows, about 307 million ADA, plus room to cover budgets that DReps have already approved. It keeps spending aligned with income and gives governance enough space to fund ongoing work without constantly hitting artificial limits.
Setting a clear cap creates discipline and predictability. It forces prioritization and prevents uncontrolled withdrawals.
This is basic financial planning for the network.
Voting Yes.

First of all, I am genuinely impressed that the founding entities managed to sit at the same table, breathe the same air, and agree on one document. History alone makes that an achievement. That said, unity by itself is not a substitute for good governance design.

I am voting NO, not because the problem is wrong, but because the solution as presented breaks too many governance principles at once. Cardano absolutely needs tier one stablecoins, institutional custody, real oracles, real bridges, and real analytics. That is not controversial. What is controversial is asking the treasury for ₳70,000,000 in one opaque bundle, with no named partners, no meaningful budget breakdown, and decision power concentrated in the same founding entities that historically controlled integration strategy.

The founding entities collectively received over a billion ADA at inception to build exactly this kind of foundational infrastructure. I fully accept that much of that capital is now spent on seven years of research, development, operations, and survival. But the shift from “we fund and execute” to “the community funds and we execute” is not being acknowledged honestly in this proposal. Instead, it is being reframed as neutrality and vendor independence. That framing is not transparent. It sidesteps the real structural change taking place in Cardano’s power and risk distribution.

I am especially concerned about the confidentiality shield being used to justify minimal disclosure, limited smart contract enforcement, and centralized administration. Governance cannot run on trust and NDAs alone, especially at this scale. If ₳70,000,000 can be approved without the community knowing who is being paid, how much per integration, and under what commercial constraints, then we are setting a precedent that weakens on-chain governance rather than strengthens it.
The Steering Committee structure further concentrates decision power in a small group composed entirely of founding or quasi-founding entities, withno independent ecosystem, DRep, or builder representation. That is not decentralized oversight. That is coordinated institutional control using public funds. Even with good intentions, the design itself creates misaligned incentives.

And yes, I am fully aware this proposal is pretty much already passed in spirit. The train is moving, the tickets are printed, and the conductor has probably locked the door. Still, with my 400k ADA in delegation at the time of this vote and my 43very patient delegators, I am voting NO anyway. Not because I think I can stop the train, but because the black box funding model it introduces should not go on record as “everyone agreed.”

I support this budget governance action in full.
The deposit was lost due to a protocol bug, not user error.
The submitter acted in good faith at the earliest stage of on-chain governance.
The community at the time recognized the loss was unjust and should be repaired once the mechanism existed.

The Constitutional Committee (CC) is not a ceremonial body. It is the core institutional safeguard of Cardano’s on-chain governance. It interprets the constitution, validates the legality and process of governance actions, arbitrates disputes, and ensures that treasury funds are released and managed according to the rules that protect the network. Without a functioning CC, there is no constitutional enforcement, no treasury execution, and no credible governance framework. The system collapses into paralysis or chaos.

At present, CC members carry real workload and legal liability. They review governance actions, verify compliance, hold and sign multisig transactions, engage in arbitration, and interface with the ecosystem during critical decision phases. These are not symbolic duties, they require time, coordination, specialized knowledge, and professional accountability. Expecting this work to be performed indefinitely on a volunteer basis is not sustainable, not fair, and not responsible. It disrespects the people doing the work and endangers the entire governance process.
This proposal seeks to fund the Constitutional Committee to ensure its members are compensated fairly for the time, expertise, and risk involved in performing this role. The requested amount represents a modest allocation, far below market rate for equivalent legal and governance oversight in any comparable ecosystem. The budget also covers administrative costs: legal setup, taxation, organizational structuring, and compliance reporting, which are unavoidable for a legally recognized governance body.
Funding the CC is not a “nice to have.” It is the cost of having a legitimate, operational governance system. If the network wants treasury withdrawals, parameter changes, and constitutional processes to function properly, then the people ensuring those mechanisms are constitutional and secure must be funded. Anything else is institutional negligence.

I'm voting yes because this is literally a no-risk proposition with real upside for demonstrating that Cardano treasury can function as actual financial infrastructure, not just a grant-dispensing machine. SNEK didn't ask for permission. It built organically, created its own community, drove real trading volume, and introduced people to Cardano who would never have cared about Voltaire governance or eUTXO architecture. That's valuable. Memecoins are often the gateway drug to broader ecosystem participation. It's symbolic acknowledgment of a community movement that already exists and thrives. Every successful chain has embraced their memecoins. Dogecoin put crypto in the mainstream. PEPE drove Ethereum engagement. Even Solana's memecoin casino gets people in the door. Fighting this is like standing on the beach yelling at the tide. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and memecoin culture is real whether we like it or not. This isn't about SNEK being serious infrastructure. It's about acknowledging that not everything needs to be buttoned-up and institutional. Sometimes a cute snake memecoin does more for adoption than another governance working group. The only argument against this is ideological gatekeeping about what deserves treasury support.

I'm voting no not because I'm against domains conceptually, but because this feels like a resource allocation that doesn't match ecosystem pain points. The info action contains no CIP, no technical architecture, no smart contract specifications. I was told tokenization and Web3 integration are "ambitions" that will be figured out after ICANN delegation, but i don't see the specifics. All that aside, the SEO disadvantage of new gTLDs is well-documented and wasn't adequately addressed. Most projects will keep their .com/.io domains for discoverability and use .ada as vanity redirects at best. The visibility and legitimacy benefits are theoretical. The defensive registration argument against scams doesn't hold up - scammers will continue using hundreds of other TLDs regardless of who owns .ada. Furthermore, the Community Advisory Group is informal and not yet formalized. We don't know its structure, its powers, or its accountability mechanisms. Advisory means CF retains final decision-making authority. I don't really really like that. For infrastructure that affects the entire ecosystem's namespace, we need binding governance before endorsement, not promises to figure it out later. Also, the economics of this investment are quite questionable. At $25 per domain with $350k annual operating costs, this requires 14,000 registrations yearly to break even. CF's own domain experts estimate anywhere from 3,000 to 30,000 annual registrations... wildly uncertain. If volume falls short, either CF subsidizes losses indefinitely from their substantial treasury, or the project fails after burning the initial investment. There's no clear sustainability plan. Our ecosystem faces real infrastructure gaps. DeFi needs liquidity depth, developers need better tooling, projects need security audits and ecosystem coordination. $4.2M over 10 years could address those concrete needs instead of buying namespace from ICANN. We're spending millions to subordinate our namespace to Web2 gatekeepers rather than investing in truly decentralized alternatives. I want to be proven wrong. I want this to be brilliant strategy I'm too shortsighted to see. But based on the information provided, I can not in good conscience endorse spending on ICANN namespace with vague governance and uncertain utility when that capital could address concrete problems facing Cardano builders today.

Firstly, how badly do we need stablecoin liquidity? Very very badly. I must admit, it’s long overdue. Cardano needs this like yesterday… but this current proposal doesn’t do it for me.
I appreciate what this team is trying to achieve. I think deeper stablecoin liquidity would genuinely help Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. The people involved seem capable, and honestly I don’t know most of them well enough to have strong opinions either way, which probably helps keep this objective.
But I’m voting no because this proposal feels like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
Fifty million ADA is an enormous amount of money… roughly 3% of our entire treasury. That’s a massive bet on experimental DeFi strategies when we haven’t even proven smaller-scale versions work effectively.

The governance structure worries me too.
A 9person committee which we have started referring to fondly as the NSWF committee, with reps from Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, IOG, and SNEK basically puts all the major players in charge of a fund larger than most venture capital rounds. The community oversight sounds good on paper, but the actual mechanisms feel theoretical when real decisions need to be made quickly.
Then there’s the legal complexity of setting up entities across multiple countries, dealing with different regulatory frameworks, and hoping no government decides to freeze community assets because they don’t like crypto that week.
Furthermore, 4% return target assumes DeFi protocols will consistently generate positive yields, which ignores how quickly things can go sideways in this space. We’ve seen billiondollar protocols collapse overnight.
What I’d need to see for a YES vote:
Start smaller. Maybe 10-15 million ADA to prove the concept works. Add real sunset clauses so this doesn’t become a permanent institution. Replace the institutional committee with community members who don’t have conflicts of interest. Include actual insurance or protection mechanisms for when things go wrong.
Most importantly, show me how this helps regular Cardano users, not just DeFi yield farmers and institutional players.

While I have serious concerns about the size, complexity, and execution risks of this proposal, I want to acknowledge its ambition. It’s clear the team is thinking long-term about Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem, and the focus on transparency, governance, and stablecoin liquidity is exactly the kind of forward-looking work our community needs.
Even if I’m voting no for now, I hope the ideas here spark discussions and lead to solutions that strengthen Cardano for everyone.
The treasury is there to experiment carefully, and with proper safeguards, initiatives like this could help us grow in meaningful ways.

I’m voting YES with conviction, though not without careful consideration of the risks involved.
The proposal requests working capital to expand what’s already working, which fundamentally changes the risk calculus compared to typical treasury requests.

The ecosystem benefits extend well beyond SNEK itself. Each exchange integration creates reusable infrastructure for future Cardano native tokens, solving the expensive compliance and technical integration challenges that every CNT would otherwise face independently. This proposal essentially socializes the cost of building exchange relationships across the entire ecosystem rather than forcing each project to rebuild the same foundations from scratch.
My analysis of market dynamics suggests this timing is strategically sound. Cardano currently lacks the cultural momentum that drives retail adoption in other ecosystems. While we’ve built sophisticated infrastructure, we’ve struggled with mainstream visibility compared to chains with strong memecoin presence. SNEK has already proven its ability to generate that cultural traction with 42,000 holders and 2 billion ADA in trading volume. Supporting their expansion leverages existing momentum rather than trying to manufacture it artificially.
The concerns I do have center primarily around ADA price appreciation risk. If ADA triples or quadruples over the five-year loan term, the real dollar value of repayment could become prohibitive for SNEK’s revenue streams. The proposal doesn’t explicitly address this scenario, though their commitment to repay the same ADA amount regardless of dollar value suggests they’ve accepted this risk. Frankly, if ADA appreciates that dramatically, it likely means the broader ecosystem strategy including this proposal has succeeded beyond our expectations.
I also acknowledge the precedent implications of funding memecoin infrastructure through treasury mechanisms. This could encourage lower-quality projects to request similar support without demonstrating comparable traction or execution capability. However, SNEK’s unique position as the only CNT currently meeting Tier 1 exchange requirements makes this more about supporting proven success than setting broad precedent for the category.
The alternative of maintaining our current trajectory concerns me more than the risks of this proposal. Cardano’s technical excellence hasn’t translated to proportional mainstream adoption, and our native token ecosystem remains largely invisible to retail markets where most crypto discovery happens. SNEK represents our best current opportunity to break through that visibility barrier using a token that’s already demonstrated cultural resonance.
The financial terms are actually conservative compared to market standards for growth capital. The 2.44% interest rate is barely above current staking yields, and the five-year timeline provides substantial flexibility for repayment. Most importantly, the loan structure means success pays the treasury back with interest while failure limits downside to the principal amount. This asymmetric risk profile favors the treasury compared to grant funding.
Looking at comparable ecosystems, the most successful have leveraged culturally resonant tokens to drive broader adoption. Dogecoin brought millions of users to crypto generally, Shiba Inu created massive Ethereum awareness, and various memecoins have been user acquisition engines for Solana. Cardano has been the outlier in building world-class technology without equivalent cultural adoption drivers. SNEK has already begun filling that gap organically.
The operational execution plan demonstrates maturity beyond typical treasury requests. Bi-yearly reporting, independent audits, open-sourced compliance documentation, and knowledge sharing with other projects all indicate serious commitment to ecosystem benefit rather than narrow self-interest. The allocation of 30-50k ADA annually for external audits ensures ongoing transparency throughout the loan term.
For these and many other personal reasons, I’m voting YES.

Already voted in support of this proposal, I am seeing it for the second time

Changing to support after team clarifications, but with important caveats.
The funding gap between Catalyst and VC is real, and this addresses it with clear operational planning and accountability measures. The KPI framework and fund return policy show responsible stewardship. Sometimes we need to try new approaches to see what works.

The approval process for non-Catalyst projects still seems unnecessarily complex despite claims of inclusivity. So I will be watching:
- Whether the approval process becomes genuinely accessible or remains gatekeep-y
- How funding decisions actually get made in practice vs. on paper
- Whether this elevates the best builders or just the most connected ones
This is a “let’s see what happens” YES, not a ringing endorsement. The concept has merit, but execution will determine whether future iterations get my support.

We’ve been operating under a document with typos, unclear definitions, and provisions for things that never actually got implemented like the DRep and SPO Codes of Conduct. It’s like trying to run a country with a constitution that still references telegraph regulations , technically functional, but embarrassingly outdated.
The most significant change is removing the budget info action requirement for treasury withdrawals, and honestly, this streamlines a process that was creating unnecessary friction. Having to pass a separate budget action before every treasury withdrawal was adding bureaucratic layers without adding meaningful oversight. The Constitutional Committee and DRep voting process already provide the checks and balances we need. Removing this requirement doesn’t eliminate accountability. Simply it just eliminates redundant procedural hurdles that were slowing down legitimate governance actions.

The DRep community participated in a legitimate election process from May to July 2025. While I didn’t personally vote for every member who was selected, that’s how democracy works. The community spoke, the votes were counted, and now we need to honor that outcome.

If we want people to actually participate in Cardano governance beyond the hardcore enthusiasts, we need tools that meet them where they are , on their phones, in their daily workflows. Tempo does that.

This is absolutely the most controversial proposal I’ve voted yes on, and honestly I’m as surprised as anyone. Six months ago, if you told me I’d be supporting 5M ADA to fund a snake meme coin’s exchange listings, I would have checked your temperature and recommended therapy.
Yet here we are. And here I am.
I’ll be brutally honest … this feels wrong in every traditional governance fiber of my being. Using treasury funds to boost a specific token’s exchange presence is supposed to be everything we shouldn’t do. But sometimes the most uncomfortable votes are the right ones, and the reality is that other ecosystems figured out that meme coins aren’t just jokes… they’re user acquisition funnels. DOGE brought more people to crypto than any white paper ever did. SHIB and PEPE have been Ethereum’s accidental ambassadors to retail. Cardano’s problem isn’t technology , it’s that nobody outside our bubble knows we exist.
SNEK isn’t asking for free money , they’ve already burned $4M of their own cash and delivered actual Tier 1 listings. Name another Cardano native token that could realistically get on Binance or Coinbase tomorrow?
I’ll wait.

The harsh reality is that SNEK might be our only viable ticket to mainstream CNT adoption, and every SNEK listing creates ADA trading pairs while potentially bringing new users who discover Cardano through a snake meme but might stay for the DeFi, governance, or infrastructure. It’s undignified, but it might actually work.
I have to be transparent about something that’s bothering me… seeing Emurgo on the advisory board is actually a bit of a red flag for me. Emurgo’s track record with community relations and ecosystem development has been… let’s call it “mixed.” Their involvement makes me wonder about the real motivations behind this proposal and whether there are backdoor deals or conflicts of interest I’m not seeing. But I’m choosing to overlook this concern because the core proposition still makes sense despite my skepticism.
Cardano’s biggest problem isn’t technical capability, it’s cultural relevance. We built the most rigorous blockchain and somehow forgot to make it cool. This sets a precedent that might haunt us, it feels like picking winners with public funds, and exchange listings don’t guarantee success. This could spectacularly backfire and make us look ridiculous. But sometimes you take the shot that makes you slightly uncomfortable because the alternative continued irrelevance in mainstream crypto culture might be worse.
I’m voting yes on the theory that SNEK has proven they can deliver, the ecosystem benefits are plausible, and frankly, we need something to break through the noise. Is this dignified? Absolutely not. Might it work? Unfortunately, yes. Don’t @ me if this ages poorly, but also don’t @ me if SNEK ends up being Cardano’s secret weapon.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

After further consideration and direct engagement with the NFTCDN team, I’m flipping my vote to support this proposal.
Why I Originally Voted NO:
My initial concerns centered on whether we should be subsidizing private infrastructure services with treasury funds, especially at this scale ($1.4M ADA). It felt like we might be picking winners and losers in the infrastructure space, potentially crowding out other solutions or creating market distortions.
What Changed My Mind:
The team’s outreach clarified several key points that shifted my perspective:
This isn’t just subsidizing one company but it’s removing a $100k+ barrier that’s preventing smaller developers from building on Cardano. That’s real ecosystem infrastructure. NFTCDN has been operating since 2022 with demonstrated reliability. We’re not funding an experiment - we’re scaling a working solution. The claimed $5.5M cost avoidance and 39k dev hours saved across the ecosystem represents serious value if even partially realized.
If native asset display is costing developers six figures and 9+ months to build in-house, that’s exactly the kind of barrier treasury funds should eliminate.
This proposal transforms expensive infrastructure complexity into a simple API call.
Let’s see what builders create when we remove the plumbing problems.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Paying exchanges for listings is essentially legitimizing a protection racket. Good projects get listed on merit and user demand. If Cardano native tokens need million-dollar bribes to get exchange attention, we have bigger problems than funding can solve.
This sets a terrible precedent and basically announces to every exchange that we're willing to pay ransom for legitimacy.

Deep breath
Okay, so haus wants 3 million ADA to tokenize home equity because they have a 30,000-person waitlist and $4.1 billion in "tokenizable" equity.
I have... questions.
So many questions.
First, if you already have $25M AUM and are generating revenue, why do you need treasury funding? Second, what's the regulatory framework for tokenized home equity in every jurisdiction you plan to operate? Third, how exactly does the legal structure work when someone defaults on their tokenized equity? Fourth, what happens to token holders if the housing market crashes?
Fifth, who's liable when (not if) something goes wrong? Hard No for me.

TxPipe builds quality tools, but we already have a confusing array of node options. Developers regularly ask "which node should I use for what?" Adding another specialized implementation doesn't help that confusion, it makes it worse.
Focus on making the existing tools better and more accessible instead of proliferating options.

If USDA needs this much subsidy to compete with other stablecoins, maybe the market is trying to tell us something about its product-market fit.

Quadratic funding is a fascinating concept from Glen Weyl's work, and I appreciate the mathematical elegance. But adding another funding mechanism when we're still figuring out Catalyst feels premature. The zero operational costs claim is nice, but the complexity of managing reputation scores, preventing Sybil attacks, and coordinating with existing funding streams...
Sometimes the best governance decision is not adding more governance layers until you've mastered the ones you have.

When i first read this, i thought " Whoa, are you sure?" Python's dynamic nature fights against everything we've learned about smart contract safety. The "strict typing" overlay feels like putting a safety harness on a motorcycle, better than nothing, but you're still on a motorcycle. haha. Initially I was going to vote no on this, but I changed my mind because you know what? I might be have been overthinking the security concerns on OpShin. Python is the second most popular language on GitHub with a 22.5% year-over-year growth rate. That's a massive developer pool we're currently excluding from Cardano. And Niels has been working on this for a while - it's not some weekend hackathon project.
The strict typing system on top of Python type hints is actually clever. They're getting the accessibility of Python syntax while enforcing the safety guarantees we need for smart contracts. Plus, all the typing gets erased during compilation for efficiency - that's solid engineering.
My concern about Python's dynamic nature might be overblown since they're essentially using Python as a higher-level syntax that compiles down to safe Plutus Core. It's not like they're running raw Python on-chain.
For ₳199,911, we could potentially unlock thousands of Python developers who are currently intimidated by Haskell or even Aiken. That ROI on developer onboarding could be massive. I am still open to change my mind on this if anyone thinks otherwise on this as my technical know how might be limited, but as of now i think this is a great win for cardano if we implement it the right way.

€30,000 per month for wallet maintenance is senior developer salary territory for what should be operational upkeep. Eternl has been around for four years - if they can't figure out a sustainable business model by now, that's a business problem, not a treasury problem.
Wallets benefit from the entire ecosystem's success. They should be investing in that ecosystem, not asking it to subsidize their operations indefinitely.

Peras consensus, canonical ledger state, various protocol improvements... which one is actually the priority?
I'd rather see them come back with a focused proposal on one major improvement and execute it brilliantly than try to juggle multiple consensus-layer changes simultaneously. The risk of introducing bugs at this level is enormous.

I know this proposal is going to pass no matter what, but I would like to share my opinion on it non the less, as I have been loud about it on x as well, might as well speak on chain. First of all, I respect IOG's technical contributions immensely. They built the foundation we're all standing on. But 97 million ADA for what reads like a university research department's wishlist just makes me uncomfortable. Ouroboros Leios, Acropolis, Hydra, Plutus improvements, LSM integration, KES agents... Eh,how about this..pick three things and do them excellently instead of promising everything to everyone? Also, where are the KPIs and deliverables on each line item?
This feels like the classic big tech company approach of throwing money at problems until they go away. For this much treasury funding, I need more than a bunch of blockchain buzzwords. In the age of voltaire, the community deserves better than "trust us, we're the smart guys." I mean, of course you are, but at least show me?

I read the PDF strategy of this document and honestly felt embarrassed for everyone involved. What they're calling a "unified globall events marketing stategy" is actually just three organizations splitting treasury money to sponsor random conferences with zero coordination. The Cardano Foundation wants to do enterprise events, EMURGO wants to do their usual ineffective ecosystem theater, and Rare Network wants to organize parties. The worst part is the vendor combination. Having EMURGO as a key partner when they've consistently failed to demonstrate measurable ecosystem value is like hiring your least competent friend to handle your most important project. Some partnerships make you weaker, not stronger, and this is definitely one of those.
Hard NO.

Twenty-seven million ADA for academic papers? I'm sorry, but no. Research is important, but this feels like funding a university department that happens to have Cardano in their mission statement. I've read IOR papers, they're academically rigorous and practically irrelevant.
The disconnect between IOR's theoretical work and what developers actually need in the trenches is honestly frustrating.
We're building a financial system for crying out loud.

I would be a hypocrite if i voted no on this one. I use it like everyday, and i know that revenue streams for these typeof tools are very very limited, yet they keep delivering. 50,000+ monthly users don't lie about utility. Blockchain explorers are critical infrastructure that everyone uses but somehow nobody wants to fund until they break.

This could be absolutely transformational. No more "connect to our centralized server to use our 'decentralized' app" nonsense. This is what true decentralization looks like - every browser becomes a potential node. I say gimme some Gerolamo.

Tiny ask, massive value. Reproducible infrastructure deployment is the difference between "works on my machine" and professional-grade systems that don't randomly explode on Tuesdays. MLabs has been quietly keeping essential infrastructure running while everyone else argues about which JavaScript framework to use. No brainer for me..let's fund this.

Sometimes you have to fund the ambitious projects to get breakthrough results. Nuff said.

For 750k, we get structured product research and a framework for making decisions based on data instead of whoever talks loudest on X. Easy Yes for me.

This is just smart economics. Instead of every project burning their life savings on expensive conference booths, we pool resources and multiply our presence. Dave (proposer) has 15 years in exhibitions and actually understands the pain points of trying to represent a complex ecosystem at events designed for simple pitches.
Also, having a coordinated Cardano presence instead of random projects scattered across a conference hall is called professionalism, and we could use more of it.

IOG's Voltaire team actually gets that we're past the 'ship it and hope" phase of governance. We need data, metrics, and honest analysis of what's working and what's not. This is the foundation for making our governance actually effective instead of just theoretically democratic.
Plus, the fact that they're willing to workshop this with the community instead of just issuing pronouncements from on high is growth. I say we fund it.

This is probably a controversial take but i think Cardano needs this event that happens every year that people look forward to. I particularly think the regional approach is smart, because not all people from everywhere can go to certain places due to visas or finances. This is going to encourage real developer engagement across continents.
Events drive ecosystem energy in ways that Medium articles and twitter AMAs just can't. When developers leave excited to build something, that's worth way more than 6M ADA.

They're doing the unglamorous work of actually coordinating this distributed mess we call an ecosystem, and honestly? Someone has to be the adult in the room. The constitutional administrator role alone justifies this. Democracy is messy and expensive.

The maintainer retainer program is awesome, actually paying people to maintain critical infrastructure instead of hoping they'll keep doing it out of pure love for the protocol.
You know what's expensive? Having your entire dApp break because some library maintainer got burned out and abandoned their project. Now you know what's cheap? Paying them enough to keep the lights on. This is infrastructure investment 101.

Look, I have heard the complaints about Catalyst, and although I haven't been here long enough to experience it firsthand,I understand the concerns. The bureaucracy, the projects that promise the moon and deliver a cheese wheel. But my opinion is that it's still the beating heart of our innovation engine. What else is there? I don't see a better option to be honest. And they have made significant improvements to this year's fund round, so let's see how it turns out before rolling them out.
Plus, watching 2,100+ projects get funded while other ecosystems are still figuring out basic grant programs... yeah, we're keeping this engine running. It's not perfect, but it's ours and it kinda works.

I’m abstaining on this one.
Not because I think the proposal is bad, I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. The community clearly signaled support for these projects, and I respect that. If people voted to fund them, then yes, let them go ahead. That part makes sense to me.
But here’s the thing. I’ve been pretty consistent about wanting treasury spending to stay closer to 200 million ADA. If you twist my arm, maybe 250 million...but this budget takes us to 275 million, and that just feels like too much. Even if I think the proposal itself is technically fine, voting yes would contradict everything I’ve already said about staying within limits.
Also, each of these proposals will still go through treasury withdrawal. Nothing gets funded automatically. They’ll be scrutinized one by one, so I don’t see this Info Action as make-or-break. It’s more procedural than anything.
So while I support the spirit of this and I’m not voting no, I’m also not going to vote yes just to stay in line. I’d rather abstain and be honest about where I stand.

This proposal brilliantly solves the collective action problem plaguing early-stage governance systems. Rather than forcing each builder to navigate the byzantine process of individual on-chain submission (creating governance fatigue), this approach establishes a repeatable pattern for efficiently allocating resources to promising initiatives with proven community support.
When future blockchain historians analyze Cardano's evolution, they'll point to this moment as when we transcended theoretical governance discussions and started building tangible infrastructure. The 7.5M ADA allocated here will likely generate 10x returns through ecosystem growth, user adoption, and technical advancement.

First off, Kudos to the proposers. I know how hard they work in the ecosystem and I really do respect the energy and thought that went into this. It’s clear they care deeply about Cardano and about pushing DeFi forward in the right direction.
That said… I’m voting no. Not because the idea is bad. Actually, I think it’s quite solid. But fifty million ADA is still… well, fifty million ADA. That’s a big number. A number that deserves a second, third, maybe even a fourth look. Especially with so many other proposals and ideas in motion, this just feels like bad timing. If the budget was smaller or rolled out in phases, I’d probably feel different.
I also think we need a bit more clarity around transparency and who gets access to the funds. The team looks strong, no doubt about that. But strong teams still need strong guardrails, especially when you’re asking for 50m ada.
So I’m saying no, but it’s a soft no, not a slammed door. I hope they come back. I hope they tighten a few things, maybe ask for less, and I’d love to see this evolve into something the whole community can rally behind.
Much love to the team.
I’m rooting for you. Just not voting yes this time.

First and foremost, I have already voted in favor of the 200M ADA NCL proposal, which I firmly believe represents the more prudent fiscal approach for Cardano's treasury management. Having multiple NCLs creates unnecessary governance confusion and dilutes voting power across competing proposals addressing the same need.
The Cardano Treasury is a finite resource that deserves rigorous stewardship. While Treasury inflows are currently estimated at approximately 300M ADA annually, these inflows are projected to decline over time as the reserve gradually depletes. The 200M limit better accounts for this inevitable trajectory, establishing a more sustainable withdrawal pattern that will serve the ecosystem for years to come.
Market dynamics must also be considered. Treasury withdrawals create selling pressure that can negatively impact ADA price. A more conservative 200M limit mitigates this risk while still enabling critical development. We must balance immediate funding needs against long-term value preservation for all stakeholders, including SPOs and ADA holders who depend on price stability.
The 300M proposal appears to be predicated on accommodating all funding requests rather than enforcing the difficult but necessary prioritization of resources. Effective treasury management requires making hard choices - not simply expanding limits to avoid them. The 200M NCL creates an appropriate constraint that will drive more efficient allocation decisions and greater accountability from funding recipients.
Most importantly, the precedent we set with this first major NCL will shape future governance expectations. Starting with a more conservative approach gives us flexibility to adjust upward if necessary, while beginning with a higher limit risks normalizing excessive withdrawals that the ecosystem may come to depend on.
I believe the 200M NCL better supports Cardano's long-term sustainability while still providing ample resources for essential development, maintenance, and growth initiatives. For these reasons, I must vote against this 300M proposal despite its well-intentioned aims.

The benefits of having a second, independent, resource-efficient node implementation far outweigh the risks. The team has the right expertise, the budget is reasonable, and the project aligns perfectly with Cardano's core value of decentralization.
Plus, bringing Rust developers into the Cardano ecosystem could significantly expand our developer community.

I support this 200M ADA Net Change Limit because it creates necessary constraints that promote thoughtful treasury management. While we need to fund ecosystem development, sustainability should remain a priority. A lower NCL forces us to carefully prioritize proposals, prevents any single entity from dominating the budget, and maintains treasury growth. This isn't about restricting innovation – it's about ensuring Cardano's treasury remains viable for years to come.

I unserstand the need for an NCL, but this is too much imo, especially this far gone into 2025. Also, proposal employs the problematic strategy of suggesting those who want higher limits should "vote yes now and change later" creating an anchor bias that would make future adjustments more difficult. We deserves treasury governance built on thorough analysis and genuine community input, not rushed decisions with arbitrary numbers that fail to account for market volatility or evolving project requirements.

As a developer, I've learned some hard truths about building things.
One of them is that perfection is like that "one last bug fix" that turns into a three-day refactoring spree. Every developer has once been there. You're about to push your code live, and suddenly you're thinking, "Maybe I should just reorganize the entire file structure... and rewrite all the comments... and maybe switch to a different framework while I'm at it?"
That's exactly where we are with the Cardano Constitution right now.
And I can hear some folks saying, "But what if we vote no? Then we can make it perfect!"
Here's the thing about perfect: it's the comfy couch of development. It feels nice to sit there and dream about it, but nothing actually gets shipped while you're sitting on that couch. Over 1,400 people from 52 countries contributed to this document. That's like having the biggest, most diverse code review in history. And unlike that time someone reviewed my code and just wrote "???" on every line (true story), these contributors actually put in thoughtful work.
Now, what if we vote no? Well, let me paint that picture: we go back to the drawing board, spend months debating commas and semicolons, whether we should use “shall” or 'will', “ada” or ADA , lovelace or #“shoelaces” (And don't even get me started on equitable and fairly...) Meanwhile, other blockchains will be moving forward.
The beauty of this Constitution is that it's not in an ancient scroll surrounded by people with powdered wigs protecting it. It's got an amendment process built in and we've got governance workshops planned for 2025. And let's talk about that amendment process for a second. It's not like the old days where you'd need to find someone with a fancy quill pen to make changes. We can actually update this thing without having to organize a continental congress or whatever they did back in the day. Though I guess a continental congress would make for some interesting Zoom calls...
In my experience, the best systems aren't born perfect - they evolve. Remember when JavaScript was just that thing you used to make annoying pop-ups? Look at it now. (Though some might argue it's still just for making annoying pop-ups, but that's a debate for another day.) The Cardano Constitution is our chance to start with something good and make it better over time. It's like launching any new project - you start with something solid and improve it based on real feedback.
If we wait for perfect, we'll be waiting forever.

So yeah, I vote YES.
Not because it's perfect - it's not even close.
I vote YES because it's good, it's solid, and most importantly, it's improvable.
We're not carving this in stone tablets or writing it with those fancy feather pens.
We're writing it in a format that can evolve with our community.
Think of it this way: if Web 1.0 developers had waited for the perfect solution, we'd still be arguing about whether this whole "internet thing" was going to catch on. Sometimes you need to get started and trust in your ability to improve things over time.
So let's do this. Let's move.
And then, just like with everything else worth doing, we'll make it better together.

No powdered wigs required. :)