RCADA

RCADA votes YES on Cardano Builder DAO.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this proposal because Cardano needs effective ways to fund builders who can create measurable ecosystem growth. The Cardano Builder DAO is attempting to provide a focused, smart contract-governed funding pathway for projects that can improve meaningful Cardano metrics such as monthly active users, monthly on-chain transactions, and total value locked.

RCADA views this as a useful evolution in Treasury funding. Not every valuable builder initiative will fit neatly into large direct Treasury withdrawals, and not every DRep has the time or specialist context to evaluate every early-stage builder proposal in depth. A builder-led mechanism, if well governed, can help identify credible teams, coordinate feedback, distribute funds transparently, and track outcomes across multiple projects.

The Builder DAO also has an existing track record. It has already completed funding rounds, coordinated builder participation, distributed capital across multiple proposals, tracked KPIs, improved its process over time, and returned unused ADA to the Cardano Treasury. That history gives this proposal more credibility than an untested funding vehicle.

RCADA also supports the proposal’s focus on measurable outcomes. Linking Treasury allocation to adoption, transactions, TVL, and other ecosystem KPIs is the right direction for Cardano. Treasury spending should increasingly demonstrate visible value, not only in terms of work completed, but in terms of real usage and long-term ecosystem growth.

RCADA recognises the value of the DAO’s member-governed structure. A funding mechanism where builders participate in review and voting can bring practical knowledge into allocation decisions, especially when paired with smart contract-based releases and public governance processes. However, that same structure creates responsibility. The DAO should maintain clear eligibility rules, transparent participation records where appropriate, strong conflict-of-interest disclosures, and recusal expectations so builder-led funding does not become insider-led funding.

RCADA also notes that some Builder DAO participants may be closely connected to other Treasury proposals or ecosystem funding requests. That is not automatically inappropriate, since active builders are often the people best positioned to evaluate ecosystem needs. However, it raises the importance of strong conflict-of-interest rules, public disclosures, voting transparency, and recusal procedures. Builder-led funding must be structured so that practical builder expertise improves allocation decisions without allowing insiders to favour themselves, close collaborators, or related projects.

That said, RCADA’s support is not unconditional. This proposal creates a funding layer that will influence which builders receive capital, and that carries governance responsibility. The DAO must maintain high standards around transparency, proposal review, milestone validation, KPI verification, and post-funding accountability.

RCADA is especially concerned that KPI-based funding must not become superficial metric chasing. Monthly active users, transactions, and TVL are useful indicators, but they can be incomplete or gamed if used without context. The DAO should continue improving its KPI methodology, increase use of verifiable on-chain data where possible, and explain how funded projects create durable value rather than short-term metric spikes.

On balance, RCADA believes this proposal meets the standard for support. The Builder DAO has shown enough operational proof to justify continued funding, and its focus on builders, measurable outcomes, and smart contract-governed allocation aligns with Cardano’s need for practical ecosystem growth.

RCADA votes YES while expecting the Cardano Builder DAO to hold itself to high standards of accountability, fairness, transparency, fiscal discipline, conflict-of-interest management, and measurable impact.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA abstains on Withdraw 4,969,231 ada for Cardano Enterprise Adoption: Ticketing Platform.

This is a constructive abstention.

RCADA supports the goal of bringing real-world enterprise adoption to Cardano. Ticketing is a credible use case for blockchain because tickets, resale, royalties, transfer rules, fraud prevention, and attendance verification can benefit from transparent ownership and programmable settlement. The proposal also has meaningful positives: Phase 1 is already live on Cardano mainnet, Sellout has invested its own capital, the platform has an existing user base, and Phase 2 includes concrete deliverables such as a secondary marketplace, royalty enforcement, anti-scalping controls, wallet onboarding, organizer tools, an independent audit, public reporting, and a revenue-share repayment commitment.

However, RCADA is not comfortable giving full support to the proposal in its current form. The request is sizeable at 4,969,231 ADA, and the proposal blends public-good infrastructure with private commercial platform expansion. Treasury funds would support not only Cardano-native ticketing infrastructure, but also Web2 integration, marketing, trade-show activations, legal setup, launch activity, and commercial rollout work for a specific ticketing business.

RCADA’s concern is not that enterprise adoption is unimportant. It is that Treasury funding should be clearly tied to ecosystem-wide value. In this proposal, some outputs appear broadly reusable and public-good oriented, while others look more like normal business development costs for a private platform. That makes it harder to justify full Treasury support at this level.

RCADA appreciates the proposed repayment structure, including the commitment to repay $1,093,231 to the Treasury through a revenue-share mechanism. That is a positive feature and makes the proposal stronger than a simple grant. However, the exact revenue-base definition and payment cadence are to be finalised during contracting, and the Treasury would still be taking early execution, adoption, and commercial-risk exposure before repayment is proven.

RCADA also notes the adoption risk. Sellout’s existing user base and event pipeline are encouraging, but existing Web2 users do not automatically become meaningful Cardano users. Custodial wallet onboarding may reduce friction, but it also raises questions about user control, transparency, education, and whether the resulting activity creates durable Cardano adoption beyond one platform.

For these reasons, RCADA abstains rather than voting yes or no. This abstention is not opposition to Sellout, Anvil, ticketing, or enterprise adoption on Cardano. It is a signal that the direction is promising, but the current proposal blurs the boundary between public infrastructure funding and commercial product expansion.

RCADA would be more comfortable supporting a future version if the Treasury request were narrowed to the clearly reusable public-good components: open-source Cardano ticketing smart contracts, CIP-68 ticketing standards, royalty and anti-scalping modules, public documentation, integration guides, independent audit outputs, dashboards, policy-ID tracking tools, and a documented enterprise adoption case study. Commercial rollout costs such as marketing, trade-show activations, Web2 platform expansion, legal entity setup, and business development should ideally be funded by the company, customers, investors, revenue, or private partnerships.

On balance, RCADA sees real potential in Cardano-native ticketing, but abstains on this proposal as submitted because the public-good case is not yet cleanly separated from private commercial expansion.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA Rationale

RCADA abstains on Alchemy by Sundial x Charms: Cardano-Native Bitcoin Treasury Protocol.

This is a constructive abstention.

RCADA recognises the strategic importance of Bitcoin liquidity and agrees that Cardano should explore ways to attract BTC-aligned capital into its DeFi ecosystem. A credible Cardano-native BTCfi infrastructure layer could strengthen liquidity, create new composable assets, support wallets and DEXs, and help Cardano compete in a category that is currently developing quickly on other chains.

RCADA also acknowledges that this proposal is detailed and more thoughtfully structured than a simple grant. It includes separated funding pools, staged launch liquidity, public dashboards, monthly reporting, audit and security review allocations, ADA price protection, pause rules, refund conditions, and a commitment to return profits, yield, and returns from Treasury-supported launch liquidity to the Cardano Treasury. These are positive safeguards.

However, RCADA is not yet comfortable giving full approval to this proposal at this stage. Alchemy is a novel structured-finance protocol involving BTC-backed reserve mechanics, FIRE and ICE assets, reserve-ratio rules, launch liquidity, bridge or protocol-layer assumptions, oracle and accounting risk, legal and compliance considerations, and user-facing risk disclosures. This is materially different from funding established developer tooling, protocol maintenance, or infrastructure continuity.

RCADA’s main concern is Treasury exposure to an unproven DeFi protocol. The proposal requests 10,000,000 ADA, with approximately half intended for protocol infrastructure and staged launch liquidity. Treasury-supported launch liquidity may help bootstrap the system, but it also means public funds would be used to seed a new market-facing financial protocol before it has demonstrated live resilience, sustained demand, broad integrations, and stress-tested reserve behaviour.

RCADA is also concerned about technical and economic complexity. FIRE and ICE may be innovative, but the model requires users, DReps, and the wider community to understand BTC volatility, reserve ratios, senior and junior exposure, minting and redemption constraints, bridge or protocol-layer risk, oracle risk, liquidity dynamics, and downside scenarios. Even with dashboards and reporting, this complexity raises the standard for audit, education, disclosure, and governance oversight.

The Charms and protocol-layer dependency is another important risk. The proposal itself acknowledges that bridge, oracle, asset-accounting, or protocol vulnerabilities could impair reserve health. RCADA appreciates the proposed mitigations, including independent security review, economic modelling, staged launch, dashboards, and pause rules, but these mitigations do not remove the underlying risk of launching a new BTCfi system with Treasury-backed liquidity.

RCADA also notes the precedent risk. If approved, this proposal may become a reference point for future Treasury-backed launch liquidity requests from DeFi protocols. That could be a valuable direction if Cardano develops clear standards, but RCADA would prefer to see stronger ecosystem-level guidance before public Treasury funds are used to seed novel protocol liquidity at this scale.

At the same time, RCADA does not want to dismiss the proposal. The BTCfi opportunity is real, the proposal is ambitious, and Sundial and Charms are attempting to address a strategic gap in Cardano’s DeFi landscape. The safeguards, reporting commitments, fund separation, rollover clause, and return-of-yield commitments are all meaningful positives.

For these reasons, RCADA abstains rather than voting no. This abstention is not opposition to BTCfi on Cardano, nor is it opposition to Sundial, Charms, or the Alchemy concept. It is a signal that the direction is promising, but the proposal asks the Treasury to assume too much early-stage protocol, liquidity, and structured-finance risk for RCADA to support it fully at this time.

RCADA would be more comfortable supporting a future version if it includes completed independent audits before Treasury liquidity deployment, clearer legal and user-risk disclosures, a smaller or more phased initial Treasury exposure, demonstrated testnet or pilot performance, confirmed administrator arrangements, stronger third-party economic review, published integration commitments, and clearer community standards for Treasury-backed protocol liquidity.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 3,810,423 ada for Mithril Protocol.

RCADA supports this proposal because Mithril is important decentralisation and infrastructure technology for Cardano. It helps reduce the cost and complexity of securely accessing and verifying Cardano state, using stake-based threshold signatures to provide fast, trust-minimised state certification.

This matters because Cardano should not become overly dependent on centralised indexers, hosted APIs, or heavy full-node synchronisation for every use case. Mithril can support faster node bootstrap, light clients, wallets, monitoring tools, bridges, cross-chain infrastructure, and other community-built services that need reliable access to verified Cardano state.

RCADA also has direct appreciation for Mithril’s value, as we operate a Mithril node ourselves. From an SPO and infrastructure perspective, we see Mithril as part of the wider effort to make Cardano more resilient, accessible, and decentralised as the ecosystem grows.

The proposal is also a sensible transition from IOG-funded development toward a community-governed funding model through Intersect. Teragone has already been involved in Mithril’s development through collaboration with IOG, and this proposal supports continuity of that work while bringing it under Treasury-funded oversight.

The governance and administration structure is positive. This withdrawal passed the required Intersect Budget Process support threshold and will use the 2026 Treasury management smart contract framework, including oversight, milestone-based disbursement controls, and public dashboard visibility.

The requested amount of 3,810,423 ADA is meaningful, so RCADA expects clear milestones, transparent reporting, visible development progress, adoption evidence, and continued focus on broad ecosystem benefit. Mithril should continue to demonstrate practical value through integrations, tooling, documentation, and measurable improvements to decentralised access to Cardano state.

On balance, RCADA believes this proposal meets the standard for support. It funds important open infrastructure, strengthens Cardano’s decentralisation and resilience, supports a transition toward community-governed maintenance, and aligns with RCADA’s own operational experience supporting Mithril infrastructure.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 25,400,000 ada for Intersect: Governance coordination and technical stewardship.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this proposal because Intersect is currently fulfilling a necessary role in Cardano’s governance and technical operating model. The work covered by this proposal includes governance coordination, technical stewardship, release coordination, incident response, core repository support, committee coordination, and management of critical unowned processes. These are important functions for a decentralised ecosystem that is still maturing its on-chain governance framework.

RCADA also recognises the practical reality that no other DAO, organisation, or coordination body currently appears ready to provide this role at comparable scope. Cardano needs an operational coordination layer while governance, technical stewardship, and community-led processes continue to mature. Under the circumstances, Intersect has provided continuity and structure during a complex transition into Voltaire-era governance.

RCADA does not see sufficient evidence that Intersect is squandering funds. The proposal discloses prior Treasury funding, states that the current USD ask has been reduced compared with the previous year, and includes milestone-based drawdowns, public dashboard visibility, Treasury smart-contract controls, and external assurance through Appold. These are positive accountability features and support confidence that the funding can be managed responsibly.

That said, RCADA’s support is not unconditional. This is a large request at 25,400,000 ADA, and it comes on top of significant prior Treasury funding to Intersect and its committees. The size and breadth of the proposal create legitimate concerns around cost discipline, opportunity cost, scope creep, governance concentration, and long-term dependency on a single member-based organisation.

RCADA believes Intersect must hold itself to the highest standards of responsibility, transparency, and public service. The organisation should treat this funding not as entitlement, but as a mandate to deliver visible value to the Cardano ecosystem. Reporting should be clear, evidence-backed, and understandable to DReps and the wider community. Milestones, spending, incident-response work, release coordination, repository stewardship, committee outputs, and critical-process management should be communicated openly and regularly.

RCADA also expects Intersect to continue improving. This should include stronger value-for-money reporting, clearer separation between essential coordination and discretionary activity, continued reduction of unnecessary overhead, and active efforts to decentralise operational capacity over time. The goal should not be to make Cardano permanently dependent on Intersect, but to help the ecosystem become more capable, resilient, and distributed.

On balance, RCADA believes this proposal meets the standard for support because the funded functions are currently necessary, Intersect has provided useful coordination under difficult circumstances, and the proposal includes meaningful oversight mechanisms. However, this YES vote comes with clear expectations: Intersect must continue to earn community trust through delivery, transparency, fiscal discipline, humility, and a genuine commitment to strengthening decentralised governance rather than becoming a permanent bottleneck.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 1,193,000 ada for Intersect Technical Steering Committee Support.

RCADA supports this proposal because effective on-chain governance needs strong technical support. DReps and the wider community are increasingly asked to assess protocol changes, parameter decisions, hard fork readiness, infrastructure proposals, and complex technical trade-offs. Clear, independent, and evidence-based technical input helps improve the quality of governance decisions.

The proposal funds 12 months of Technical Steering Committee support across three areas: community-facing technical coordination, protocol governance and evolution, and a pilot independent technical review programme. This includes support for technical reports, the Parameter Committee, CIP editors, the Hard Fork Working Group, and future technical reviews of core infrastructure proposals.

RCADA views this as useful governance infrastructure. Cardano’s governance system should not rely only on popularity, lobbying, or surface-level proposal summaries. DReps need access to technical analysis that is transparent, understandable, and grounded in expertise. The proposed technical review function is especially valuable if it helps DReps assess complex infrastructure proposals more confidently and consistently.

The proposal also includes positive accountability features. It passed the required Intersect Budget Process support threshold, will use the 2026 Treasury management smart contract framework, includes milestone-based drawdowns and public dashboard visibility, and provides external assurance through Appold. The commitment to return unspent funds to the Treasury is also welcome.

RCADA’s support comes with important expectations. Technical governance support must remain transparent, advisory, and independent. TSC outputs should be public where appropriate, written in a way that DReps and community members can understand, and supported by clear evidence. Conflict-of-interest procedures, reviewer selection criteria, recusals, commissioned report scopes, and spending should be published clearly.

RCADA also notes the broader governance-concentration risk around Intersect and its committees. This proposal should strengthen decentralised decision-making, not create a gatekeeping layer over it. Technical advice should inform DReps and the community, not replace their judgement.

On balance, RCADA believes this proposal meets the standard for support. It funds a necessary layer of technical governance capacity, includes reasonable oversight mechanisms, and can help improve the quality, independence, and accountability of Cardano governance decisions.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 1,310,960 ada for Hardware Wallet Maintenance 2026.

RCADA supports this proposal because hardware-wallet compatibility is a security-critical access layer for Cardano. Users rely on hardware wallets for secure signing, staking, governance participation, DeFi, payments, and everyday self-custody. If Ledger or Trezor support falls behind Cardano protocol changes, firmware updates, or wallet and dApp integration needs, users and builders can face avoidable disruption.

This proposal is clearly focused on continuity rather than speculative new development. It funds 12 months of maintenance for Cardano hardware-wallet support, including Ledger and Trezor compatibility updates, supporting interoperability libraries, cardano-hw-cli, developer support for ecosystem integrators, release support, and vendor-required audit or assurance work where needed.

RCADA views this as important public-good infrastructure. Hardware-wallet support benefits the wider ecosystem, including users, wallets, dApps, builders, and institutions that depend on secure self-custody flows. Maintaining this layer proactively is preferable to waiting until compatibility breaks and then reacting after users lose access or integrations fail.

The governance and administration structure is also positive. This withdrawal passed the required Intersect Budget Process support threshold and will use the 2026 Treasury management smart contract framework, including oversight, milestone-based disbursement controls, and public dashboard visibility.

The requested amount of 1,310,960 ADA is larger than some maintenance proposals, so RCADA expects clear reporting and evidence of value delivered. This should include visible compatibility work, release updates, audit or vendor-assurance evidence where applicable, issue resolution, integrator support, and transparent capped time-and-materials reporting.

On balance, this proposal supports security, interoperability, developer experience, and user confidence in Cardano’s self-custody infrastructure. It is clearly scoped, process-approved, and focused on maintaining a proven access layer that many users and builders depend on.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA abstains on Withdraw 3,961,538 ada for Bringing Real-World Payments to Cardano with Wirex.

This is a constructive abstention.

RCADA supports the goal of bringing real-world payments to Cardano. Practical payment infrastructure, card access, stablecoin rails, wallet integrations, and fiat-connected financial activity could help Cardano move beyond speculative use cases and toward everyday economic utility. Wirex also brings relevant experience, including an existing payments business, card infrastructure, and a large user base.

However, this proposal raises important questions around public-good boundaries, commercial dependency, delivery complexity, and long-term ecosystem benefit. The request is sizeable at 3,961,538 ADA, and although the proposal describes open-source payments infrastructure, the practical value appears closely connected to Wirex’s own regulated payment rails, card programme, compliance stack, and commercial product strategy.

RCADA’s main concern is whether the Treasury is funding broadly reusable Cardano payments infrastructure, or primarily subsidising a commercial provider’s Cardano integration. Real-world payments are important, but Treasury funding should produce clear, measurable, ecosystem-wide value that can be used by builders, wallets, merchants, stablecoin providers, and users beyond one company’s product environment.

The regulatory and operational complexity is also significant. Card issuance, banking rails, stablecoin systems, fiat connectivity, KYC/AML obligations, supported jurisdictions, and payment-provider relationships can all affect delivery and adoption. These risks are not necessarily reasons to reject the proposal, but they do raise the standard for milestone clarity, reporting, open-source deliverables, and accountability.

RCADA also notes the precedent risk. If this proposal is approved, it may encourage more commercial fintech and payment providers to seek Treasury support for integrations. That could be positive if handled through a clear framework, but without strong standards it may blur the line between public infrastructure funding and commercial business development.

At the same time, RCADA does not want to dismiss the opportunity. Cardano needs more real-world utility, and payments remain one of the most important adoption pathways. Wirex has credible experience in this sector, and the proposal has passed through the Intersect budget process with structured administration, oversight, milestone-based disbursement controls, and public dashboard visibility.

For these reasons, RCADA abstains rather than voting no. This abstention is not opposition to Wirex or to real-world payments on Cardano. It is a signal that the objective is worthwhile, but the proposal does not yet give RCADA enough confidence that the funded outputs will be sufficiently open, reusable, measurable, and ecosystem-wide to justify full support at this level of Treasury funding.

RCADA would be more comfortable supporting future proposals of this type if they include clearer separation between open-source public infrastructure and vendor-specific commercial integration, stronger adoption metrics, defined jurisdictional rollout plans, transparent milestone reporting, and evidence that Cardano builders and wallet providers can reuse the funded components independently of Wirex’s own product stack.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 540,750 ada for TxPipe Dolos: Maintaining Cardano’s Lightweight Data Node, Year 2.

RCADA supports this proposal because Dolos is useful open-source infrastructure for the Cardano developer ecosystem. It provides a lightweight, resource-efficient way for builders, tools, and infrastructure operators to access Cardano chain data without the full overhead of traditional node and indexing setups. This supports developer experience, infrastructure resilience, and long-term ecosystem sustainability.

The proposal is clear and appropriately scoped. It funds 12 months of maintenance and enhancement work, including dependency updates, Cardano protocol compatibility, performance improvements, bug fixing, documentation, community support, contribution review, and AI-friendly developer resources.

RCADA also notes that this is a continuation of prior maintenance funding rather than a speculative new initiative. TxPipe has a strong reputation in the Cardano ecosystem and a credible delivery history across open-source infrastructure projects. Prior funding should not create automatic entitlement to future Treasury support, but in this case it supports confidence in execution.

The governance and administration structure is also positive. This withdrawal passed the required Intersect Budget Process support threshold and will use the 2026 Treasury management smart contract framework, including oversight, milestone-based disbursement controls, and public dashboard visibility.

The requested amount of 540,750 ADA is reasonable for the scope and category of work, consisting of 525,000 ADA for Dolos maintenance and enhancement plus a 15,750 ADA Intersect administration fee.

RCADA’s support comes with standard expectations around transparent reporting, visible repository activity, milestone delivery, issue resolution, useful documentation, community responsiveness, and evidence that Dolos remains valuable to developers and infrastructure operators.

On balance, this proposal is open-source, infrastructure-focused, clearly scoped, process-approved, and delivered by a team with a credible track record.

RCADA votes YES.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Withdraw 540,750 ada for TxPipe Dolos: Maintaining Cardano’s Lightweight Data Node, Year 2.

RCADA supports this proposal because Dolos is useful open-source infrastructure for the Cardano developer ecosystem. It provides a lightweight, resource-efficient way for builders, tools, and infrastructure operators to access Cardano chain data without the full overhead of traditional node and indexing setups. This supports developer experience, infrastructure resilience, and long-term ecosystem sustainability.

The proposal is clear and appropriately scoped. It funds 12 months of maintenance and enhancement work, including dependency updates, Cardano protocol compatibility, performance improvements, bug fixing, documentation, community support, contribution review, and AI-friendly developer resources.

RCADA also notes that this is a continuation of prior maintenance funding rather than a speculative new initiative. TxPipe has a strong reputation in the Cardano ecosystem and a credible delivery history across open-source infrastructure projects. Prior funding should not create automatic entitlement to future Treasury support, but in this case it supports confidence in execution.

The governance and administration structure is also positive. This withdrawal passed the required Intersect Budget Process support threshold and will use the 2026 Treasury management smart contract framework, including oversight, milestone-based disbursement controls, and public dashboard visibility.

The requested amount of 540,750 ADA is reasonable for the scope and category of work, consisting of 525,000 ADA for Dolos maintenance and enhancement plus a 15,750 ADA Intersect administration fee.

RCADA’s support comes with standard expectations around transparent reporting, visible repository activity, milestone delivery, issue resolution, useful documentation, community responsiveness, and evidence that Dolos remains valuable to developers and infrastructure operators.

On balance, this proposal is open-source, infrastructure-focused, clearly scoped, process-approved, and delivered by a team with a credible track record.

RCADA votes YES.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA abstains on the Strike Finance Liquidity Deployment proposal.

This is a positive and constructive abstention.

RCADA recognises the strength of the proposal and the importance of what it is trying to achieve. Strike Finance has demonstrated real traction within Cardano DeFi, with significant trading volume, active users, protocol revenue, and liquidity-provider returns. The proposal is also not structured as a conventional grant. It is presented as a 12-month productive Treasury deployment, with Treasury-owned capital converted into USDM, deployed into Strike Finance V2 liquidity infrastructure, and returned to the Cardano Treasury with realized yield at the end of the term. This is an innovative model and could represent an important step toward making the Cardano Treasury more productive rather than purely distributive.

RCADA is supportive of exploring productive Treasury deployment as a concept. Cardano should be willing to consider responsible ways for Treasury assets to support ecosystem liquidity, strengthen Cardano-native DeFi, retain trading activity on-chain, and potentially generate returns for the Treasury. Strike is a credible candidate for that conversation because it has demonstrated usage, a clear liquidity bottleneck, and a proposal that includes reporting, independent administration, yield return, and a defined 12-month term.

However, this proposal also asks the Cardano Treasury to enter a new and higher-risk category of governance action. Unlike a grant, this deployment places Treasury-owned capital into live DeFi liquidity infrastructure. That introduces risk to principal, smart contract and protocol risk, drawdown risk, custody and multisig governance risk, stablecoin exposure, execution risk, and precedent risk. These risks do not make the proposal bad, but they do raise the standard required for full support.

RCADA’s largest concern is custody and operational governance. The use of an independent multisig council is a positive safeguard, and Strike Finance not having unilateral custody is important. However, a 9,000,000 ADA Treasury deployment depends heavily on named individuals coordinating custody, deployment, reporting, risk response, and return of funds. For this scale of public capital, RCADA would prefer to see stronger and more formalised procedures around signer responsibilities, emergency response, signer replacement, dispute handling, wind-down authority, public account publication, and independent verification.

RCADA is also concerned about smart contract and protocol risk. The proposal states that an official audit is expected and will be published, but for a deployment of this size, RCADA believes the completed audit report should be public, reviewed, and understood before Treasury capital is deployed. This is especially important because the deployment would expose the Treasury not only to ordinary market risk but also to the specific mechanics and security assumptions of Strike V2 liquidity infrastructure.

The drawdown and market-making risks are also material. Even without fraud, a hack, or mismanagement, liquidity provision can lose money. In volatile or one-sided markets, the vault may absorb adverse trader PnL, inventory imbalance, poor execution conditions, or strategy underperformance. The proposal includes review and wind-down triggers, which is positive, but review triggers are not the same as automatic protection. Losses may already have occurred before a review or wind-down process begins.

RCADA does not view the ADA-to-USDM conversion as automatically negative. Holding more stablecoin liquidity may become useful for the Cardano Treasury in future, especially if the community develops a deliberate Treasury liquidity or sub-treasury strategy. However, this proposal effectively asks the community to accept stablecoin exposure and productive deployment risk before such a broader framework has been clearly established. USDM may be a credible and familiar Cardano-native stablecoin, but stablecoin exposure still introduces redemption, liquidity, issuer, regulatory, and depeg considerations that should be explicitly governed.

The precedent question is central. This proposal may become a test case for Treasury assets being deployed into specific DeFi protocols. That could be a valuable evolution for Cardano, but it should not happen casually. RCADA would prefer to see clearer ecosystem-level standards for productive Treasury deployment, including eligibility criteria, concentration limits, custody requirements, audit requirements, reporting standards, stablecoin exposure rules, emergency procedures, and fairness principles for other protocols that may seek similar support.

RCADA also notes the concentration and fairness issue. A 9,000,000 ADA deployment into one protocol would provide a significant liquidity advantage to Strike Finance. That may be justified by Strike’s traction and ecosystem value, but future proposals of this type should ideally be assessed within a broader framework so that Treasury liquidity is not perceived as preferential support for one venue over another.

At the same time, RCADA does not want to dismiss the proposal. The structure is more thoughtful than a simple subsidy. The independent council, monthly reporting, third-party assurance, midpoint yield return, final return of principal and yield, risk disclosures, and requirement for any future participation to come back through governance are all positive elements. RCADA also agrees that even a break-even pilot could produce useful learning for Cardano if principal is protected and reporting is transparent.

For these reasons, RCADA abstains rather than voting no. This abstention is not opposition to Strike Finance, nor is it opposition to productive Treasury deployment. It is a signal that the concept is promising, but the safeguards and governance framework are not yet mature enough for RCADA to give full approval to a 9,000,000 ADA deployment into protocol-specific DeFi liquidity.

RCADA would be more comfortable supporting future proposals of this type if they include a completed and published audit before deployment, stronger custody and multisig operating procedures, clearer automatic drawdown and wind-down rules, independent assurance before and during deployment, public reporting standards, and a broader Treasury deployment framework that can apply fairly across the ecosystem.

RCADA abstains constructively, encouraging continued development of productive Treasury models while asking for stronger risk controls before public Treasury capital is deployed at this scale.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on this updated Eternl Path to Sustainability Treasury Withdrawal.

This proposal is a resubmission of the earlier Eternl funding request that RCADA previously supported. The core purpose remains the same: to provide 12 months of operational runway for Eternl while the team transitions toward a more sustainable revenue model through paid Pro plans. Eternl remains an important user-facing access layer for Cardano, supporting payments, staking, governance participation, DApp interaction, hardware wallets, mobile users, and power users across the ecosystem.

The main difference in this resubmission is that the proposal now directly addresses the concern that led to Constitutional Committee NO votes on the previous action: lack of clarity around audit funding. The updated metadata clarifies that the audit allocation is for independent audits of treasury fund use and oversight metrics, not for technical security audits. It also specifies that independent parties unaffiliated with Tastenkunst GmbH or the Eternl team will review receipt, custody, conversion, spending, remaining balances, Pro-plan income relevant to repayment, and any refunds or repayments to the Cardano Treasury in February 2027 and August 2027. This materially improves the transparency and accountability profile of the proposal.

RCADA also notes that the higher ADA amount reflects a lower ADA/USD conversion assumption, not an expanded USD operating budget. The proposal continues to target approximately $420,000 for 12 months of operations. The commitment to convert only up to that USD amount into stablecoins, return any excess ADA to the Treasury, hold funds in an auditable account, avoid SPO delegation, and delegate to the predefined abstain voting option are positive safeguards.

We continue to view Eternl’s sustainability plan as important. The proposal does not simply ask the Treasury to permanently subsidise a wallet; it sets out a pathway where Pro-plan revenue may replace Treasury support over time. The repayment framework, public wallet monitoring, on-chain Pro-plan metadata, published income reporting, and repayment or donation transaction hashes create a reasonable basis for public oversight.

That said, RCADA’s support remains conditional and expectations-based. This proposal is not milestone-based, the main Eternl UI is not open source, and Tastenkunst GmbH remains both the submitting entity and fund administrator. These factors mean the community must rely heavily on transparent reporting, independent audit follow-through, and public accountability. RCADA therefore expects Eternl to publish clear audit outputs, treasury wallet activity, conversion rates, repayment calculations, Pro-plan adoption data, and progress updates during the funding period.

On balance, RCADA believes this updated proposal meets the standard for support. It preserves continuity for a widely used Cardano wallet, strengthens access to governance and DApp participation, responds constructively to the previous constitutional concern, and includes a credible transition path toward self-sustainability.

RCADA votes YES, while making clear that this support should not be interpreted as automatic approval of recurring wallet funding. Future support should depend on demonstrated progress toward sustainability, transparent use of funds, delivery against the stated operational commitments, and evidence that Eternl continues to provide meaningful value to the wider Cardano community.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on the van Rossem Hard Fork — Protocol Version 11.0.

This is a focused intra-era upgrade that strengthens Plutus capabilities, ledger consistency, node diagnostics, and stake-pool security while keeping Cardano in the Conway era and preserving the existing transaction shape.

RCADA supports the upgrade because it delivers practical improvements for builders and operators. The new Plutus primitives, unified built-in availability across Plutus V1, V2, and V3, and native case expressions should improve script performance, reduce execution costs, and expand what developers can build on Cardano. The ledger changes also improve consistency and correctness through stronger VRF key-hash rules, revised reference-input handling, deterministic Constitutional Committee voting restrictions, clearer withdrawal validation, and improved protocol-parameter mismatch reporting.

This action is also consistent with RCADA’s earlier support for the companion Plutus Cost Models update. That action provides the cost-model entries required to activate the new primitives safely across the supported Plutus versions. Supporting the hard fork therefore completes a coordinated set of upgrades rather than approving an isolated change.

RCADA is voting from both a DRep and stake-pool operator perspective. As an SPO, RCADA has already upgraded its Mainnet infrastructure to a Protocol Version 11-compatible node and has also participated in the corresponding Preview and Preprod testnet upgrades. That operational experience gives us additional confidence that the upgrade path is manageable and that the changes have been exercised across the expected testing environments.

The most important constitutional condition remains HARDFORK-04. At least 85% of stake pools by active stake should be running a compatible node version before ratification. RCADA’s support does not replace that network-wide readiness requirement. The Constitutional Committee and the relevant readiness reporting process should verify that the threshold has been met before enactment proceeds.

RCADA also recognises that a hard fork is a permanent ledger-rule change and cannot be treated casually. The reported testing, security review, conformance work, performance checks, Hard Fork Working Group recommendation, and Technical Steering Committee endorsement are therefore important parts of our support.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES. The van Rossem hard fork is a technically focused and strategically useful upgrade that improves Cardano’s smart-contract platform, ledger correctness, node operation, and long-term developer capabilities, provided the required SPO readiness threshold is confirmed before ratification.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on Reforming Treasury Governance.

RCADA welcomes this Info Action as a serious and timely discussion starter. Treasury governance is one of the hardest problems Cardano now has to solve. The current process has exposed real weaknesses: fragmented proposal-by-proposal voting, DRep workload, limited shared budget strategy, difficult comparisons between unrelated funding domains, and community tension around scarce Treasury resources.

RCADA agrees with the core diagnosis. The Net Change Limit is a ceiling, not a budget. A collection of individual Treasury withdrawals does not, by itself, create a coherent strategy. Cardano would benefit from a clearer process for setting funding priorities, defining budget categories, reducing unnecessary competition between unrelated domains, and giving DReps better tools for evaluating proposals.

RCADA is especially interested in the proposed sequence of moving from the Net Change Limit, to a thematic budget structure, and only then to project evaluation. In RCADA’s companion deep-dive analysis, we identify this NCL → thematic budget → project selection sequence as one of the most promising and actionable parts of the proposal. We believe this idea deserves further development regardless of whether the community ultimately supports a strategic entity or expert commission.

However, RCADA is abstaining because the proposal remains a rough outline. That is not meant as a criticism of AtlasHub. The proposal itself is framed as an Info Action to open public discussion, not as a complete implementation plan. RCADA appreciates that approach. At the same time, an Info Action can still create a durable governance signal, and we do not want a Yes vote to be read later as endorsement of structures whose details are not yet defined.

The most important open questions relate to the proposed strategic entity and expert commission. RCADA is open to exploring expert input, structured budget planning, and professional review processes. These could help DReps make better decisions and could help Cardano develop a Treasury model that other ecosystems may learn from. But the next phase of discussion needs to define the operating model much more clearly.

For RCADA, future work should answer questions such as:

• What specific problem is each body solving?
• Would an expert commission be advisory, decision-making, or implementation-focused?
• Would DReps retain the final vote over actual Treasury withdrawals?
• Who would be eligible to serve?
• Would members be elected by DReps, elected by ada holders, appointed by institutions, selected by open application, or chosen through another process?
• Should these bodies include Cardano community members, independent external experts, technical specialists, financial reviewers, governance experts, or a mix?
• Would members be paid, contracted, reimbursed, or voluntary?
• If paid, who sets compensation and how is it capped?
• How would conflicts of interest be disclosed and managed?
• Could members evaluate proposals from organisations they are affiliated with?
• What recusal rules would apply?
• What transparency would be required around scoring, meeting notes, dissenting opinions, and recommendation logic?
• What appeal or challenge mechanism would proposers and DReps have?
• How would smaller builders and community projects be protected from insider gatekeeping?
• What term limits, sunset clauses, and re-ratification requirements would apply?
• How would the community measure whether the reform is actually improving Treasury governance?

These questions are not presented as a rejection of AtlasHub’s proposal. They are the next layer of design work RCADA believes is needed before any implementation proposal could be responsibly supported.

For RCADA, any future Treasury reform built around strategic entities, expert review, or thematic budgeting should be guided by minimum safeguards:

1. DRep and delegator oversight must remain central. Expert review should inform decisions, not replace accountable voting.
2. Authority must be narrow and explicit. Preparing, recommending, selecting, and implementing are different powers and should not be blurred.
3. Participation must be open and competitive. Funding access should not depend on proximity to insiders or institutions.
4. Conflicts of interest must be public and enforceable. Disclosure should be paired with recusal rules where direct conflicts exist.
5. Review logic must be transparent. Scores, assumptions, dissenting views, and recommendation criteria should be published.
6. Roles must be time-limited and reviewable. Any new body should include term limits, removal mechanisms, and sunset or re-ratification.
7. Small proposers must remain protected. A more professional process should not become so complex that only large organisations can participate.
8. The model should be piloted before becoming permanent. A trial cycle with public metrics would be safer than immediately embedding a standing structure.

These safeguards are RCADA’s own view of what would be needed for responsible implementation. They are informed by our governance values and the community concerns we have seen around accountability, open participation, conflicts of interest, transparency, decentralised oversight, and protection against insider gatekeeping. They are not presented as requirements already contained in the Info Action.

RCADA appreciates AtlasHub putting forward a structured starting point. The proposal does more than name the problem; it offers a possible sequence and budget framework that deserves further exploration. We would welcome deeper work on thematic budgeting, anti-bundling principles, project evaluation support, expert review design, and how a future Treasury process can remain both strategic and decentralised.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We support the need for Treasury governance reform and welcome further development of this proposal, but we are not ready to endorse the outlined model until the roles, safeguards, authority boundaries, and accountability mechanisms are more clearly defined.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA has also prepared a companion deep-dive analysis to explore these trade-offs in more detail:
Reforming Cardano Treasury Governance: A Comparative Analysis and Reform Roadmap
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/supporting%20docs/Cardano%20treasury%20governance%20reform.html

RCADA votes YES on Reimburse Ikigai Info Governance Action Deposit.

RCADA previously supported the principle of reimbursing the deposit lost during one of the very first on-chain governance submissions following the Chang hard fork. The original Cardanoの生きがい - Ikigai Info Action was symbolic and community-oriented, thanking those who helped bring Cardano to that point and expressing hope for the future of the ecosystem.

The issue was not ordinary user error or misuse. A Cardano node bug permitted an unregistered stake key to submit the Info Action, but the submitter was then unable to recover the required 100,000 ADA deposit. The submitter participated during the earliest phase of Cardano governance, when tooling and processes were still maturing, and RCADA believes it is fair to correct this unusual outcome.

This Treasury Withdrawal requests 103,000 ADA: the original 100,000 ADA deposit plus 3,000 ADA for estimated lost staking rewards and opportunity cost. RCADA previously considered the additional 3,000 ADA reasonable in context. It is somewhat subjective, but it does not materially change the low-risk nature of the request, and the intent appears to be making the proposer whole rather than creating profit.

This action is modest relative to the Treasury, directly auditable on-chain, and does not involve ongoing delivery risk, administrator custody, project execution, or recurring funding expectations. It is a simple reimbursement to resolve an edge case from the earliest period of on-chain governance.

RCADA also wants to be clear that this vote should not be interpreted as a broad precedent for reimbursing failed governance actions, operational mistakes, or ordinary deposit losses. The support here is based on the unique circumstances: an early governance action, a protocol-side issue, a previously recognised fairness concern, and a narrow one-time remedy.

As a general governance best practice, and without questioning the proposer’s integrity, RCADA continues to believe it would be beneficial for the proposer to sign a simple verification transaction from the original affected address where practical. This would provide clean on-chain confirmation of ownership and could serve as a useful procedural pattern if similar edge cases ever arise in the future. However, this is a suggestion for administrative clarity, not a precondition for supporting this action.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES. Reimbursing this deposit is a fair and proportionate remedy that helps maintain confidence in Cardano governance while keeping the precedent narrow and clearly bounded.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on Reduce the committeeMinSize parameter from 7 to 5.

RCADA recognises the genuine operational issue this proposal addresses. With both the current Constitutional Committee and committeeMinSize set at 7, the system has no buffer. A single resignation, term expiry, registration issue, or temporary inactivity can immediately affect the committee’s ability to ratify governance actions that require Constitutional Committee approval, including parameter changes, Treasury withdrawals, Constitution updates, and hard forks.

This is a real governance resilience concern. RCADA agrees that Cardano governance should not be fragile enough that one or two committee availability issues can create system-wide disruption.

RCADA also recognises that this resubmission gives the community a proper opportunity to review the proposal after the previous action was affected by parameter-action coordination issues. RCADA’s prior abstain was largely procedural and should not be read as opposition to improving Constitutional Committee resilience.

However, RCADA is not fully convinced that lowering the minimum from 7 to 5 is the strongest long-term governance design.

While the proposal addresses an immediate pain point, it does so by reducing the floor of one of Cardano’s key constitutional safeguards. Even if the current intention is to keep operating with a seven-member committee, protocol parameters can shape future behaviour. A lower minimum may make it easier over time to normalise operating with fewer committee members.

RCADA believes a stronger long-term structure may be to expand the target Constitutional Committee size while maintaining a higher minimum. For example, electing 9 members with a minimum of 7 could provide a similar operational buffer while better preserving representation, legitimacy, and resilience.

RCADA also remains cautious about voting dynamics at a smaller committee size. Under the current two-thirds threshold, a seven-member committee requires 5 constitutional votes to approve, while a five-member committee requires 4. At five members, inactivity or opposition from a small number of members can have a larger effect on whether governance actions progress.

This abstain is not opposition to improving governance resilience. RCADA supports fixing the current brittleness. However, we prefer solving it through a broader discussion on Constitutional Committee design rather than only lowering the minimum parameter.

The preferred steady state should remain a healthy, full-sized Constitutional Committee, not one operating near the bare minimum.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We support preventing governance inoperability, but do not fully endorse reducing committeeMinSize to 5 as the best long-term path forward.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on IO: Hydra.

RCADA supports this proposal because Hydra is one of Cardano’s most mature Layer 2 scaling technologies and already has real production usage. The proposal identifies live or active Hydra-related use cases including Delta DeFi, Masumi, Intersect voting infrastructure, VTech Labs, Blockfrost, Hydra Doom, Glacier Drop, and others. This makes the proposal less speculative than many infrastructure requests, because the work is based on real user feedback and existing ecosystem demand.

Cardano needs more than Layer 1 scaling alone. Improvements such as Leios and Peras are important for the base layer, but some applications require sub-second interaction, near-zero fees, high parallel throughput, and reliable off-chain execution with settlement back to Cardano L1. Hydra can help support categories such as high-performance DeFi, agent-to-agent commerce, micropayments, gaming, point-of-sale, and verifiable information processing that are difficult or uneconomic on L1 alone.

The Treasury ask of ₳5,100,781 is relatively focused compared with many recent infrastructure proposals. The proposal funds four clear workstreams: performance optimization, operational excellence, ecosystem support, and maintenance/developer experience. RCADA views these as practical production-hardening activities rather than open-ended research. The budget is also heavily weighted toward development, with ₳4,386,671, or 86%, allocated to development work.

RCADA also considered whether this work could reasonably be deferred to another ecosystem team. While RCADA supports broader competition and more distributed development across Cardano’s Layer 2 landscape, this proposal concerns core Hydra production hardening, not only applications or integrations built on top of Hydra. At present, no alternative team has submitted a comparable proposal to deliver this specific body of protocol-level performance, operations, maintenance, and developer-experience work. Rejecting this proposal may therefore not create a more decentralised delivery path in the near term; it may simply slow progress on Cardano’s most mature L2.

RCADA recognises the concerns around repeated IO Treasury funding. The proposal discloses that IO and affiliated entities have already been allocated ₳130,708,860 across Treasury-funded projects, with ₳84,909,073 withdrawn to date. This does not disqualify the proposal, but it does raise the standard for accountability, transparency, and delivery reporting.

For that reason, RCADA’s support is conditional on strong execution discipline. We expect milestone-gated disbursement, independent assurance, public progress reporting, clear adoption metrics, transparent reconciliation with prior IO Treasury allocations, and evidence that Hydra improvements translate into measurable ecosystem value.

RCADA is also cautious about Treasury-value capture claims. Hydra can increase Cardano L1 settlement activity through head opening, settlement, and closure transactions, and applications may be able to route some internal fees to the Treasury. However, this depends on adoption and application design. RCADA supports Hydra because it can expand Cardano’s usable application surface and retain builders, not because future Treasury revenue is guaranteed.

Overall, RCADA believes this is a focused and strategically relevant proposal that helps convert prior Hydra R&D into production-ready infrastructure. Hydra is not the only scaling path Cardano should pursue, and RCADA continues to support broader L2 competition and ecosystem diversity. However, given Hydra’s maturity, existing usage, and the absence of a comparable alternative proposal for this core hardening work, RCADA supports funding this proposal.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Tweag Core Cardano Infrastructure: Treasury Withdrawal 2026–2027.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA previously abstained on Tweag’s broader infrastructure proposal because it was too large, too broad, and too difficult to evaluate as a single all-or-nothing package. That earlier proposal bundled many work packages across multiple infrastructure areas, and RCADA wanted greater focus, clearer reviewability, better risk partitioning, and a more staged approach.

This revised proposal is materially different. It is narrower, smaller, and more focused on three critical work packages: Peras v1, History Expiry, and Conformance Testing for Peras and Leios. The proposal requests ₳18,263,496 to support core infrastructure delivery across 2026–2027, with the primary focus on bringing Peras toward mainnet readiness, reducing future SPO storage pressure through History Expiry, and strengthening correctness testing for major protocol upgrades.

RCADA supports the direction because this is foundational public-good infrastructure. Peras, History Expiry, and conformance testing are not narrow commercial products. They are core protocol and network-resilience work that can improve Cardano’s long-term scalability, finality, correctness, and operational sustainability.

The Peras work is especially important because faster finality can improve the user and application experience. The proposal describes Peras as targeting approximately 2-minute finality, compared with roughly 12 minutes today. Moving this work toward production-grade mainnet readiness, including real cryptography, operational tooling, KillSwitch functionality, hard-fork readiness, support, and maintenance, is a reasonable use of Treasury funding if delivered with strong accountability.

RCADA also sees History Expiry as important for decentralisation and SPO sustainability. As Cardano moves toward higher throughput through future upgrades such as Leios, storage growth can become a real burden for stake pool operators. The proposal notes that higher throughput could significantly increase SPO disk usage and that partial-history nodes can help reduce long-term storage costs. For RCADA, this is directly relevant because infrastructure improvements should not make participation harder for smaller or independent operators.

The conformance testing work also strengthens the proposal. Major protocol upgrades require careful validation. Extending the CTC framework for Peras and Leios, including correctness scaffolding, adversarial testing, mutation testing, and audit infrastructure, helps reduce the risk of deploying complex changes to mainnet.

RCADA also recognises Tweag’s long history in Cardano core infrastructure. The proposal states that Tweag has been engaged with Cardano since January 2018, including work leading consensus and ledger teams, implementing Ouroboros Genesis, and contributing to Peras design. That track record gives this proposal more credibility than a greenfield infrastructure request.

The governance and accountability framework is also materially stronger than many Treasury proposals. The proposal includes Intersect administration, a written legal contract with Cardano Development Holdings, milestone-based fixed-price contracts where scope is well defined, public transaction metadata, third-party assurance, mandatory IOG code review, independent validation by No Witness Labs, Intersect delivery assurance, smart-contract-based budget management, external oversight, auto-abstain delegation, no SPO delegation, public demos at least every two months, refund of undisbursed funds, and proportional return of unused funds in the event of partial delivery or scope reduction.

However, RCADA’s support is not unconditional.

The ask remains large. ₳18,263,496 is a significant Treasury withdrawal, and core infrastructure work should be held to a high standard of public reporting, milestone clarity, and delivery evidence. RCADA expects transparent updates showing progress against Peras readiness, History Expiry implementation, conformance testing milestones, review outcomes, risks, and any funds returned.

RCADA also notes that some benefits depend on later governance, hard-fork readiness, and ecosystem activation. The proposal addresses this by committing to “ready-for-activation” deliverables such as merged code, reproducible releases, runbooks, benchmarks, and governance-action packages. That is a reasonable distinction, but the community should still track whether this work ultimately translates into mainnet value.

The proposal is still bundled, though much less so than the previous version. RCADA would generally prefer maximum voting granularity, but in this case the three work packages are more tightly connected and focused on critical protocol delivery, correctness validation, and SPO sustainability. This makes the bundling more acceptable than in the prior broader proposal.

RCADA also notes Tweag’s prior Treasury allocation of ₳11,070,322.68. Continued support should be tied to clear evidence that prior and current Treasury-funded work is advancing toward public mainnet benefit.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES. This proposal is closer to the narrower, staged, critical-path infrastructure funding model that RCADA asked for previously. RCADA supports funding core open-source Cardano infrastructure while expecting strong milestone reporting, public demos, independent review, transparent delivery evidence, and responsible return of unused funds.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on Rare Evo and Dev Gov Day 2026: Cardano Title Sponsorship.

RCADA recognises Rare Evo and Dev Gov Day as valuable Cardano ecosystem events with a meaningful track record. Rare Network has been active in the Cardano ecosystem since 2020, Rare Evo has operated for five consecutive years, and the 2025 event reported strong participation across attendees, exhibitors, speakers, livestream reach, social impressions, Cardano projects, and enterprise participants. RCADA also recognises the value of Dev Gov Day as a dedicated Cardano-focused technical, governance, and community coordination event.

The proposal includes several positive elements. Free General Admission access for the Cardano community, complimentary booth space for selected Cardano projects, governance and technical workshops, livestream access, media coverage, and broader ecosystem visibility all have potential value. RCADA also appreciates the proposal’s transparency around budget categories, event deliverables, milestone structure, Intersect administration, oversight, refund conditions, and the commitment to return 20% of VIP ticket sales to the Treasury.

However, RCADA cannot fully endorse the proposal as presented.

The core concern is not whether Rare Evo has value. It does. The concern is whether this specific ₳2,750,000 Treasury package is the right allocation of public funds in the current environment. The event will occur regardless of Treasury funding, so this proposal is primarily an amplification and sponsorship request rather than a continuity requirement for essential infrastructure.

RCADA is especially cautious about the budget composition. Some funding is directed toward important ecosystem access and programming, but significant portions are also allocated to items such as food and beverage, happy hour and kickoff party sponsorship, travel and lodging, media sponsorship, tax withholding, and a Dev Gov Day 2027 venue deposit. These may be normal event costs, but they make the proposal harder to support from the Treasury when compared with more direct technical, infrastructure, governance, or developer needs.

The 2027 venue deposit is a particular concern. RCADA does not want to create a soft standing order from the Treasury for recurring event funding. Future event proposals should stand on their own merits, with fresh community review, clear impact data, and no implied continuation from prior deposits.

RCADA also remains concerned about fairness and precedent. Supporting one major title sponsorship can be perceived as favouring one event organizer over others. Rare Evo has a strong Cardano history, but Treasury funding should be careful not to crowd out other community-led events or create expectations that large sponsorship packages will become a regular Treasury expense.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We value Rare Evo, Dev Gov Day, and the work Rare Network has done for Cardano, but the current proposal includes too many non-essential or precedent-setting elements for RCADA to fully support.

A revised proposal would be easier to support if it were smaller and more tightly focused on the highest-impact public-good components: Dev Gov Day programming, livestream access, free community participation, selected project booths, governance and developer workshops, transparent selection processes, and measurable post-event reporting — without hospitality-heavy expenses or future-year deposits.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Cardano Critical Integrations V2.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this proposal because Cardano should not fund major ecosystem integrations once and then allow them to degrade due to a lack of maintenance, renewal funding, or operational support. The original CCI V1 program was a large Treasury investment, and this proposal is primarily focused on preserving and extending that investment through continued operation of Circle/USDCx, LayerZero, Pyth, and Dune, while adding Fireblocks native Cardano support.

These integrations are not abstract. Stablecoin access, cross-chain messaging, oracle feeds, analytics infrastructure, and institutional custody support are important parts of a mature blockchain ecosystem. They help make Cardano more usable for builders, institutions, exchanges, liquidity providers, dApps, analysts, and end users. Cardano cannot reasonably position itself as infrastructure-ready if key integrations are launched but not maintained.

RCADA recognises that the Treasury ask is substantial. At ₳23,000,000, this is a major allocation, especially following the prior ₳70,000,000 CCI V1 budget. We also recognise that most of the budget is allocated to integration and maintenance costs, while specific vendor-level costs cannot be publicly disclosed due to confidentiality obligations. This creates a real accountability challenge for the community.

However, RCADA does not believe the correct response is to abandon or underfund critical infrastructure that the ecosystem has already chosen to pursue. If Cardano funded the first year of these integrations, then the second-year maintenance and renewal question must be handled responsibly. Otherwise, the ecosystem risks wasting prior Treasury investment and weakening the reliability of infrastructure that builders may now depend on.

RCADA also sees the Fireblocks integration as a meaningful addition. Native Cardano support within Fireblocks could reduce friction for exchanges, custodians, fintechs, asset managers, market makers, and other institutional participants that already rely on Fireblocks for digital asset operations. The proposal expects Fireblocks support to include ADA, Cardano Native Tokens, and technical foundations for Cardano-specific workflows such as staking and governance delegation.

RCADA remains cautious about the governance structure. The Pentad Steering Committee concentrates significant influence among major ecosystem entities, including Input Output Global, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Midnight Foundation, and Intersect as non-voting administrator. That concentration should not be ignored, and future governance should continue developing broader community capacity.

At the same time, RCADA believes this concern should be weighed practically. For large commercial integrations involving legal agreements, institutional counterparties, contract renewals, audits, custody, infrastructure maintenance, technical coordination, and partner management, it is not enough to prefer decentralisation in theory. The community also needs entities that are willing, capable, accountable, and legally prepared to execute. At present, the Pentad structure appears to be the practical mechanism available for continuity of CCI V1 and delivery of Fireblocks.

RCADA also believes the major founding and ecosystem entities should not be pushed out or alienated from Cardano governance. They continue to have an important role to play. The healthier path is for the broader community and these institutions to grow together: strengthening transparency, expanding accountability, increasing community participation, and building more distributed execution capacity over time.

The proposal includes several accountability measures that support this cautious YES: Intersect administration, the Treasury Reserve Smart Contract Framework, Steering Committee approval of maintenance and enhancement drawdowns, Statements of Work, dedicated auditable accounts, auto-abstain delegation, no SPO delegation, independent audits, refund circumstances, unused-fund return, and bi-annual reporting on finances, integration status, Fireblocks progress, enhancement reserve activity, audits, and future outlook.

These measures do not remove all concerns. RCADA expects the reports to be specific enough for the community to judge whether CCI V2 is producing real value. Future renewal requests should provide clear evidence of uptime, usage, adoption, developer impact, institutional onboarding, oracle consumption, analytics usage, cross-chain activity, tooling delivery, and any remaining or returned funds.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES. This vote should be understood as support for continuity of critical integrations and institutional infrastructure, not as unconditional approval of large recurring Treasury renewals. RCADA expects strong reporting, clear evidence of ecosystem value, and continued movement toward broader community capacity in future integration programs.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Update Plutus Cost Models.

RCADA supports this parameter update because it is a necessary technical step to prepare Cardano for the new Plutus primitives that become available after the van Rossem hard fork to Protocol Version 11. The proposal also improves consistency by making Plutus primitives available across Plutus V1, V2, and V3, and it updates costs for some existing primitives based on benchmarking data.

This is not a Treasury withdrawal and does not fund a project or vendor. It is a technical parameter update intended to ensure that Plutus script execution is priced correctly and safely as the platform gains new capabilities. Cost models are important because they determine how much CPU and memory a script operation is expected to consume. Without accurate cost models, new primitives cannot be responsibly enabled on mainnet.

RCADA views this as important developer and infrastructure maintenance. The new primitives support areas such as cryptography, list manipulation, array operations, and value/data manipulation. These improvements can make smart contracts more capable, efficient, and predictable, especially for more advanced applications and future interoperability use cases.

The process behind this update appears strong. The proposal states that the changes were recommended by Intersect’s Parameter Committee, confirmed by Intersect’s Technical Steering Committee, and tested through equivalent changes on SanchoNet, Preview, and Preprod before being submitted for mainnet approval.

RCADA also notes that the proposal directly addresses the relevant constitutional guardrails. The metadata states that cost model values were benchmarked on the reference architecture, that the update is required because new Plutus primitives are being introduced, and that none of the new cost model values are negative.

The main caution is timing and communication. The new primitives will only become available after the Protocol Version 11 hard fork, while some changes to existing primitives take effect immediately when this parameter update is enacted. Developers should be aware of that distinction and should review whether any existing scripts are affected by updated costs for current primitives.

Overall, this appears to be a well-scoped, benchmarked, reviewed, and testnet-deployed technical update. It supports Cardano’s smart contract roadmap without creating Treasury spend or broad governance risk.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Eternl: Path to Sustainability (2026–2027).

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this proposal because Eternl is important user-facing infrastructure for Cardano. Wallets are not optional extras in a blockchain ecosystem. They are the practical access layer through which users stake, vote, interact with DApps, manage assets, sign transactions, and participate in the network. Without reliable wallets, the usefulness of the chain is directly weakened.

Eternl has a long-standing role in the Cardano ecosystem across web, browser extension, Android, and iOS. The proposal states that Eternl supports payments, staking, governance, and DApp interaction, and that it accounts for approximately 10–18% of mainnet transactions. It also highlights Eternl’s governance tooling, including DRep dashboards, proposal browsing, in-wallet voting, and support for governance proposal creation.

RCADA recognises that subsidising wallet infrastructure is not a simple decision. It is difficult to remain fair and impartial when public Treasury funds are used to support one wallet provider rather than others. We do not believe this vote should be interpreted as automatic support for recurring Treasury funding of wallets in general.

At the same time, wallet sustainability is a real problem. Most users expect basic wallet access to remain free or very low cost, yet maintaining secure, multi-platform, hard-fork-compatible wallet infrastructure has real costs. If those costs are hidden through opaque transaction fees, reduced support, degraded infrastructure, vendor dependency, or excessive commercial pressure, the ecosystem may still pay — just less visibly.

For that reason, RCADA appreciates that Eternl is attempting to make its sustainability model more explicit. The proposal introduces a future Pro plan while keeping a basic version free, and estimates that around 5,500 paying users, or approximately 4.2% of its install base, could cover the annual operating cost of approximately $420,000. This is not guaranteed, but it is a reasonable sustainability experiment.

The proposed repayment mechanism is also a meaningful positive. Eternl commits to converting the Treasury funds into stablecoins, placing them in a public company wallet, reporting Pro plan income, and using surplus funds to repay the Treasury until the full USD value of the proposal has been repaid in ADA. After that, if Pro income exceeds the annual cost threshold, Eternl commits to donating 50% of income above that threshold until an additional $210,000 worth of ADA has been returned to the Treasury.

This makes the proposal stronger than a simple operational subsidy. It gives the community a way to test whether a widely used wallet can transition toward sustainability while preserving continuity for users during that transition.

However, RCADA’s support is not unconditional.

The proposal is not milestone-based and is administered by Tastenkunst GmbH itself. RCADA understands that operational continuity funding does not always fit neatly into milestone delivery, but this structure places greater importance on public wallet monitoring, regular reporting, Pro revenue transparency, and clear repayment/donation transaction records.

RCADA also notes that Eternl’s main UI is not open source, although some libraries are planned for publication. This weakens the pure public-good framing and should be considered carefully in any future Treasury request. Treasury-funded user infrastructure does not necessarily have to be fully open source in every respect, but where public funds support closed-source or partially closed-source products, transparency, accountability, and ecosystem value must be especially strong.

We also note the prior funding history. Eternl has received Catalyst funding, Intersect funding, and prior Treasury support. The proposal explains that the previous Treasury allocation was materially affected by ADA price decline and left a significant shortfall against the expected USD value. RCADA accepts that explanation, but we emphasise that this vote is support for a transition toward sustainability, not an endorsement of recurring annual Treasury dependence.

RCADA also believes the free or basic wallet experience should remain genuinely useful. Many users may not choose to pay for a Pro wallet subscription, and basic access to a wallet should not become so limited that ordinary users feel pushed into payment simply to participate meaningfully in Cardano. A Pro model can be appropriate, but it should enhance the experience rather than make the basic version feel degraded, coercive, or unnecessarily similar to traditional finance gatekeeping.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising that this is bridge support for essential user infrastructure during a sustainability transition. RCADA expects clear public reporting on Treasury wallet balances, Pro plan income, repayment progress, operational continuity, governance tooling, user support, and the ongoing usefulness of the basic wallet experience.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on Scalus: Cardano’s Application Platform for Building, Launching, and Scaling.

RCADA recognises Scalus as a credible technical effort and appreciates the track record of Lantr Engineering. Scalus is not a greenfield idea; it has several years of delivery history, existing ecosystem integrations, and prior Cardano community funding where completed milestones were delivered and publicly reported.

We also agree with the core problem the proposal identifies. Cardano needs more serious applications reaching production. Builders should not have to repeatedly assemble smart contract tooling, testing, off-chain logic, chain access, runtime infrastructure, formal verification, and scaling integrations from scratch. Improving the application-development experience is important for Cardano’s long-term growth in users, transactions, TVL, and real utility.

The Scalus vision is therefore valuable. A JVM-native platform that helps Scala, Java, and Kotlin teams build and operate Cardano applications could broaden the ecosystem’s developer base, especially among enterprise and financial software teams. RCADA also sees value in self-sovereign application operations, better local development environments, formal-verification integration, and L2 scaling support.

However, RCADA cannot fully endorse the proposal as presented.

Our concern is not primarily the team’s competence or the usefulness of Scalus. Our concern is the scale and framing of the Treasury request. The proposal asks for ₳8,503,000 to expand one language-oriented platform into a broad full-stack application environment. While this may produce public-good benefits, it remains closely tied to one vendor, one primary technical stack, and one product direction.

In a constrained Treasury environment, large developer-platform requests need an especially clear public-good case. RCADA would have preferred a smaller, more modular proposal focused first on the most reusable ecosystem components: shared conformance work, open formal-verification integrations, public runtime components, documentation, JS/TS interoperability, and integrations that clearly benefit multiple Cardano tooling ecosystems beyond Scalus-native users.

We also believe the proposal would be stronger with clearer non-duplication against other funded or proposed work in Plutus, high assurance, developer experience, L2 scaling, node diversity, and open-source maintenance. Scalus may complement these efforts, but the proposal should make those boundaries and shared benefits easier for the community to assess.

RCADA also remains cautious about execution risk. The roadmap is ambitious for 12 months, especially around the application-focused L1 node, production-grade runtime capabilities, L2 integrations, and formal verification dependencies. These are valuable goals, but they are technically demanding and partly dependent on progress from other ecosystem projects.

Finally, RCADA notes the future maintenance question. Expanding Scalus into a wider application platform may create larger ongoing maintenance needs. Future funding requests should show a clearer path toward diversified support from users, commercial services, ecosystem partners, or other non-Treasury sources.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We respect Lantr’s contribution and believe Scalus can be valuable for Cardano, but the current proposal is too broad, too large, and too platform-specific for RCADA to fully endorse at this stage.

A revised proposal with smaller scope, stronger public-good framing, clearer ecosystem-wide integrations, tighter non-duplication, stronger adoption evidence, and a more explicit sustainability path would be easier for RCADA to support.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on Cardano Vision 2026: Human Centred, Scalable, Post Quantum Secure — IO Research.

This is a cautious YES, but a clear one.

RCADA supports this proposal because Cardano’s long-term strength has always been rooted in research, formal methods, careful protocol design, and high-assurance engineering. While Treasury discipline remains essential, we believe continued research investment is necessary if Cardano is to remain technically credible, resilient, and differentiated over the long term.

This proposal funds a broad research and innovation programme across three strategic priorities: human-centred design, scalability, and post-quantum security. It includes work on Leios and Peras analysis, Layer 2 and zero-knowledge infrastructure, light clients, decentralized APIs, SPO incentives, governance, identity, economic systems, bridge security, and quantum-resistant cryptographic migration pathways. These are not minor areas; they are foundational questions that will shape Cardano’s future architecture and competitiveness.

RCADA believes it is prudent to begin this research sooner rather than later. Areas such as post-quantum readiness, ZK infrastructure, scalable consensus, secure interoperability, SPO incentives, and governance participation require long lead times. Waiting until these challenges become urgent would likely make them more expensive, more disruptive, and more difficult to address safely.

We also view this proposal differently from proposals that depend mainly on ambitious adoption projections or commercial upside. Research risk is real, but it is a different kind of risk. Foundational research does not always convert directly into mainnet code, and it should not be judged only by the percentage of papers that become implemented protocol changes. Negative findings, formal analysis, threat modelling, simulations, prototypes, and abandoned design paths can still create value by helping Cardano avoid fragile upgrades, unsafe assumptions, or poorly understood engineering decisions.

The proposal itself acknowledges that IO Research has produced more than 250 peer-reviewed papers, with approximately 20% implemented in Cardano, and it frames Cardano Vision 2026 as a more structured attempt to improve research-to-implementation conversion through an integrated model combining IO Research, Applied Research & Creative Engineering, and Cardano Business Unit product alignment. RCADA welcomes that focus. We believe the research produced to date has been money well spent, even where not every output becomes immediate production code.

The Cardano Vision 2026 programme also builds on an established record. The proposal states that Cardano Vision 2025 exceeded targets by 20%, delivered 24 peer-reviewed papers, advanced 20 research streams, and helped move several technology validation streams toward deployment, including Leios, anti-grinding protections, Jolteon, and ZK verification work. This track record gives RCADA more confidence than we would have in an unproven research organisation making similar claims.

That said, this is a substantial Treasury request. The proposal asks for approximately ₳32.916M, or $7.9M at the reference rate, to fund 36 FTEs across a nine-partner research consortium. RCADA recognises that this is one of the larger asks in the current funding cycle, and large research programmes must meet a high standard of transparency, prioritisation, and public accountability.

Our main concern is breadth. The proposal covers many areas, some of which are clearly urgent or strategically necessary, while others are earlier-stage and more exploratory. Post-quantum security, Leios and Peras analysis, ZK infrastructure, light clients, SPO incentives, governance participation, and secure interoperability all have strong strategic relevance. Other areas, such as sharding, proof-of-useful-work, multi-resource consensus, and agent-based coordination, are more speculative. RCADA accepts that research portfolios need exploratory work, but future proposals would benefit from clearer prioritisation and more modular funding where practical.

We also note potential overlap with other Treasury-funded initiatives. The proposal includes scope clarifications excluding productionisation work covered by other proposals, such as Leios in the Consensus Initiative, Babel Fees in Cardano Upgrades, DA work in L2 Scalability, and maintenance/performance work in the Maintenance proposal. RCADA appreciates these boundaries, but expects them to be actively maintained in delivery reporting so the community can see that funding is not duplicative.

The four-tranche funding model is a positive feature, with funds released in equal 25% tranches tied to the services agreement, mid-year interim report, Q3 R&D session and report, and year-end final report. However, for research funding at this scale, RCADA believes reporting events alone should not be treated as sufficient proof of value. The community should be able to assess the quality, relevance, and translation potential of outputs.

For this reason, RCADA expects Cardano Vision 2026 to report clearly on which outputs become papers, technical reports, Cardano Problem Statements, prototypes, CIPs, implementation handoffs, or explicit “do not pursue” findings. Research should be allowed to discover that some paths are not worth pursuing, but those conclusions should be visible and explained. A well-supported “do not pursue” result can be valuable if it prevents wasted engineering effort or future protocol risk.

RCADA also expects continued attention to SPO impacts. Several workstreams relate directly or indirectly to SPO responsibilities, including Leios, Peras, Mithril, node security, HSM-backed key management, network resource demands, and incentive recalibration. Research should help ensure that Cardano’s future architecture strengthens decentralisation rather than unintentionally raising operational barriers for smaller or independent stake pool operators.

Overall, RCADA believes the case for support is strong. Cardano’s research base is not a luxury; it is part of what made Cardano distinctive. The ecosystem should not allow short-term Treasury caution to erode the long-term capability that underpins protocol safety, scalability, and resilience. At the same time, research funding at this scale must show stronger translation discipline and clearer public evidence of impact.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising the importance of prioritisation, non-duplication, transparent reporting, research-to-implementation tracking, SPO impact awareness, and clear communication of both successful outputs and research paths that should not proceed further.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on the Cardano dOSPO and OMF Program Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

RCADA recognises the importance of the problem this proposal is trying to solve. Cardano depends on open-source infrastructure: protocol libraries, wallet SDKs, developer tooling, indexers, CI infrastructure, documentation, and shared components that are often maintained by small teams or individual contributors. Undermaintained open-source dependencies can become a real security, reliability, continuity, and ecosystem-growth risk.

We support the general direction of building stronger open-source sustainability mechanisms for Cardano. A healthier ecosystem needs better maintainer support, clearer succession planning, dependency-risk mapping, contributor pathways, and funding models that reward long-term stewardship rather than only new feature development. RCADA has consistently encouraged broader multi-party contribution and reduced dependency on any single organisation or small group of maintainers.

The proposal includes several constructive ideas. A dependency audit, SBOM generation, centrality scoring, bus-factor assessment, maintainer retainers, structured mentorship, CodeForUs bounties, ecosystem activation, public reporting, advisory councils, return of undeployed reserves, and explicit sunset criteria are all directionally valuable.

RCADA particularly appreciates the principle that maintenance funding should be guided by objective ecosystem risk rather than visibility, personal relationships, or grant-writing ability. Selecting support based on dependency centrality, maintainer risk, and reproducible methodology is the right direction if implemented transparently and fairly.

However, RCADA cannot fully endorse this proposal in its current form.

The Treasury ask is substantial: ₳12,000,000 over 36 months. This is a large multi-year commitment for a new operational structure whose independent entity, advisory councils, selection methodology, and community trust still need to be proven in practice. The proposal funds not only maintenance work, but the creation of a new ecosystem coordination layer. That may ultimately be useful, but it carries governance and legitimacy risk.

Our main concern is that the dOSPO institution itself does not yet exist. The proposal states that Open Source Cowboy Consulting would operate as transitional coordinator during the first six months, with the independent dOSPO legal entity formed by month 6 and operational accountability transferred from month 7 onward. RCADA recognises the safeguard that failure to form the entity freezes the portfolio reserve and triggers governance review, but this still leaves important structural pieces to be created after approval rather than demonstrated before funding.

RCADA is also concerned about scale before proof. A smaller 12-month pilot focused on dependency auditing, council formation, a first maintainer cohort, and a limited retainer programme may have been easier to support. Proving the model first would reduce risk before asking the Treasury to fund a three-year mandate.

The advisory council model is promising, but it also requires trust. Council independence, member selection, conflict disclosures, meeting transparency, and decision quality will determine whether the programme is perceived as legitimate. Without strong confidence in those mechanisms, the dOSPO could unintentionally become a new gatekeeping layer over Cardano open-source funding rather than a neutral sustainability mechanism.

The selection methodology also needs to be exceptionally transparent. The proposal’s emphasis on dependency data is positive, but the community will need reproducible scoring, clear weighting, open data sources, appeal mechanisms, and public explanations for each funding decision. If selection decisions are not easily auditable, the programme risks recreating the very relationship-driven dynamics it is trying to avoid.

RCADA also notes concerns around coordination with existing and emerging funding structures. This proposal is informed by lessons from the Paid Open Source Model and aims to replace or improve on earlier approaches, but future versions would benefit from clearer integration with Intersect, existing maintainer programmes, tooling initiatives, and other open-source funding efforts. Cardano should avoid duplicate structures competing for legitimacy when coordinated maintenance funding would be more effective.

This abstention should not be read as opposition to open-source sustainability. Quite the opposite. RCADA believes this is an important area that deserves Treasury support. The issue is whether this specific proposal has earned enough confidence to justify its scale, duration, and institutional mandate.

A stronger revised proposal would likely receive more support if it started as a smaller pilot, formed the independent entity and councils before major funding deployment, published the dependency-scoring methodology and sample outputs earlier, used tighter smart-contract milestone controls, coordinated more explicitly with existing ecosystem programmes, and demonstrated one or two successful retainer and mentorship cycles before scaling.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We support the need for sustainable Cardano open-source maintenance and appreciate the proposal’s data-driven and community-governed ambition, but we cannot fully endorse a 36-month, ₳12M operational institution before the governance model, independent structure, selection methodology, and community trust have been sufficiently proven.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on the 5am.earth Trust Layer Targeting Vision 2030 KPIs Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this proposal because it targets one of Cardano’s clearest opportunities for meaningful real-world adoption: verifiable identity, farm records, supply-chain trust, traceability, and financial access for smallholder agriculture. The proposal is ambitious, but it is aligned with the kind of external utility Cardano should be trying to enable.

The core idea — verify once, use many times — is compelling. Agricultural supply chains depend on trusted information, but today that information is often fragmented across lenders, buyers, insurers, certifiers, governments, and project operators. If a shared trust layer can allow verified farmer, farm, crop, credential, and application data to be reused across multiple services, then the value of each verified record can compound across the ecosystem.

RCADA also recognises that this is not presented as a purely speculative concept. The proposal states that Project Swaminathan is already operating on Cardano mainnet, with 10,500 cumulative farmer/farm registrations as of 5 May 2026, and that the pilot validated 1,056 farms with a reported 100% blockchain success rate. This existing operational foundation gives the proposal more credibility than a greenfield real-world adoption pitch.

The funded programme is also structured around concrete milestones. Over 18 months, the proposal targets 200,000 cumulative farmers at Month 6, 350,000 at Month 12, and 500,000 at Month 18, across India, Cambodia, and Kenya. It also names three funded application paths: AE certification with Andamio, traceability and compliance with Zengate Global, and finance and credit with Seedstars SIGMA. These application paths help demonstrate that the trust layer is intended to support practical usage, not simply data collection.

RCADA sees particular value in the proposal’s focus on identity, traceability, and finance. If implemented well, this could help smallholder farmers access better verification, market access, training credentials, compliance pathways, and credit infrastructure. The proposal also states that Treasury funds would support the rails for finance and credit — including verified data, lender APIs, wallet and stablecoin rails, on-chain monitoring, and write-back — but not the loan capital itself. That distinction is important.

We also support the use of Cardano-native components and ecosystem partners, including Veridian identity, Andamio credentials, Zengate traceability, Seedstars SIGMA credit infrastructure, DigiFarm satellite data, NMKR tokenisation, and Cardano smart contract/on-chain anchoring infrastructure. This proposal has the potential to showcase Cardano as infrastructure for real-world trust, not merely as a financial speculation layer.

That said, RCADA’s YES vote should not be interpreted as an unconditional endorsement of the proposal’s projections or risk profile.

This is a large and complex programme. The Treasury ask is ₳10,000,000, with ₳5,000,000 released on approval, followed by ₳2,000,000 on M1 acceptance and ₳3,000,000 on M2 acceptance. RCADA recognises that some front-loading may be necessary for foundation setup, partner procurement, multi-country deployment, architecture lock, and early scale-up. However, the size of the first tranche increases the need for strong oversight, transparent reporting, and disciplined milestone verification.

The execution risk is also significant. This proposal involves multiple countries, field operations, Agri-Entrepreneur networks, identity infrastructure, satellite verification, on-chain attestations, application partners, credit rails, audits, legal transition, governance reporting, and institutional coordination. Each of these areas is challenging on its own. Delivering them together over 18 months will require careful management and clear accountability.

RCADA also treats the long-term projections with caution. The proposal’s 2030 projections — including 3 million farmers, 112.5 million annual on-chain transactions, $900 million TVL, and 16–20 million ADA in annual protocol revenue — are ambitious. We view these as directional upside rather than guaranteed outcomes. The proposal should ultimately be judged first on funded-period evidence: real farmer registrations, active application usage, verifiable credit activity, traceability pilots, dashboard data, independent audits, and partner delivery.

We also note the organisational transition risk. The proposal states that the legal contract will initially be created with Elk GMBH and HashPoint Consulting as pre-Foundation co-promoters, then transferred to the 5am.earth Foundation upon registration at M1. RCADA expects this transition to be closely monitored and clearly reported, because neutral foundation stewardship is central to the public-good argument.

The absence of a direct Treasury repayment or revenue-share mechanism is another point of caution. Unlike some commercial proposals that offer direct repayment or upside sharing, this proposal relies primarily on indirect ecosystem value: adoption, transactions, TVL, protocol revenue, farmer utility, and reusable infrastructure. RCADA accepts that public-good infrastructure does not always need a repayment model, but where Treasury funding helps establish a trust layer that commercial partners can build upon, public-good guarantees, open access rules, transparent governance, and clear sustainability reporting become especially important.

For this reason, RCADA expects strict reporting against the proposal’s stated commitments: public milestone reports, independent audits at M2 and M3, a monthly refreshed on-chain KPI dashboard, quarterly narrative reports to Intersect, monthly Cardano Forum updates, and quarterly DRep-facing reports. These reporting commitments should be treated as core deliverables, not optional communications.

Overall, RCADA believes this proposal clears the threshold for cautious support because it represents a serious attempt to scale real-world Cardano utility through identity, trust, agricultural verification, traceability, and finance. The existing Project Swaminathan mainnet activity, named partners, concrete application paths, and governance commitments provide enough basis to support the scale-up.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising that this is not a low-risk vote. It is a deliberate vote for real-world utility, with strong accountability expectations attached. RCADA expects rigorous milestone verification, transparent reporting, careful monitoring of the Foundation transition, proof of real application usage, evidence of farmer benefit, and honest assessment of whether the programme is moving toward self-sustainability without recurring Treasury dependence.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA votes YES on this top-up with reservations. We did not have the opportunity to vote on the Baseline Platinum proposal before it ratified, so this decision should not be interpreted as retrospective endorsement of that original action. Our review is limited to the incremental Title upgrade now before us.

Given that the Baseline sponsorship has already been approved by Cardano governance, this top-up presents a modular decision on whether the ecosystem should secure additional premium visibility at TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026. The upgrade provides a larger booth footprint, mainstage keynote, press release inclusion, media introductions, lanyard branding, and additional event access. These are tangible sponsorship benefits, and the proposal includes defined KPIs, refund provisions, surplus-return language, smart contract administration, third-party assurance, and public reporting commitments.

RCADA’s support is cautious. We do not see strong public precedent proving that premium conference sponsorship reliably produces proportional ROI, and current bear-market conditions may dampen enthusiasm, investor appetite, and near-term conversion. However, visibility during weaker market conditions can also be strategically useful if executed well, especially where builders receive meaningful access and Cardano presents a unified, professional ecosystem presence.

Our YES vote is therefore conditional in spirit: EMURGO and Intersect should provide clear post-event reporting, including evidence of builder participation, media outcomes, lead quality, partnership follow-through, wallet or user-acquisition results, and a transparent accounting of any surplus or unused funds. This vote should not establish a default precedent for high-cost event branding, but supports this specific modular upgrade following the already-ratified Baseline sponsorship.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA abstains on the Tweag Core Cardano Infrastructure: Treasury Withdrawal 2026–2028 proposal.

This is not an abstention against Tweag, Peras, History Expiry, conformance testing, network observability, Plutus tooling, or the broader infrastructure direction described in the proposal. On the contrary, RCADA recognises that much of this work is important, technically credible, and highly relevant to Cardano’s long-term resilience, scalability, developer experience, and decentralisation.

The proposal requests ₳39,787,316 to fund 17 work packages across 9 core infrastructure areas over the 2026–2028 period. These include Peras v1 and v2, History Expiry, Hard Fork Mempool Bridger, conformance testing, adversarial fork testing, Canonical Ledger State and Mithril work, Plutus Script Re-Executor, mutation testing, Hoarding Node work, block cost investigation, and ongoing maintenance of Genesis Sync Accelerator and the Cardano Node Emulator.

RCADA acknowledges that these work packages are not arbitrary or unrelated. The proposal makes a reasonable technical argument that they form a connected delivery pipeline around Peras, Leios-readiness, testing, observability, node sustainability, and developer tooling. The proposal explicitly states that it is structured as a single delivery pipeline rather than a modular menu, because several of the testing, observability, and audit components support the safe delivery of larger protocol improvements.

That technical connection matters, and it is one of the reasons RCADA does not vote No.

However, RCADA also has a responsibility to uphold strong governance standards, especially for treasury withdrawals of this size and duration. A request approaching ₳40 million over two years must meet a very high bar for granularity, reviewability, cost transparency, milestone clarity, and risk partitioning. Even where work packages are technically related, DReps are still being asked to approve a large, multi-year, all-or-nothing funding pipeline in a single governance action.

RCADA’s concern is therefore not with the importance of the work, but with the structure of the proposal.

The proposal contains several positive governance features. It identifies Intersect as administrator, refers to a legal contract with Cardano Development Holdings, includes milestone-based delivery and third-party assurance, uses treasury smart contract infrastructure, provides refund conditions for undisbursed or reduced-scope work, discloses prior treasury receipts, and states Net Change Limit compliance. These are meaningful safeguards, and RCADA welcomes them.

Nevertheless, for a proposal of this scale, RCADA would have preferred clearer per-work-package costing, stronger modularity or phase separation, explicit annual review or renewal gates, sharper prioritisation of critical-path deliverables, and clearer handling of dependencies where final ecosystem value depends on later governance actions, hard fork activation, CIP progression, or adoption by other teams.

RCADA is particularly mindful that poor proposal structure can cause important and much-needed work to fail on governance grounds, even where the underlying technical case is strong. This is a message not only to Tweag, but to all proposers seeking treasury support: high-quality work deserves high-quality proposals. The more important the work, the more important it is that the proposal gives DReps and the community enough clarity, granularity, and accountability to support it confidently.

In this case, RCADA is genuinely pained not to vote Yes. The infrastructure direction is valuable, and Tweag’s long-standing involvement in Cardano core development gives the proposal substantial credibility. But RCADA cannot ignore the governance responsibility that comes with approving a large treasury commitment. Supporting important work must not come at the cost of lowering proposal-quality standards, especially when those standards protect the legitimacy and sustainability of Cardano governance itself.

RCADA therefore abstains as a constructive signal.

This abstention should not be read as rejection of Tweag, Peras, or the infrastructure roadmap. It is a request for a more granular, risk-partitioned, and reviewable funding structure. RCADA would be more comfortable supporting a revised proposal that preserves the critical infrastructure objectives while offering clearer cost breakdowns, stronger phase gates, and more opportunity for DReps to assess and approve the highest-priority work on its own merits.

RCADA encourages Tweag and future infrastructure proposers to return with structures that make it easier for DReps to say Yes to important work without compromising governance discipline.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA abstains on the [OriLife × TonFarm] Identifying 180 Million Durians Without Physical Labels treasury withdrawal proposal.

RCADA appreciates the ambition and real-world relevance of this proposal. Agricultural traceability, farmer onboarding, export-market integrity, food safety, fraud reduction, and sustainability-aligned supply-chain transparency are all areas where Cardano could provide meaningful value. The proposal identifies a real problem: physical QR labels can be detached, moved, or falsified, weakening the integrity of traceability systems. OriLife’s attempt to use biological fruit identification, Cardano-based identity, dynamic NFTs, and verifiable data batching is a creative response to that problem.

RCADA also recognises the proposal’s sustainability and real-world adoption potential. A deployment across 12,000 hectares of durian production in Đắk Lắk, Vietnam, with claimed targets of 180 million fruits per season, 24,000 PhoenixKey DIDs, 12,000 CIP-68 Dynamic Farm NFTs, and significant on-chain activity, would be a meaningful demonstration of Cardano utility if executed successfully.

However, RCADA cannot give full support at this time.

The proposal is currently shown as not constitutionally approved, and that is a serious concern for a Treasury Withdrawal. While RCADA forms its own independent judgment as a DRep, the Constitutional Committee’s position is an important signal that cannot be ignored. A proposal seeking treasury funds must satisfy not only a compelling use-case narrative, but also the constitutional and governance requirements needed to protect the legitimacy of Cardano’s treasury process.

Beyond the constitutional concern, the proposal carries a high verification and execution burden. It relies on a broad set of legal, institutional, technical, and adoption claims: Vietnamese traceability regulation, export-market pressure from China, institutional support in Đắk Lắk, prior field deployment, AI-based fruit identification, PhoenixKey DIDs, LampNet, VeData, MAGIC credits, CIP-68 NFTs, optional Midnight integration, escrow structures, and future SDK expansion. Many of these elements are promising, but together they create a complex execution model that is difficult for DReps to validate confidently within the voting window.

RCADA is also cautious about the adoption pathway. The proposal argues that demand is non-discretionary because food-production establishments face legal traceability obligations. RCADA accepts that regulatory pressure may create a strong market need, but a legal requirement for traceability does not automatically guarantee adoption of this specific platform. The proposal would benefit from clearer independent evidence that the proposed system is accepted, or likely to be accepted, as a practical compliance route by the relevant farmers, exporters, buyers, and authorities.

RCADA’s abstention should not be read as opposition to agricultural traceability, sustainability-focused adoption, or real-world use of Cardano. On the contrary, RCADA wants to see more credible real-world utility on-chain. The challenge is that ambitious adoption proposals must still meet high standards of constitutional clarity, independent verifiability, risk reduction, and execution readiness.

RCADA therefore abstains as a constructive signal.

We encourage the OriLife × TonFarm team to return with a revised proposal that resolves the constitutional concerns, strengthens independent verification of legal and institutional claims, simplifies or better evidences the technical architecture, and provides clearer assurance that the deployment pathway is accepted by the relevant real-world stakeholders. RCADA would welcome a stronger version of this proposal because the underlying category — sustainable agricultural traceability using Cardano — is exactly the kind of real-world utility the ecosystem should be working toward.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes YES on the Revised Cardano Summit 2026 Singapore Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

This is a cautious YES.

RCADA supports this revised proposal because it is materially stronger than the earlier Cardano Summit / TOKEN2049 proposal. The Cardano Foundation has responded to community feedback by decoupling the Summit from EMURGO’s TOKEN2049 sponsorship proposal, reducing the requested budget by 22%, narrowing the event from three stages to two, and increasing the Foundation’s estimated internal resource contribution from $250,000 to $380,000.

These changes matter. RCADA has consistently raised concerns about bundled proposals, unclear accountability, high Treasury asks, and weak measurability. In this case, the revised proposal addresses several of those concerns directly. It is not perfect, but it demonstrates responsiveness to community scrutiny and a willingness to reduce scope and cost.

RCADA also recognises the strategic case for holding the Cardano Summit in Singapore immediately before TOKEN2049. Singapore is a major financial, regulatory, and digital-asset hub, and the timing provides access to an audience already concentrated around institutional finance, blockchain infrastructure, enterprise adoption, developers, investors, regulators, and media. If well executed, this positioning could help Cardano reach audiences that are difficult and expensive to attract through ecosystem-only events.

The two-day structure is also clearer than the earlier version. Ecosystem Day provides space for governance, builders, DReps, technical workshops, hackathon activity, ecosystem showcases, and community engagement. Industry Day focuses on enterprise, institutional, regulatory, DeFi, stablecoin, interoperability, identity, AI, and real-world adoption themes. RCADA sees value in this split because it preserves community participation while also targeting external adoption audiences.

The proposal also includes a more useful KPI framework than many event proposals. The Foundation is targeting 1,200 attendees, 700 senior executives and decision makers, 250 enterprise marketing-qualified leads, 50 strategic meetings within 45 days post-event, 10 live demos or technical workshops, 200 developer participants, and 30 hackathon submissions or applications. These targets do not guarantee impact, but they provide a clearer basis for post-event accountability than attendance numbers alone.

That said, RCADA’s support should not be interpreted as blanket approval for large recurring event funding from the Treasury.

Even after the reduction, this remains a significant request: ₳7,800,000, based on a $1,950,000 budget. A two-day event must be held to a high standard when funded from the public Treasury. Brand visibility alone is not enough. The Summit should produce measurable follow-through in the form of qualified leads, strategic meetings, developer engagement, technical demonstrations, sponsor revenue, partnership opportunities, and credible post-event reporting.

RCADA also notes that stronger community support may have been achieved with a larger direct cash contribution from the Cardano Foundation, a matched-funding structure, stronger sponsor commitments before the vote, more granular milestone release, or a clearer multi-year plan for reducing recurring Treasury dependency. The proposal does deduct $313,000 in Summit 2025 revenue and states that 2026 revenue will be ring-fenced for 2027 venue deposits and early planning, which is positive, but a more explicit long-term sustainability model would strengthen future event proposals.

We also remain cautious about the front-loaded funding structure. The first milestone releases ₳6,240,000 after approval and funding of the treasury contract, while ₳1,560,000 is paid after delivery of the event. RCADA understands that major events require early deposits, vendor commitments, venue planning, and lead time, but this structure places substantial reliance on pre-delivery execution discipline. Public reporting and oversight therefore need to be especially strong.

RCADA further notes that the proposal is submitted outside the Intersect budget process due to event-planning timing constraints. We accept that large events require earlier commitments than an August or September withdrawal would allow, and the proposal explains that a delayed funding cycle could make the October 2026 event impractical. However, timing pressure should not become a routine workaround for normal budget discipline. Future event planning should aim to align more predictably with budget cycles where possible.

Overall, RCADA believes the revised Summit proposal clears the threshold for cautious support. It has improved meaningfully, is strategically timed, includes clearer KPIs, uses smart-contract-based administration and oversight, and responds to community budget concerns. However, this vote is narrow and conditional in spirit.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising that future Summit or event proposals should continue improving cost-sharing, sponsor pre-commitments, post-event ROI reporting, milestone design, and long-term sustainability. The success of this proposal should ultimately be judged not by attendance or visibility alone, but by whether it creates measurable enterprise, developer, governance, and ecosystem outcomes for Cardano.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal as a strategically meaningful investment in Cardano’s decentralisation, developer accessibility, and long-term ecosystem resilience.

This proposal introduces Gerolamo — a production-ready, browser-based validating Cardano light node — and seeks to transform what is arguably one of Cardano’s unique architectural strengths into a tangible and demonstrable ecosystem advantage. Cardano’s eUTxO model, deterministic execution, and comparatively lightweight validation requirements make this type of implementation realistically achievable in a way that is difficult or impractical for most competing blockchain architectures. We believe there is merit in pursuing innovations that strengthen Cardano’s unique positioning while simultaneously improving decentralisation in practical, user-facing ways.

RCADA has historically supported infrastructure proposals that strengthen network resilience, reduce systemic dependency, and expand the diversity of tooling available across the ecosystem. In our previous support for alternative node development, we recognised that independent implementations reduce single-client risk and improve the robustness of the network over time. Gerolamo extends this principle into the light-node tier by enabling trust-minimised, browser-native validation for wallets, dApps, and users who would otherwise rely on centralised infrastructure providers. We view this as directionally aligned with Cardano’s long-term decentralisation goals and consistent with prior RCADA voting positions.

We also recognise the broader strategic value of expanding developer accessibility. By building within the TypeScript ecosystem, this proposal lowers barriers to participation for a significantly larger pool of developers and improves integration pathways for wallets, browser applications, and dApps. As with prior infrastructure proposals, we consider wider contributor accessibility to be an important ecosystem benefit, particularly when balanced against long-term resilience and maintainability.

Importantly, the governance structure presented in this proposal materially strengthens confidence in treasury stewardship. The use of milestone-based escrow contracts, independent oversight, public reporting, transaction journaling, auditable financial controls, and objective delivery criteria represents a strong governance framework and reflects an encouraging maturation in Treasury Withdrawal proposal standards. RCADA has consistently emphasised the importance of accountability, measurable deliverables, and transparent administration in treasury-funded initiatives, and we view this proposal favourably in that regard.

At the same time, our support comes with caveats.

First, execution risk remains meaningful. Delivering a fully-validating browser-based node capable of reliable synchronization, consensus validation, rollback handling, and wallet/dApp integration is an ambitious technical undertaking. While the proposal is thoughtfully scoped and milestone-driven, success will ultimately depend on execution quality and adoption by downstream ecosystem participants.

Second, ecosystem demand remains an area we will monitor closely. The proposal’s value proposition becomes substantially stronger if wallets, dApps, and governance tooling meaningfully integrate Gerolamo after delivery. We therefore view real-world adoption as an important indicator of success and would expect future funding requests, if any, to demonstrate measurable ecosystem traction.

Third, while we appreciate the flexibility required in complex engineering efforts, we note that the ability for milestone schedules to be reorganised by HLabs introduces a governance consideration that should be exercised conservatively and transparently to preserve confidence in treasury accountability.

On balance, RCADA finds that this proposal meets the threshold for treasury funding. It combines a compelling strategic vision, meaningful decentralisation benefits, strong developer-accessibility potential, and one of the more mature treasury governance structures currently presented to the ecosystem.

Our YES vote reflects support for this specific proposal and its merits. It should not be interpreted as a blanket endorsement of all future infrastructure implementations or continued funding without demonstrated delivery, adoption, and accountability. Future requests should continue to meet the same standard of scrutiny, measurable progress, and ecosystem value.

RCADA remains committed to supporting initiatives that strengthen decentralisation, improve governance standards, and contribute meaningful long-term value to the Cardano ecosystem.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on the Pogun: Capital Without Compromise Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

RCADA recognises the ambition and potential significance of this proposal. Bringing Bitcoin liquidity, credit markets, yield products, and trust-minimized bridging infrastructure to Cardano could be highly valuable for the ecosystem. Bitcoin remains the largest digital asset by market capitalization, and Cardano would benefit from credible infrastructure that allows BTC holders to access lending, borrowing, yield, and DeFi activity without relying on weak custodial or bridge assumptions.

Pogun’s core idea is compelling: a non-margin, peer-to-peer credit market; a yield layer; and a BitVM-based bridge that could allow Bitcoin liquidity to enter Cardano under stronger security assumptions than conventional multisig or wrapped-token models. If successful, this could increase Cardano TVL, transaction activity, DeFi relevance, and external capital inflow.

RCADA particularly appreciates that this proposal attempts to move beyond a simple grant model. The commitment to return 20% of EBITDA to the Cardano Treasury until the USD-equivalent funding amount is repaid, followed by a 5% perpetual EBITDA return, is a meaningful improvement over proposals where the Treasury funds commercial upside but receives no direct financial participation.

This repayment structure is important. If Cardano Treasury funding is ever to support commercial ventures, then clear upside-sharing, repayment, reporting, and public accountability mechanisms should become part of the expected standard. Pogun deserves credit for attempting to define such a model.

However, RCADA also views this as a high-risk, high-reward commercial ecosystem investment, not a conventional public infrastructure grant.

The proposal combines several complex components: a credit protocol, a yield application, institutional adoption strategy, Bitcoin bridging, BitVM-related cryptographic infrastructure, reporting obligations, revenue accounting, and long-term Treasury return mechanics. Each of these is challenging on its own. Delivering all of them together creates a significant execution, adoption, security, and commercial risk profile.

RCADA also recognises that some of the proposal’s strongest ecosystem benefits depend on future market adoption. The projected value to Cardano depends on users trusting the bridge, capital entering the credit market, liquidity providers using the yield layer, institutional participants engaging with the product, and the protocol eventually producing positive EBITDA. These outcomes may happen, but they are not guaranteed.

The phased disbursement model is a positive feature. Pogun proposes four delivery phases from Q2 2026 to Q1 2027, with later tranches released after milestone verification. The proposal also includes refund clauses for milestone failure, team dissolution, voluntary termination, partial delivery, and technical infeasibility of the bridge. These controls are welcome and help reduce downside risk.

That said, RCADA believes the enforcement and assurance framework should be stronger for a proposal of this kind.

The Treasury return commitment is attractive, but its practical value depends on enforceability. RCADA would like to see greater clarity around the legally bound entity, governing jurisdiction, enforcement rights, treatment of affiliated entities, reporting failures, sale or restructuring of the project, and whether the repayment obligation survives changes in ownership or corporate structure. Without that clarity, return commitments can look strong on paper while remaining difficult for the community to enforce in practice.

RCADA would also like stronger independent financial verification. EBITDA-based commitments depend heavily on accounting treatment, cost allocation, and related-party transactions. Future proposals of this type should define allowable expenses, reporting standards, independent review requirements, and safeguards against shifting revenue or costs in ways that weaken the Treasury’s return.

We also believe the first disbursement could be better protected. While the proposal includes milestone-gated funding, the first tranche is released upon ratification. For a venture-style proposal involving significant technical and commercial risk, stronger pre-disbursement conditions would improve confidence. These could include publication or summary of the signed legal agreement, confirmation of the Treasury-return enforcement mechanism, independent technical review of the bridge roadmap, confirmed audit engagement, and clear disclosure of the project entity responsible for delivery and repayment.

RCADA is not opposed to Treasury-funded commercial ecosystem bets in principle. Some commercial ventures can also be ecosystem improvements if they bring external capital, reusable infrastructure, open-source components, public documentation, protocol revenue, and long-term Treasury returns. Pogun may fit that category if successfully delivered.

However, that category requires a higher standard than ordinary grant funding. It needs stronger legal enforceability, clearer downside protection, independent financial verification, transparent reporting, and careful separation between private upside and public benefit.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We appreciate Pogun’s ambition, the Bitcoin DeFi opportunity, and especially the repayment and perpetual-return model. However, given the proposal’s execution complexity, bridge-security risk, commercial uncertainty, adoption dependency, and unresolved enforceability questions, RCADA cannot fully endorse the Treasury allocation at this stage.

We would welcome a refined or future proposal with stronger legal enforcement mechanics, clearer financial verification, more explicit public-good guarantees, and tighter pre-disbursement protections.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on the Blockfrost: Maintenance and Next Generation Indexing Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

RCADA recognises Blockfrost as important infrastructure within the Cardano ecosystem. Many applications, wallets, services, developers, and smaller projects benefit from reliable, low-friction access to Cardano data. The free tier has helped make the ecosystem richer by lowering barriers to experimentation and development, and RCADA appreciates the work Blockfrost has done over several years to provide that access.

RCADA also sees merit in Project Cayley. As Cardano scales, especially with future throughput improvements such as Leios, full-chain indexing may become increasingly expensive. A decentralised slice-indexing architecture could reduce the burden on operators, allow more SPOs and node operators to participate in data-serving infrastructure, and help avoid concentration of the data layer around only a few large providers. That direction is aligned with Cardano’s decentralisation and resilience goals.

However, this proposal combines two distinct elements: funding next-generation decentralised indexing through Project Cayley, and providing an operational subsidy for Blockfrost’s free-tier infrastructure. The proposal allocates approximately $1,000,000 to Project Cayley and approximately $900,000 to maintaining the free-tier infrastructure, with a total Treasury ask of ₳7,916,666.

RCADA does not dismiss the value of the free tier. Free or low-cost access to blockchain data can be a genuine ecosystem public good, especially for new builders, small teams, wallets, tooling providers, and community services. The difficult question is not whether such access should exist, but how it should be funded fairly, sustainably, and without creating unhealthy dependency or capture risk.

At this stage, RCADA is not fully satisfied that the proposal resolves those questions. Treasury support for a private infrastructure provider’s operational free tier may be justified in some circumstances, but it requires a clear framework. That framework should ideally include independent usage verification, transparent cost attribution, a time-limited bridge rationale, a long-term sustainability plan, and a clear distinction between public-good infrastructure and commercial business operations.

RCADA also discloses that we currently participate in Blockfrost’s API service provision and receive income from that activity. As a relatively small stake pool, this income stream is meaningful. Because of this relationship, we believe it is appropriate to avoid casting a direct YES vote on a Treasury proposal that could be perceived as supporting an infrastructure model from which RCADA benefits. Our abstention reflects both governance caution and conflict-of-interest transparency.

This should not be read as opposition to Blockfrost or Project Cayley. RCADA appreciates Blockfrost’s contribution and believes decentralised indexing is an important area for Cardano’s future. We would welcome future proposals that further separate public-good infrastructure development from commercial operational subsidy, provide clearer independent metrics for free-tier usage, and explore fairer long-term funding models.

Possible future models could include time-limited bridge funding while decentralised infrastructure matures, public-good service contracts with measurable SLAs, multi-provider subsidy mechanisms, matched funding between Treasury and commercial revenue, usage-based support for verified community traffic, or repayment/revenue-sharing structures where Treasury funding strengthens a commercial service.

RCADA believes the Cardano ecosystem needs sustainable, reliable, and decentralised data access. We also believe Treasury funding should be structured carefully where public infrastructure overlaps with private commercial services.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We recognise the value of Blockfrost and Project Cayley, but due to RCADA’s current Blockfrost API-service relationship and unresolved questions around subsidy precedent, commercial sustainability, independent usage verification, and fair long-term funding, we cannot fully endorse the proposal as presented.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes YES on the IO & VacuumLabs: Enhancing Plutus - Performance, Correctness, and Usability Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

We support this proposal because Plutus is foundational to Cardano’s smart contract ecosystem. The cost, expressiveness, correctness, and usability of Plutus directly affect what developers can build, how safely they can build it, and whether Cardano can remain competitive as a serious platform for DeFi, high-assurance applications, zero-knowledge use cases, and broader on-chain utility.

This proposal addresses three connected areas: improving Plutus capabilities and execution efficiency, strengthening formal specification and conformance testing, and improving developer experience. RCADA sees these as mutually reinforcing rather than unrelated workstreams. A smart contract platform should be cheaper to use, easier to build with, and more rigorously specified as the ecosystem matures.

The performance and capability work is important because execution costs remain a practical constraint for Cardano applications. Features such as built-in casing on Data, implementation of multiIndexArray from CIP-0156, additional BuiltinValue functions from CIP-0168, and investigation into scope-check removal, laziness, and memoization could reduce script size, lower execution budgets, and unlock more efficient contract patterns. These improvements can make Cardano more attractive to developers and improve the user experience of applications that depend on Plutus.

RCADA also values the formal specification, correctness, and security work. As alternative node implementations and independent Plutus evaluators become more realistic, Cardano needs stronger implementation-independent specifications and conformance testing. A property-based conformance framework, Agda formalisation of built-in semantics, and structured security review of evaluator and costing logic all help reduce the risk of subtle consensus or execution differences. This is exactly the type of foundational work that supports a safer multi-client future.

The developer-experience work is also welcome. Cardano smart contract development has a reputation for being powerful but difficult to approach. Better compiler architecture, clearer source-level error messages, reduced boilerplate, broader GHC support, and simpler setup without heavy Nix or native dependency friction could help more developers move from experimentation to production. RCADA has consistently encouraged practical documentation, tooling, and onboarding improvements, and this proposal includes meaningful steps in that direction.

We also view the collaboration with VacuumLabs positively. RCADA does not want Cardano’s core infrastructure to depend indefinitely on a single organisation. At the same time, the answer is not simply to replace one dominant provider with another. The healthier path is progressive multi-party stewardship, where specialist teams contribute to shared public infrastructure according to their strengths. The IO and VacuumLabs co-venture is a constructive example of that model for Plutus.

However, our YES vote should not be read as unconditional endorsement of every future protocol change described in this proposal.

Some of the benefits depend on future hard-fork activation. The proposal states that language and built-in extensions require a hard fork for activation on mainnet, with Dijkstra as the target. RCADA views this vote as support for development readiness, formalisation, testing, and implementation work. Any future hard-fork activation should remain subject to separate technical, governance, ecosystem, and constitutional review.

We also note the familiar concern around budget transparency. The proposal requests ₳11,877,575, with a large share grouped under development. While specialist compiler, language, formal-methods, and security work is expensive and requires rare expertise, future proposals would benefit from clearer partner-level cost attribution, staffing assumptions, and milestone-level payment detail. Treasury-funded technical work should be understandable and auditable by the wider community, not only by insiders.

RCADA also encourages early and continuous coordination with downstream tooling teams. Plutus changes can affect compilers, wallets, indexers, auditors, alternative evaluators, DApp developers, and educational resources. To avoid unnecessary disruption, these improvements should be accompanied by strong documentation, migration guidance, conformance tests, examples, and public communication.

Overall, RCADA believes this proposal is well aligned with Cardano’s strategic needs. It strengthens the smart contract foundation, supports formal correctness, improves performance, improves developer usability, and helps distribute Plutus stewardship across expert teams. It is a broad proposal, but the workstreams are connected by a coherent goal: making Plutus cheaper, safer, and easier to use.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising the importance of downstream coordination, clear documentation, separate scrutiny for future hard-fork activation, measurable delivery, and improved cost transparency in future Plutus funding requests.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/".

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes YES on the IO: Cardano High Assurance Technical Collaboration Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

We support this proposal because it strengthens one of Cardano’s clearest and most important differentiators: high-assurance, security-first development. Cardano has long positioned itself as a blockchain for serious applications where correctness, reliability, and trust matter. However, the practical benefits of formal methods and high-assurance engineering will only reach the wider ecosystem if the tools become accessible to everyday developers, not only specialist auditors, researchers, or formal-methods experts.

This proposal directly addresses that gap.

The first workstream expands Blaster, IO’s automated formal verification tool, from single-script verification toward full DApp-level verification. It also introduces integrations with Aiken, Pebble, Scalus, and Futura; a VS Code extension; visual counterexample exploration; a Common Vulnerability Library; equivalence checking for UPLC programs; and proof reconstruction capabilities. These are meaningful improvements because they make verification more usable, more practical, and more relevant to real-world Cardano DApp development.

The second workstream delivers a Container-Based Developer Environment, intended to package the high-assurance toolkit into a single-command setup. RCADA sees value in this because setup complexity remains a real barrier for Cardano developers. A reliable pre-configured environment can reduce onboarding friction, improve consistency between teams, and make advanced tools easier to adopt.

RCADA also views the collaboration model positively. The proposal includes contributions from IO, Lantr, Harmonic Labs, SAIB, Midgard Labs, TxPipe, and No.Witness Labs. This is the kind of multi-party technical collaboration we want to see more of across the Cardano ecosystem. It broadens delivery responsibility, supports multiple developer communities, and helps avoid high-assurance infrastructure being locked inside one team or one language stack.

The ecosystem value is significant. If successful, this work could help developers identify vulnerabilities earlier, reduce reliance on expensive expert-only assurance processes, improve confidence in production DApps, support safer optimisation, and strengthen Cardano’s credibility with institutional users. In a market where smart contract exploits continue to damage trust, Cardano should lean into the advantage it already has: correctness, formal reasoning, and secure-by-design infrastructure.

That said, RCADA’s YES vote is not without reservations.

The proposal requests ₳13,078,578, with a large share of the budget grouped under development. While we accept that specialist formal-methods work is expensive and requires rare expertise, future proposals of this kind would benefit from clearer partner-level budget breakdowns, staffing assumptions, and milestone-level cost attribution. Treasury-funded work should be understandable not only to experts, but also to the wider community that ultimately pays for it.

We also believe adoption must be treated as a core success condition. A technically excellent verification tool provides limited ecosystem value if it remains underused. The proposal itself recognises that without dedicated promotion and developer outreach, Blaster and CBDE may see low adoption despite being delivered on time. RCADA therefore expects strong documentation, examples, developer education, visible integration paths, and public reporting on actual usage across supported languages.

Execution risk should also be monitored carefully. Scaling Blaster from single-contract to multi-script DApp-level verification is ambitious, and the proposal depends on several specialist contributors delivering coordinated work packages. RCADA supports this ambition, but we expect milestone acceptance and third-party assurance to pay close attention to whether the delivered tools are genuinely usable by external developers, not merely completed in a technical sense.

Overall, RCADA believes this proposal is well aligned with Cardano’s long-term identity and strategic needs. It is more coherent than several other proposals in this funding round, has a clear public-good character, supports distributed technical collaboration, and could materially improve the security baseline for Cardano applications.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while encouraging clear partner accountability, practical documentation, adoption reporting, and improved cost transparency in future high-assurance funding requests.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes YES on the IO & Ensurable Systems: Cardano Maintenance Initiative Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

We support this proposal because Cardano’s core maintenance is essential infrastructure. Every feature, upgrade, DApp, wallet, stake pool, governance process, and future scaling initiative depends on a stable, secure, well-maintained base layer. Maintenance is not a discretionary luxury; it is the operational foundation that allows Cardano to remain reliable as a production blockchain.

RCADA recognises that IO has carried a significant share of Cardano’s core maintenance responsibility to date and has done so with a strong overall record. Cardano’s stability, release discipline, security posture, and continued protocol evolution have benefited from IO’s institutional knowledge and technical depth. At this stage, there is no practical or sensible path to simply remove that expertise from the maintenance envelope without creating unnecessary continuity risk.

However, RCADA does not believe the long-term objective should be to replace IO with another single dominant maintenance provider. Cardano should avoid recreating single-provider dependency, whether that provider is IO or any future organisation. The healthier path is progressive multi-party stewardship, where IO continues to contribute its deep protocol expertise while more responsibilities are opened, where practical and safe, to capable ecosystem contributors, independent engineering groups, alternative client teams, SPOs, auditors, open-source organisations, and neutral coordination structures.

We therefore view the collaboration with Ensurable Systems as a positive step, not because it replaces IO, but because it points toward a broader and more resilient maintenance model. Cardano’s long-term infrastructure health will be strengthened when knowledge, responsibility, tooling, monitoring, documentation, and operational capability are distributed across a wider bench of competent contributors.

The proposal covers a wide and important maintenance envelope, including node bug fixing, DevOps and CI/CD infrastructure, disaster recovery, mainnet and mempool monitoring, documentation, open-source support, performance optimisation, QA, release management, incident response, Plutus Core, DB-Sync, guardrails scripts, APIs, CLI tools, and related components. These are not glamorous workstreams, but they are critical to keeping Cardano safe, usable, and dependable.

RCADA also sees value in the proposal’s focus on the Cardano Blueprint and implementation-independent documentation. In our view, documentation should be treated as a serious maintenance deliverable, not a secondary activity. Cardano’s technical documentation remains fragmented across repositories, specifications, guides, and community-maintained resources. We would welcome a more coherent and accessible documentation layer covering network architecture, node setup, configuration, operational practices, core technologies, and implementation-independent specifications. Better documentation would benefit SPOs, developers, auditors, alternative client teams, and new contributors.

That said, our YES vote should not be read as a blank cheque.

This proposal requests ₳62,134,630, which is a substantial Treasury allocation. Large recurring maintenance budgets must meet a high standard of public transparency, cost justification, measurable delivery, and independent assurance. While the proposal includes budget categories, refund provisions, smart-contract administration, third-party assurance, prior Treasury receipt disclosure, and Net Change Limit compliance, RCADA agrees with the broader community concern that future maintenance proposals should provide clearer line-item detail, staffing assumptions, workstream-level cost attribution, and measurable public reporting.

We are also wary of Treasury-funded maintenance becoming an opaque mechanism for underwriting ongoing employment under a broad maintenance umbrella. Maintenance work is essential, and the people performing it should be fairly compensated, but recurring public funding must remain tied to clear outputs, visible service levels, delivery evidence, and ecosystem benefit. The community should be able to understand not only that maintenance is needed, but what is being maintained, by whom, at what cost, and with what measurable results.

RCADA would therefore like to see future maintenance reporting include clearer evidence around uptime, incident response, release cadence, security reviews, unresolved critical issues, test coverage, performance benchmarks, documentation progress, open-source contribution handling, and progress toward broader multi-party participation. Continuous maintenance does not remove the need for measurable accountability.

We also recognise the concerns raised by other DReps and community members around proposal size, budget granularity, potential overlap with other IO-led initiatives, and concentration of Treasury funding. The Cardano Foundation’s abstention, for example, highlights legitimate questions about financial detail, potential duplication, quantifiable deliverables, and the need for a more modular and node-agnostic maintenance approach. These concerns are valid and should influence how future maintenance proposals are structured.

Nevertheless, RCADA believes that rejecting this proposal outright would create more risk than benefit at this stage. Cardano needs uninterrupted maintenance coverage. The operational scope is real, the expertise required is significant, and the network should not be placed in a position where essential maintenance becomes uncertain while alternative structures are still maturing.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while strongly emphasising that future maintenance funding should become more transparent, more measurable, more modular where practical, and more explicitly oriented toward distributed stewardship. Cardano should continue funding the maintenance it depends on, but it should also use that funding to widen participation, improve documentation, strengthen public accountability, and reduce long-term dependency on any single organisation.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes YES on the IO: Consensus Initiative (Leios) Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

We support this proposal because we believe Cardano must continue investing in foundational infrastructure capable of sustaining long-term growth, adoption, and economic viability. While the Treasury ask is substantial and execution risk is non-trivial, RCADA believes Leios represents one of the most strategically important protocol initiatives currently under consideration.

At its core, this proposal addresses a fundamental challenge facing Cardano: scaling transaction throughput while preserving the decentralization, security, and stake pool economics that distinguish the network. Cardano’s long-term ambitions — including meaningful DeFi adoption, enterprise use cases, real-world assets, and increased on-chain activity — are difficult to achieve if throughput limitations become a bottleneck. Leios offers a credible pathway toward addressing this challenge without abandoning Cardano’s core architectural principles.

Importantly, this proposal does not seek immediate activation of Leios on mainnet, nor does it ask the community to pre-approve a future hard fork. Instead, it funds the work required to move Leios from public testnet toward a mainnet-ready release candidate, including engineering, conformance testing, ecosystem integration, adversarial validation, SPO readiness, and governance preparation. RCADA views this distinction as important. Supporting development readiness is not the same as committing in advance to activation. Any future hard-fork decision should remain subject to separate constitutional, technical, governance, and ecosystem review.

RCADA also recognizes several positive governance improvements within this proposal. Milestone-based disbursement, refund provisions for unused funds, third-party assurance, Intersect-administered smart contracts, and public auditability mechanisms all represent stronger Treasury accountability than many earlier funding proposals. The proposal also demonstrates meaningful effort toward ecosystem preparedness through workshops, infrastructure support, and implementation-independent technical documentation.

However, our YES vote should not be interpreted as unconditional endorsement.

This proposal requests a significant amount of Treasury funding, and RCADA believes large Treasury asks must meet an increasingly high standard of transparency and accountability. While the proposal provides stronger detail than many prior requests, we continue to believe clearer staffing assumptions, milestone-level cost attribution, measurable delivery indicators, and more granular resource allocation would improve confidence in Treasury stewardship.

We also recognise that Leios is an ambitious and technically complex undertaking. The proposal itself acknowledges meaningful execution risks, including Dijkstra-era timing dependencies, integration complexity, ecosystem readiness, parameter uncertainty, and governance dependencies required for eventual activation. Cardano’s high-assurance engineering approach has historically prioritized correctness over speed, but Treasury-funded initiatives must still demonstrate measurable progress and clear communication with the community.

RCADA further believes particular attention should be paid to Stake Pool Operator impacts as development progresses. Increased chain growth, operational requirements, hardware expectations, and network assumptions must be carefully validated to ensure Cardano’s decentralization and SPO participation remain healthy. Scaling should strengthen decentralization — not unintentionally erode it.

Ultimately, RCADA believes Cardano’s Treasury exists to fund meaningful ecosystem advancement where the expected long-term benefit justifies responsible risk-taking. While Leios carries execution uncertainty and warrants continued scrutiny, we believe the potential ecosystem value, strategic importance, and governance safeguards present in this proposal justify support at this stage.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while emphasising the importance of milestone transparency, measurable delivery, SPO impact monitoring, and independent scrutiny prior to any future hard-fork activation.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

We support this proposal because it addresses several meaningful friction points that continue to limit Cardano’s usability, adoption, and long-term competitiveness. While we retain important reservations around governance quality, cost transparency, and proposal structure, we believe the expected ecosystem value and strategic importance of these upgrades justify support at this time.

This proposal combines three major workstreams: CIP-159 Account Address Enhancement, Multi-Asset Treasury design work (CPS-23), and Native Babel Fees. Collectively, these initiatives aim to improve wallet economics, reduce onboarding friction, enable more sustainable Treasury capabilities, and strengthen Cardano’s broader application and DeFi ecosystem. Importantly, these are not purely speculative concepts. They target genuine limitations experienced today by developers, wallets, users, and infrastructure providers.

The strongest case for support lies in the practical ecosystem improvements this proposal could unlock.

CIP-159 has the potential to materially improve Cardano’s usability and application design flexibility. By enabling more flexible account address functionality and micro-fee collection, it addresses longstanding limitations affecting wallet monetisation, batchers, aggregators, and Layer 2 reserve management. Lowering these friction points could improve both user experience and economic sustainability for ecosystem participants.

Similarly, Native Babel Fees addresses one of Cardano’s most persistent onboarding barriers: the requirement to first acquire ADA before transacting. Enabling users to pay fees using native assets has the potential to improve accessibility for stablecoin users, bridged asset holders, and first-time participants entering Cardano’s ecosystem. In an increasingly competitive multi-chain environment, reducing avoidable friction matters.

We also recognise the longer-term strategic importance of beginning design work around a Multi-Asset Treasury. While RCADA does not view future Treasury diversification as automatically desirable or inevitable, we acknowledge that stable-value budgeting, diversified treasury management, and reduced exposure to ADA volatility warrant serious exploration. Supporting research and specification work is not the same as pre-approving future implementation. Any eventual proposal to alter Treasury asset composition should still be subject to rigorous constitutional, governance, and risk scrutiny.

We also acknowledge that this proposal demonstrates stronger governance maturity than many earlier Treasury requests. Milestone-based disbursement, refund provisions for unused funds, third-party assurance, Intersect-administered smart contracts, and public auditability mechanisms all represent positive steps toward more accountable Treasury governance.

However, our YES vote should not be interpreted as unconditional endorsement.

RCADA continues to hold concerns around proposal bundling. Although the three workstreams are more strategically connected than many prior omnibus-style Treasury proposals, we still believe modular funding requests generally improve governance quality by allowing DReps to assess initiatives on their own merits. In this case, we believe the shared strategic direction and technical interdependence justify flexibility, but this should not become the default standard for future Treasury asks.

We also believe cost transparency remains insufficiently detailed for a Treasury request of this size. While high-level budget categories are provided, clearer breakdowns of staffing assumptions, engineering effort, resource allocation, and milestone-level cost attribution would materially improve confidence and accountability. As Treasury governance matures, RCADA expects increasingly robust financial transparency from proposals requesting significant public funding.

Additionally, the proposal’s timelines and delivery assumptions deserve careful monitoring. Cardano has historically prioritised high-assurance engineering, which has often resulted in slower delivery cycles than anticipated. While RCADA recognises the complexity of protocol development and does not wish to penalise engineering rigor, we believe the ecosystem must increasingly demonstrate an ability to execute and deliver measurable outcomes within reasonable expectations.

We also encourage particular caution around the initial Babel Fee implementation model, which currently envisions a limited provider structure during its MVP phase. While we understand the pragmatic reasons for phased delivery, RCADA strongly believes any fee abstraction system should evolve toward a competitive, decentralised, and permissionless model as quickly as practical to avoid unnecessary centralisation risks.

Ultimately, RCADA believes governance should not become so rigid that it prevents meaningful progress. Cardano’s Treasury exists to fund ecosystem advancement, and the proposals that deserve support are those capable of delivering real utility while remaining accountable to the community. Despite our reservations, we believe this proposal meets that threshold.

For these reasons, RCADA votes YES, while encouraging stronger Treasury accountability, clearer cost transparency, and measurable delivery expectations as Cardano governance continues to mature.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/".

Agreed. A constructive ABSTAIN fits this case well.

The key nuance should be:

RCADA supports all three areas in principle and would likely have supported them if presented independently, but the combined proposal prevents differentiated assessment of workstreams with different maturity levels, risk profiles, and accountability concerns.

Here is a final rationale draft:

RCADA Rationale

RCADA votes ABSTAIN on the IO & Midgard Labs: L2 Scalability Initiative Treasury Withdrawal proposal.

RCADA supports the strategic direction of this proposal. Cardano needs credible Layer 2 infrastructure if it is to compete for high-performance use cases such as DeFi, AI-agent micropayments, gaming, consumer payments, and other applications that require faster finality, lower fees, and higher throughput than L1 can currently provide. We recognise that L2 development is not a rejection of Cardano’s base layer; it is a necessary complement to it.

We also support the three workstreams in principle.

Hydra production hardening is valuable and timely. Hydra has a distinct role in known-party, high-frequency environments, and the proposed work around performance optimisation, operational tooling, documentation, observability, DeFi reference implementations, and support for live adopters such as Delta DeFi and Masumi appears useful for the ecosystem.

The L2-agnostic infrastructure workstream also has merit. Shared data availability research and prototyping could help avoid future fragmentation and provide common infrastructure for current and future Cardano L2s.

Midgard is likewise a promising direction. A permissionless optimistic rollup designed around Cardano’s EUTXO model could meaningfully expand the range of applications that can build on Cardano, particularly open-participation DeFi and consumer-facing use cases.

If these workstreams had been presented independently, RCADA would likely have been supportive of each of them, while still providing specific feedback and scrutiny appropriate to their individual scope and maturity.

However, as a single bundled Treasury action, this proposal is weaker than several of the other infrastructure proposals we reviewed in this funding round.

The issue is not that the three areas are unrelated. RCADA understands why they were grouped together: they are all part of a coherent L2 scaling strategy and may share research, infrastructure, ecosystem coordination, and adoption pathways. Hydra, Midgard, and shared L2 infrastructure address different parts of Cardano’s scaling challenge and could reinforce one another over time.

The difficulty is that they carry different maturity levels and risk profiles. Hydra hardening is comparatively practical and connected to current production use cases. The data availability workstream is more exploratory and architectural. Midgard is strategically interesting but materially higher risk, particularly around the transition from a single-sequencer testnet toward decentralised multi-operator coordination. The proposal itself identifies this transition as a high-likelihood, high-impact technical risk.

This creates a governance problem. DReps are being asked to cast one vote across workstreams that deserve separate evaluation. RCADA cannot express support for the more mature Hydra work while separately applying stronger conditions to the more speculative or higher-risk components. An all-or-nothing vote reduces the quality of governance judgement, even when the overall strategic direction is sound.

RCADA also shares community concerns around delivery accountability, responsibility splits, prior milestone confidence, and budget granularity. The workstream-level budget is helpful, but the broader cost distribution still places 86% of the request under “Development,” which limits public review of staffing assumptions, contractor allocation, and precise cost attribution. Given the proposal’s reliance on multiple teams, live adopters, and future coordination structures, clearer public separation of responsibilities and acceptance criteria would have improved confidence.

We also note that the expected benefits depend partly on external adoption behaviour. The proposal explicitly identifies Delta DeFi and Masumi as important production validation partners and recognises that delays could put early adopters at risk. That is a reasonable ecosystem argument, but it also means the impact case depends on execution and adoption beyond the core technical deliverables.

RCADA does not want this abstention to be interpreted as opposition to Hydra, Midgard, or Cardano L2 scaling. Quite the opposite: we believe L2 development is important, and we want to see these efforts continue. Our abstention is a process and confidence signal, not a rejection of the technical vision.

A stronger proposal would separate the three workstreams or provide clearer internal gating, milestone-level cost attribution, responsibility mapping between IO and Midgard Labs, evidence of prior delivery status, and objective readiness criteria for Midgard progression. RCADA would be more comfortable supporting each workstream on its own merits with appropriate conditions attached.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN. We support the direction of travel and would likely support the individual components if separately proposed, but we cannot fully endorse the bundled structure, uneven maturity profile, and unresolved accountability concerns in this single Treasury action.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal proposal from Harmonic Laboratories (HLabs) for Pebble and TypeScript ecosystem maintenance as a strategically important investment in Cardano’s long-term developer accessibility, tooling resilience, and ecosystem continuity.

This proposal funds two tightly related workstreams: the continued development of Pebble, an imperative, TypeScript-shaped smart contract language targeting UPLC, and the ongoing maintenance of critical TypeScript infrastructure libraries that underpin a significant portion of Cardano’s developer ecosystem. These include dependencies relied upon directly or transitively by projects such as Mesh, Lucid Evolution, Midgard, wallet integrations, indexers, and other production systems. Ensuring these libraries remain synchronized with protocol upgrades and future hard forks represents meaningful ecosystem maintenance rather than optional experimentation.

RCADA previously voted YES on the broader HLabs 2026 infrastructure proposal, which included Gerolamo, Pebble, and TypeScript tooling maintenance as a tightly integrated stack spanning infrastructure, developer onboarding, and ecosystem resilience. This proposal represents a more modular and independently reviewable version of that vision, separating Gerolamo into its own governance action. We view this increased granularity positively and consistent with our long-standing preference for more focused treasury proposals.

From a governance perspective, this proposal demonstrates a strong degree of maturity and accountability. Funds are managed through audited SundaeSwap treasury escrow contracts with milestone-based disbursement, independent oversight, pause mechanisms, refund protections, and automatic treasury return of unused funds at expiry. Importantly, milestone acceptance criteria are tied to objective, publicly inspectable artifacts such as tagged releases, npm packages, benchmark submissions, test logs, and observable execution on preview or pre-production networks. RCADA places considerable weight on verifiable delivery mechanisms, and this proposal compares favorably to many prior treasury requests in that regard.

We also acknowledge the strategic case for expanding Cardano’s developer funnel. Cardano has historically faced onboarding friction, particularly for developers accustomed to imperative and TypeScript-based environments. Pebble attempts to lower this barrier by offering a familiar development model while targeting the same underlying UPLC runtime as existing languages. We do not view this as a replacement for Aiken, but rather as a complementary pathway that may broaden participation among Web2 and Solidity developers who might otherwise find Cardano’s smart contract stack less accessible.

That said, our support comes with several caveats.

First, while we appreciate the proposal’s detailed governance structure, we continue to hold reservations around the use of upfront contingency reserves within treasury asks. Although the 15% contingency is refundable, milestone-gated, and substantially smaller than structures seen elsewhere, RCADA remains cautious about the precedent that pre-allocated contingency buffers can establish for treasury discipline. Future proposals should continue exploring more conditional or milestone-triggered approaches wherever feasible rather than normalizing larger embedded reserves.

Second, while we recognize Pebble’s potential to improve onboarding, developer adoption ultimately remains the key measure of success. A new language ecosystem introduces some risk of fragmentation, duplicated effort, or ecosystem complexity if adoption fails to materialize meaningfully. For this reason, we strongly encourage transparent reporting not only on technical delivery, but also on measurable ecosystem usage — including developer onboarding, tooling adoption, educational uptake, and downstream integration into real applications.

Third, RCADA continues to emphasize the importance of maintaining multiple complementary developer pathways without creating unnecessary competition for scarce ecosystem attention or treasury resources. Pebble’s success should be evaluated on whether it expands Cardano’s total addressable developer base rather than merely redistributing existing developers across another toolset.

In summary, RCADA believes this proposal meets the standard for responsible treasury funding. It addresses genuine ecosystem needs, demonstrates mature governance and accountability mechanisms, and aligns with long-term goals around decentralization, developer accessibility, and infrastructure resilience. Our support should be interpreted as endorsement of this specific implementation, governance structure, and reporting model — while signaling continued scrutiny around contingency design, measurable adoption outcomes, and ecosystem fragmentation risk.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

After carefully reviewing the proposal, associated documentation, community feedback, and its alignment with Cardano’s long-term strategic needs, I have decided to ABSTAIN on the IO: Developer Experience Initiative Treasury Withdrawal.

Let me begin by acknowledging that I strongly agree with the core problem this proposal seeks to address. Developer experience remains one of Cardano’s most significant barriers to growth and adoption. Fragmented tooling, inconsistent onboarding pathways, scattered documentation, and a steep learning curve continue to make it harder for developers to build effectively on Cardano compared to competing ecosystems. If Cardano is serious about long-term utility, developer adoption must improve.

There are many aspects of this proposal that I find encouraging. The focus on practical deliverables such as the cardano-init setup tool, an OpenZeppelin-style smart contract library, and a more unified Developer Portal onboarding experience addresses real friction points that developers frequently raise. I also appreciate the proposal’s ecosystem-oriented approach. Rather than operating purely as an internal initiative, it seeks collaboration with community maintainers, ecosystem tooling teams, Intersect, and external contributors, while including a bounty mechanism to support high-impact improvements across existing projects. This collaborative approach aligns with Cardano’s decentralised ethos and increases the likelihood that outcomes extend beyond a single organisation.

Structurally, this proposal is also more mature than many Treasury requests we have seen in the past. The inclusion of milestone-based disbursement, independent assurance, administrator designation through Intersect, refund provisions for unspent funds, and auditable treasury smart contract controls demonstrates a stronger commitment to accountability and constitutional compliance than earlier funding requests.

That said, despite recognising the value and intent of this initiative, I am not yet fully convinced that the governance and accountability framework is sufficiently mature to justify an unqualified Yes vote.

My primary concern relates to cost transparency and accountability. While the proposal outlines high-level budget categories, it does not provide enough detail regarding staffing assumptions, resource allocation, milestone cost attribution, or expected delivery effort to comfortably evaluate whether the requested ₳3.6M ADA represents the most efficient use of Treasury funds.

I also have reservations around the proposed success metrics, particularly the ambition of achieving a 30%+ acceleration in developer growth. While aspirational targets are valuable, developer growth is influenced by many external factors and should not be reduced to a single headline KPI. Instead, I believe milestone reporting should provide publicly verifiable evidence of meaningful progress — such as onboarding improvements, tooling adoption, upstream ecosystem contributions, and measurable reductions in developer friction.

Additionally, I believe there remains a legitimate governance discussion regarding process and precedent. As Cardano matures its Treasury governance framework, consistency in how large funding initiatives are proposed, compared, and evaluated becomes increasingly important.

My abstention should not be interpreted as opposition to improving developer experience — quite the opposite. I believe investment in developer onboarding, tooling, and ecosystem coordination is essential to Cardano’s future success. Rather, this abstention reflects a desire to encourage stronger standards of transparency, clearer budget accountability, and more measurable reporting as Treasury governance continues to mature.

RCADA remains open to revisiting this position should clearer cost traceability, transparent reporting, and publicly verifiable evidence of delivery be demonstrated either through future iterations or delivery evidence over time.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/."

RCADA recognises the strategic value of a flagship Cardano Summit and agrees that Singapore, particularly in proximity to TOKEN2049, presents a strong opportunity for institutional visibility, ecosystem growth, and builder engagement. We also acknowledge the inclusion of smart-contract administration, milestone-based disbursement, audit provisions, and public reporting mechanisms within this proposal.

However, at the time of voting, a revised and decoupled proposal submitted by the Cardano Foundation has been introduced. This updated proposal separates the Cardano Summit from the TOKEN2049 sponsorship and significantly reduces the overall budget following community feedback.

Given this development, RCADA does not consider the current combined proposal—requesting 14,076,539 ada for both the Summit and TOKEN2049 sponsorship—to remain an appropriate or necessary vehicle for Treasury funding.

The original proposal bundles two distinct activities into a single governance action, limiting DReps’ ability to assess each component independently. It also represents a materially higher treasury outlay, includes large upfront disbursements, and is submitted outside the standard budget process.

The existence of a revised, more focused, and lower-cost alternative demonstrates that a better-structured approach is both possible and already underway. For these reasons, RCADA chooses not to support this earlier combined proposal.

This vote should not be interpreted as opposition to the Cardano Summit or broader ecosystem marketing efforts. RCADA remains open to assessing the revised standalone Summit proposal on its own merits.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal proposal from Harmonic Laboratories (HLabs) as a high-impact infrastructure investment aligned with Cardano’s long-term decentralization, developer accessibility, and ecosystem resilience.

The proposal presents a coherent and well-structured funding request across three interrelated workstreams: Gerolamo (a TypeScript-based node implementation), Pebble (a developer-friendly smart contract language and tooling suite), and ongoing maintenance of critical TypeScript ecosystem libraries. While these components are bundled, we find that they form a vertically integrated and mutually reinforcing stack spanning infrastructure, developer experience, and ecosystem continuity. This distinguishes the proposal from broader multi-project bundles and supports its evaluation as a unified initiative.

From a governance and treasury perspective, the proposal demonstrates a mature and robust design. Funds are held in audited smart contract escrow, disbursements are milestone-based, and an independent oversight board with credible ecosystem representation has meaningful enforcement powers, including the ability to pause funding and co-sign releases. Importantly, unused funds are automatically returned to the treasury at contract expiry. These mechanisms provide strong safeguards against misuse and materially reduce execution risk.

We also recognize the strategic importance of the proposed deliverables. Gerolamo contributes directly to client diversity and decentralization, particularly through its light-node and browser-based capabilities. Pebble lowers the barrier to entry for a large pool of Web2 and EVM developers, expanding Cardano’s potential developer base without displacing existing tooling. Continued maintenance of foundational TypeScript libraries ensures ecosystem stability across protocol upgrades and reduces fragmentation risk. Collectively, these contributions align with the Cardano 2030 vision and represent meaningful public goods for the network.

That said, this proposal is not without concerns.

First, the inclusion of a 25% contingency buffer within the upfront funding ask raises important governance considerations. While the justification—accounting for uncertainty and optimism bias in complex R&D work—is reasonable, and while the escrow model ensures that these funds are not automatically disbursed, we remain cautious about the precedent this sets. Large pre-allocated contingencies, even when refundable, risk inflating treasury requests and reducing funding discipline over time. We strongly encourage future proposals to explore more conditional or milestone-triggered contingency mechanisms rather than incorporating significant buffers into the initial ask.

Second, although we find the bundling in this case to be justified due to the tight coupling of the three workstreams, we reiterate our general preference for modular governance actions wherever feasible. Bundling inherently limits DRep granularity in decision-making and should be applied carefully. This proposal sits at the acceptable boundary of that practice, but broader or less cohesive bundling approaches would likely not receive the same level of support.

In summary, RCADA views this proposal as meeting the bar for responsible treasury allocation: it is strategically aligned, technically credible, and supported by strong governance and oversight mechanisms. Our support should be interpreted as endorsement of this specific implementation and structure—not as blanket approval of bundled proposals or large upfront contingencies as a general standard.

We therefore vote YES, while signaling clearly that future proposals adopting similar patterns—particularly around contingency design—may face increased scrutiny and could result in an Abstain or No vote if not sufficiently justified or refined.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA supports this Info Action as a necessary step to ensure continuity and responsible administration of existing Project Catalyst commitments.

This proposal addresses an operational requirement rather than a strategic or funding decision. It enables the transition of Catalyst management from Input Output Global to the Cardano Foundation in order to maintain uninterrupted administration of Funds 10–14, including milestone reviews and payments to funded projects. Without this transition, Catalyst operations may face disruption, creating delays and uncertainty for active participants.

We consider this action to be a matter of stewardship and continuity. It does not introduce new funding, expand the scope of Catalyst, or define its future direction. Instead, it ensures that previously approved commitments are fulfilled in a timely and responsible manner.

The Cardano Foundation is an established and capable ecosystem entity with relevant governance and operational experience. In the absence of clearly defined alternative managing entities within the required timeframe, we consider this transition to be an appropriate and pragmatic solution.

Importantly, this approval should not be interpreted as endorsement of any future structure, funding model, or long-term governance framework for Project Catalyst. Decisions regarding the future of Catalyst remain open and should be addressed through separate governance processes with full community consideration.

RCADA’s YES vote reflects support for operational continuity, responsible fund administration, and protection of ecosystem participants currently engaged in Catalyst-funded projects.

RCADA’s full vote assessment can be found here: https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal as a strategically important investment in Cardano’s infrastructure resilience, decentralisation, and long-term ecosystem accessibility.

This proposal addresses a fundamental structural consideration within the network: reliance on a single production node implementation. By advancing Dingo—a Go-based Cardano node—toward mainnet block production readiness, it contributes directly to node diversity, which is essential for reducing systemic risk and improving network robustness. Multiple independent implementations strengthen Cardano’s ability to withstand client-specific defects, an approach that has proven critical in other blockchain ecosystems.

We recognise the substantial progress already demonstrated by the Blink Labs team. With a significant body of merged code, full Plutus V1–V3 conformance, and working implementations of key node components, this proposal represents the continuation of an already credible and actively developed infrastructure effort rather than a speculative or early-stage initiative.

The governance and treasury management structure presented is notably strong. The use of audited smart contract escrow mechanisms, milestone-based disbursements, independent oversight, and a public transaction journal establishes a high standard of accountability and transparency. These mechanisms align closely with responsible treasury usage and represent a positive precedent for future funding proposals.

We also acknowledge the broader strategic value of a Go-based implementation. Go is widely adopted across high-performance distributed systems and blockchain infrastructure, and its inclusion expands accessibility to a significantly larger developer ecosystem. This has potential long-term benefits for adoption, integration, and contributor growth within Cardano.

At the same time, we recognise and take seriously several concerns raised within the community.

First, questions around overall treasury coordination and budget visibility remain valid. The current environment, where multiple treasury withdrawal proposals are assessed independently, can make it difficult to evaluate cumulative impact and prioritisation across competing initiatives. While this is a systemic governance consideration rather than a deficiency specific to this proposal, it remains an area that requires continued improvement.

Second, we acknowledge the argument that funding multiple node implementations introduces long-term maintenance considerations and may risk spreading resources too thinly. These concerns are legitimate and highlight the importance of disciplined treasury management. However, we consider node diversity to be a foundational requirement rather than a discretionary enhancement. Progressing toward a multi-client ecosystem should not be treated as strictly sequential, as doing so may delay meaningful risk reduction at the protocol level.

Third, execution risk remains non-trivial. Delivering a production-ready block-producing node requires successful completion of consensus implementation, operational hardening at scale, and a comprehensive security audit. These risks are inherent to the scope of the work. However, they are explicitly acknowledged within the proposal and are mitigated through structured milestones, escrow-based disbursement controls, independent oversight, and contingency planning.

We also note minor shortcomings, such as the use of an outdated constitutionality checklist template, which, while not materially affecting the validity of the proposal, reflects an area for improvement in future submissions.

On balance, RCADA finds that this proposal meets the threshold for treasury funding. It combines demonstrated delivery capability, strong governance design, and clear ecosystem value. It represents a meaningful step toward improving Cardano’s infrastructure resilience and developer accessibility.

Our YES vote reflects support for this specific proposal and its merits. It should not be interpreted as a blanket endorsement of all future node implementations or ongoing funding without the same level of scrutiny. Each subsequent proposal must independently justify its value, cost, and alignment with ecosystem priorities.

RCADA remains committed to supporting initiatives that strengthen decentralisation, improve governance standards, and deliver long-term value to the Cardano ecosystem.

RCADA’s full vote assessment can be found here: “https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA abstains on this treasury withdrawal as we consider it a strategically significant enabling action that does not yet meet the threshold for full endorsement.

While the proposal is structurally sound and demonstrates improvements in areas such as cost controls, audit provisions, and transparency mechanisms, it is not a neutral funding request. Rather, it establishes the legal, technical, and governance infrastructure required to execute a much larger treasury deployment of approximately 50 million ADA into DeFi liquidity strategies.

This introduces a level of path dependency that warrants careful consideration. Approving this withdrawal would effectively commit the ecosystem to a specific execution model before the broader strategic direction has achieved sufficient consensus or validation.

We acknowledge that increasing stablecoin liquidity and improving routing efficiency are valid objectives, and we recognise that this proposal represents a staged approach designed to reduce risk prior to large-scale capital deployment. However, the effectiveness of treasury-funded liquidity as a mechanism for sustainable ecosystem growth remains debated, particularly in relation to whether liquidity alone can attract meaningful and lasting user adoption.

We also note that this proposal introduces a hybrid governance structure through the creation of a Cayman Islands Foundation Company and a 9-person Interim Committee with delegated authority. While this may be necessary for interacting with off-chain legal and financial systems, it represents a shift away from purely on-chain governance and introduces additional layers of complexity, trust, and centralisation risk.

Importantly, current DRep sentiment reflects a lack of strong consensus on this proposal. While there is support from some major stakeholders, overall participation indicates meaningful division regarding both the implementation approach and the broader strategic direction. This reinforces our view that the proposal has not yet reached the level of maturity or alignment required for approval.

Our abstention should not be interpreted as opposition to the underlying goals of improving Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. Rather, it reflects a position that further clarity, validation, and consensus are needed before committing treasury resources to this execution path.

RCADA remains open to supporting future iterations of this initiative if concerns around governance structure, strategic justification, and ecosystem alignment are more fully addressed.

RCADA’s full vote assessment can be found here: “https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

RCADA recognises the significant effort and progress represented in this Budget Process Framework. Compared to the 2025 cycle, this proposal introduces meaningful improvements in structure, transparency, and accountability. The introduction of KPI-linked proposals, work-package-based budgeting, identity verification, and smart contract-based treasury execution are all strong advancements that align with the principles of responsible treasury governance and long-term ecosystem sustainability.

We particularly support the move toward measurable outcomes, clearer proposal comparability, and enhanced execution safeguards through escrow-style smart contracts and independent oversight mechanisms. These are important steps toward a more mature and accountable governance system.

However, despite these improvements, we have chosen to abstain due to several structural concerns that remain unresolved.

A central consideration in our assessment is the role of Ekklesia within this framework. While we recognise its value as a coordination and signal-gathering tool, its use as a gating mechanism—where proposals require a 67% threshold off-chain before progressing to on-chain governance—introduces a de facto pre-consensus layer. This creates a structural dependency on an off-chain system that is not fully verifiable, not protocol-enforced, and not subject to the same guarantees as on-chain governance.

Although this approach improves efficiency and reduces noise, it also shifts meaningful influence to a layer outside the protocol, where participation levels, stake distribution among active voters, and process visibility may materially affect outcomes. In practice, this means that proposals may be filtered before reaching formal on-chain governance, raising important questions around legitimacy, transparency, and long-term decentralisation.

Additionally, the role of Intersect within this framework remains broad and somewhat ambiguously defined. Intersect operates as framework facilitator, process coordinator, and potential administrator, which introduces a degree of role concentration that warrants clearer boundaries, accountability mechanisms, and dispute resolution pathways.

We also note potential unintended consequences in areas such as the minimum proposal threshold and Net Change Limit (NCL)-driven allocation logic, which may favour larger proposals and introduce distortions in prioritisation outcomes.

Our abstention should not be interpreted as opposition to the direction of travel. On the contrary, we believe this framework represents a strong and necessary evolution in Cardano’s governance maturity. However, as this process may become the de facto standard for treasury coordination, it is essential that its core mechanisms—particularly those influencing proposal selection—meet the highest standards of decentralisation, transparency, and verifiability.

We encourage future iterations of this framework to:

• Reduce reliance on off-chain gating mechanisms for critical decision pathways
• Strengthen on-chain traceability and verifiability across all stages
• Further decentralise coordination roles and clarify Intersect’s responsibilities
• Explore more inclusive pathways for smaller-scale proposals
• Continue refining accountability and oversight structures

RCADA remains supportive of continued iteration and will actively contribute to improving governance processes that strengthen Cardano’s long-term sustainability and decentralisation.

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RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/"

RCADA recognizes the importance of establishing a Net Change Limit (NCL) as a core fiscal guardrail within Cardano’s treasury governance framework. Clear limits on treasury outflows help ensure responsible stewardship of community resources and contribute to the long-term sustainability and stability of the ecosystem.

The proposed limit of 300 million ADA is broadly consistent with the reported treasury inflows of approximately 306.9 million ADA during 2025, suggesting an intent to align potential treasury spending with historical inflow levels. From a fiscal discipline perspective, this approach is reasonable and reflects an effort to maintain a sustainable balance between ecosystem investment and treasury preservation.

However, RCADA is choosing to abstain from this proposal due to concerns regarding the quality and completeness of the governance submission. Compared to earlier Net Change Limit proposals, this action provides limited supporting analysis, references, or methodological transparency regarding the treasury inflow calculations used to justify the proposed limit. Governance parameters that may influence more than a year of potential treasury spending should ideally be supported by clearer data sources, methodology, and contextual analysis so that DReps and the broader community can fully evaluate the proposal.

RCADA also notes that recent market conditions — including a significant decline in ADA’s price since the previous NCL discussions — introduce additional uncertainty regarding the real-world purchasing power of treasury allocations. While the NCL represents a ceiling rather than a spending commitment, macroeconomic conditions reinforce the importance of careful treasury governance and well-supported proposals when setting fiscal parameters of this scale.

RCADA’s abstention should therefore not be interpreted as opposition to the concept of a 300 million ADA Net Change Limit, but rather as a signal that governance actions of this significance should meet a higher standard of documentation and analytical support.

RCADA encourages future proposals establishing treasury governance parameters to include clearer supporting data, references, and treasury modeling to strengthen transparency and community confidence in the decision-making process.

For these reasons, RCADA votes ABSTAIN.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here: "https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/.

RCADA votes **ABSTAIN **on this Treasury Withdrawal.

At the time of voting, the action is currently deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Committee due to non-compliance with Article II, Section 6(1) of the enacted Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution v2.4, which requires an immutable URL and corresponding hash for supporting documentation. The primary rationale metadata references a standard GitHub URL rather than an immutable permalink, and under v2.4 this requirement is mandatory.

Given its present constitutional status, RCADA abstains on procedural grounds.

Should the proposal be resubmitted in full alignment with v2.4 requirements, it may be reassessed on its merits.

RCADA votes YES on Part 1 of this protocol parameter update.

This proposal reflects disciplined governance design: it is incremental, benchmark-supported, testnet-validated, and compliant with the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution v2.4 and its Guardrails.

The increase to Plutus memory limits improves developer flexibility without modifying cost model parameters, monetary policy, or treasury funds. It remains within defined per-epoch adjustment bounds and preserves structural block composition.

I support measured scaling where evidence demonstrates sufficient performance headroom. At the same time, I recognize that parameter increases create forward path dependency once developers build against higher ceilings.

For that reason, this vote applies strictly to Part 1. It does not constitute pre-approval of Part 2. Any subsequent increase must be evaluated independently following observable mainnet performance data, including propagation metrics and real-world usage patterns.

Incremental scaling must remain evidence-driven and constitutionally grounded.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
"https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/"

This governance action proposes naming Cardano Protocol Version 11 the “van Rossem Hard Fork” in memory of Max van Rossem, a respected contributor to the Cardano community and its governance foundations.

RCADA recognises that naming hard forks has long served as a symbolic tradition within Cardano, reflecting milestones in the protocol’s evolution while honouring individuals whose contributions have had lasting impact. This proposal continues that tradition and has received broad support across the DRep community.

Max van Rossem made meaningful contributions to Cardano’s governance development, including constitutional discussions, participation in the Constitutional Convention, and sustained community representation through the Dutch DRep Collective. He also contributed to the election process of the first fully community-elected Constitutional Committee and supported governance coordination efforts that will continue to shape the network’s future.

From a governance perspective, this action is intentionally narrow in scope, constitutionally neutral, and non-precedent-expanding beyond the continuation of an established naming practice. It does not affect protocol rules, treasury access, or governance authority, and therefore does not raise concerns related to guardrails, fiscal discipline, or decentralisation resilience.

RCADA also acknowledges the broader community sentiment expressed by many DReps in support of this proposal and supports the naming in that spirit. For these reasons, RCADA votes YES.

RCADA's full vote assessment can be found here:
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/

This Info action proposes setting a Net Change Limit (NCL) of 350 million ADA for Epochs 613–713 (approximately 16 months and 20 days).RCADA recognises that a Net Change Limit remains a constitutionally required guardrail under the current treasury withdrawal framework and that the proposer has attempted to provide a clear fiscal boundary following the recent enactment of Constitution v2.4. We also note the pragmatic attempt to adjust the previous NCL benchmark for the decline in ADA price and the longer period.However, RCADA must apply the same high-bar lens we have used for other significant governance actions: changes that affect treasury access and spending discipline must be both technically accurate and accompanied by demonstrable improvements in process quality, accountability, and decentralisation resilience.Three issues prevent us from endorsing this proposal as submitted:Constitutional inaccuracy
The “Application and Compliance” section still references compliance with “Article IV of the Cardano Constitution” for treasury withdrawal guardrails. Following the ratification of Constitution v2.4 (effective January 24, 2026), Article IV now addresses the Amendment Process. The treasury/budget provisions have moved. This is not a minor typo; it is a material error in a document that is intended to become a binding fiscal constraint. Submitting live governance actions with outdated constitutional references undermines the very legitimacy the Constitution is meant to protect.
Lessons from the previous NCL cycle
Our voting record shows we voted NO on the 300M and 350M proposals for the first NCL and YES only on the 200M proposal. Those concerns proved justified: the NCL was repeatedly treated as a spending target rather than a cap. We witnessed a frantic end-of-cycle rush in December 2025, a 70M ADA budget withdrawal approved in record time (≈20% of the entire NCL), and even an extension of the NCL itself to accommodate poor timing by key entities. RCADA believes we have not yet had sufficient time or structured review to analyse the real impact and lessons of that cycle before simply rolling into the next one.
Process and timing
The recent removal of the Budget Info Action requirement has already narrowed early-stage deliberation. Submitting a new NCL proposal that still contains constitutional inaccuracies, without prior community coordination or a pause for post-cycle analysis, risks repeating the same governance-speed-run pattern we saw at the end of 2025.

RCADA has therefore chosen to ABSTAIN.This abstention is not a rejection of the need for a Net Change Limit, nor is it opposition to fiscal discipline. It is a constructive signal that any proposal that sets spending boundaries for the treasury must first be constitutionally accurate, grounded in a clear-eyed review of the previous cycle, and developed with the coordination that the Cardano community has repeatedly asked for.We would welcome a revised version that corrects the Article IV reference, includes a short post-cycle impact summary, and demonstrates that the 350M figure has been stress-tested against realistic spending scenarios under the new constitutional rules. Such a revision would materially increase our level of support.RCADA remains committed to thoughtful, disciplined treasury governance and to protecting the long-term resilience of the Cardano treasury.

RCADA recognises the substantial effort, technical competence, and ecosystem commitment demonstrated in this proposal. The DeltaDeFi team has a strong open-source track record, and their work contributes valuable learnings toward validating Hydra in real-world DeFi contexts. The inclusion of KPI baselining and public dashboards reflects a commendable push toward accountability that we would like to see more broadly across governance proposals.

However, for a ₳1,500,000 budget signal, RCADA believes treasury funding should be reserved primarily for non-exclusive, ecosystem-wide infrastructure whose benefits accrue regardless of which individual application succeeds. As currently structured, this proposal remains predominantly focused on the productionization, operation, and competitiveness of a single branded trading venue, with ecosystem benefits that are indirect and dependent on that venue’s adoption.

We do not view this as a rejection of Hydra-based trading infrastructure, nor of the DeltaDeFi team’s work. Rather, it reflects a view that the funding lane and scope are misaligned. Product-specific scaling, liquidity acquisition, and venue operations are more appropriately addressed through Project Catalyst or private capital, while the treasury should prioritise reusable components, benchmarks, tooling, and observability infrastructure that the entire ecosystem can build upon.

For these reasons, RCADA votes NO on this Budget Info Action, while encouraging the proposers to consider a restructured, narrower request focused explicitly on neutral Hydra infrastructure and public-goods deliverables. Such a revision would materially change our level of support in future governance actions.

This governance action proposes adoption of Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution v2.4. RCADA recognises that v2.4 contains several material improvements that strengthen governance integrity and treasury discipline, including clearer definitions and terminology, stronger audit and accountability safeguards applied uniformly across treasury withdrawals, and an important requirement that proposal documents referenced by URL remain immutable after submission. These changes address real weaknesses identified during early governance operation and represent a net technical improvement over prior versions.

However, RCADA is applying a high-bar amendment lens for constitutional changes, under which improvements in legal clarity must be accompanied by demonstrable gains in decentralization resilience, accountability, and governance quality in practice. Under this standard, a constitutional update must do more than streamline text or remove ambiguity; it must strengthen Cardano’s ability to resist capture, coordinate governance effectively, and maintain legitimacy over time.

While v2.4 improves enforceability, it also removes multiple non-binding “expectations” and “encouragement” clauses, as well as constitutional requirements related to governance conduct. RCADA is not convinced that removing these normative guardrails—without a clearly defined replacement path—strengthens Cardano’s long-term governance posture. Constitutions do not only define enforceable minimums; they also help shape institutional behaviour and shared expectations that support decentralization in practice. Eliminating these elements risks narrowing the Constitution to a purely transactional document, reducing its role in reinforcing governance culture and accountability norms.

RCADA is also cautious about the removal of the Budget Info Action mechanism. Consolidating requirements into Treasury Withdrawal actions may simplify governance flow, but it also reduces early-stage deliberation and strategic signalling. This change shifts more governance pressure onto high-stakes execution votes, increasing cognitive load on DReps and potentially reducing the quality of deliberation, particularly in the absence of explicit pacing, coordination, or replacement mechanisms anchored in the Constitution itself.

Additionally, RCADA notes that parts of the proposal rationale emphasise pragmatic reversions intended to secure broader stakeholder alignment. While broad alignment is often necessary for constitutional adoption, amendments should ultimately be justified by their objective contribution to governance quality rather than their likelihood of passage. This reinforces RCADA’s view that v2.4, while improved, should not be treated as final, and that future constitutional refinement should more directly address decentralization safeguards, amendment processes, and institutional accountability expectations.

While v2.4 represents a net technical improvement over prior versions, RCADA does not consider the remaining governance risks to be marginal or merely cosmetic at the constitutional level.

For these reasons, RCADA is choosing to Abstain.

This abstention is not opposition to governance maturation, nor a rejection of the improvements included in v2.4. Rather, it is a constructive signal that constitutional amendments should meet a higher standard than cleaner text alone: they should demonstrably strengthen decentralization, accountability, and long-term resilience, and where non-binding guardrails are removed, clear and socially anchored replacement mechanisms should be defined.

RCADA would welcome follow-up actions or supporting standards that clarify acceptable immutability practices for proposal documents, define a clear and community-legitimised constitutional amendment process, and ensure that the removal of normative clauses does not inadvertently weaken capture resistance or governance legitimacy over time.

This Info action reflects a substantial, good-faith effort by the Intersect Product Committee to articulate a shared long-term Vision, Mission, Strategy framework, and KPIs for Cardano under full on-chain governance. The process followed was extensive, consultative, and well documented, involving broad community participation across workshops, surveys, SPO engagement, and dialogue with founding entities. From a governance-process perspective, this work meets a high standard of legitimacy and transparency.

RCADA agrees with the underlying motivation of the proposal. As Cardano transitions from protocol delivery into decentralized treasury governance, the absence of a commonly articulated strategic reference point increases the risk of fragmented decision-making, inconsistent resource allocation, and reactive governance driven by short-term narratives. The intent to provide DReps with shared language and long-term framing is reasonable and directionally aligned with the maturation of Cardano’s governance model.

However, RCADA does not believe this proposal, in its current form, is sufficiently actionable or decision-constraining to warrant an affirmative endorsement.

While the Vision and Mission statements are broadly aligned with Cardano’s historical identity, they remain highly abstract and do not meaningfully narrow governance decision space or establish explicit trade-offs. The five strategic pillars describe important domains of activity, but they are additive rather than prioritised, offering limited guidance on what should be de-prioritised or declined when resources, attention, or governance capacity are constrained. As such, the framework functions primarily as a consensus narrative rather than a governance tool.

RCADA places particular emphasis on decentralization as an active governance risk, not a background assumption. Although the strategy acknowledges decentralization and includes quantitative indicators—such as DRep voting power distribution, multi-client requirements, and a target of more than 500 independent stake pools—these thresholds are aspirational rather than disciplinary. From an SPO perspective, the “500 independent pools” target is especially concerning: it is a very low bar relative to Cardano’s current and historical decentralization levels and risks becoming a rhetorical shield for stake concentration rather than a safeguard against it. Large multi-pool operators could readily meet such a threshold while further marginalizing small, independent single-pool operators, using the KPI itself to justify outcomes that weaken decentralization in practice.

More broadly, the proposed KPIs, while more concrete than purely narrative statements, remain weakly coupled to governance decisions. They are useful as diagnostic or communicative indicators, but they do not clearly constrain treasury approvals, trigger corrective action, or define failure conditions that would materially discipline power or spending. This creates a risk that alignment with the strategy can be asserted rhetorically without demonstrable accountability or causality.

RCADA also notes that much of the strategic detail and iteration occurs off-chain as a living document. While this is appropriate for exploratory strategy development, it reinforces that this Info action functions primarily as acknowledgment rather than as a governance instrument. Endorsing such a framework on-chain without stronger decision hooks risks establishing soft precedent, where strategic narratives gain informal authority without corresponding mechanisms for challenge, revision, or enforcement by DReps.

For these reasons, RCADA has chosen to abstain on this action.

This abstention should not be interpreted as opposition to the intent, the process, or the value of strategic reflection. Rather, it signals that while this work represents a constructive and serious starting point, it does not yet meet the threshold of governance usefulness, decentralization protection, and decision discipline required for a supportive “Yes” vote. RCADA would welcome future iterations or follow-up actions that narrow scope, embed decentralization more explicitly, raise the bar on decentralization metrics, and more clearly link strategy and KPIs to concrete governance and treasury decisions.

RCADA remains committed to thoughtful, disciplined governance and to supporting approaches that strengthen Cardano’s long-term resilience, decentralization, and credibility. This abstention is intended as a constructive signal toward that end.
https://brolloks.github.io/rcada-drep-votes/votes/2026/cardano-2030-vision-mission-strategy-framework-and-kpis.html

RCADA previously voted YES on the Update Committee action that added Cardano Curia to the Constitutional Committee. That decision was grounded in a clear and principled position: a sitting committee member had retired, the Committee had fallen below the committeeMinSize parameter, and the snap election facilitated by Intersect produced a single, auditable outcome. Although RCADA supported a different candidate during that election, we upheld the result because safeguarding process integrity and restoring constitutional functionality takes precedence over individual electoral preferences.

Importantly, in that prior rationale RCADA also explicitly acknowledged a broader structural issue: a Constitutional Committee operating without buffer seats is fragile, and a single resignation should not temporarily impair the system’s ability to ratify governance actions. We stated then that governance resilience should be addressed through appropriate, constitutionally compliant channels, such as a deliberate review of committee sizing or the committeeMinSize parameter, rather than through ad-hoc or reactive measures.

It is against that same framework that we assess the present action.

This proposal is constitutionally valid and well-intentioned. It does not negate the Curia outcome, does not remove or replace any member, and correctly respects ledger ordering. RCADA also recognises the genuine governance risk it seeks to mitigate and does not question the qualifications or good faith of the proposed candidate.

However, this action introduces a different governance dynamic than the one RCADA previously supported. Rather than executing a single, final election outcome to restore minimum functionality, it expands committee membership in response to the narrowness of an earlier off-chain result. While understandable, this mechanism risks establishing a precedent where close electoral margins become grounds for post-hoc committee expansion. Over time, such a pattern could weaken election finality and blur the boundary between outcome execution and outcome revision.

RCADA’s abstention should therefore not be interpreted as opposition to the candidate, nor as a retreat from our prior vote. On the contrary, it reflects consistency with that earlier position. We supported the Curia action because it faithfully enacted a necessary and final outcome. We abstain here because we believe long-term committee resilience should be addressed through neutral, system-level design choices, not candidate-specific corrective actions tied to past elections.

For these reasons, RCADA abstains — affirming constitutional validity and governance intent, while signaling the need for a more principled, forward-looking approach to Constitutional Committee resilience.

RCADA participated in the off-chain snap election facilitated by Intersect using the Ekklesia platform. Although we supported a different candidate during the voting period, we recognize that the audited, stake-weighted process produced a clear result. Upholding the legitimacy of Cardano’s governance framework means respecting the outcome of a constitutionally compliant election, even when the elected candidate was not the one we personally voted for. The role of a DRep is to safeguard process integrity and ensure continuity of governance, not to pursue preferred electoral outcomes.

The retirement of the Cardano Atlantic Council reduced the Constitutional Committee below the committeeMinSize parameter defined in Cardano’s governance system. This placed the Committee in a state where it could not ratify governance actions requiring its approval, limiting Cardano’s on-chain governance to only a subset of actions. Restoring the Committee to its minimum operational size is therefore a constitutional and functional requirement. This Update Committee action correctly executes the next step of the election process by placing the highest-supported candidate—Cardano Curia—into the vacated seat with the appropriate, staggered term.

We reviewed the metadata, audit files, and Merkle-verifiable results provided. These demonstrate that the off-chain election followed the principles outlined in Article VII of the Cardano Constitution: accessibility, transparency, verifiability, and community stewardship. The presence of independently audited results strengthens the legitimacy of the process and ensures that this governance action faithfully reflects the will of participating DReps.

While this action resolves the immediate issue, RCADA acknowledges the broader risk highlighted by several community members: a Constitutional Committee operating without buffer seats is structurally fragile. A single resignation should not temporarily disable the governance system’s ability to ratify actions. We encourage future consideration—through the appropriate governance channels—of either increasing the Committee size modestly or revisiting the committeeMinSize parameter in a constitutionally compliant manner. Such resilience measures would help ensure that Cardano governance remains robust in the face of unexpected changes.

Given the urgent need to restore full governance functionality, the clear community-validated election outcome, and the constitutional correctness of the process, RCADA votes YES on this governance action.

I am choosing to **Abstain **on this Budget Info Action. The proposal addresses real and long-standing gaps in Cardano’s infrastructure, including tier-one stablecoin integrations, institutional custody, pricing oracles, analytics platforms, and cross-chain interoperability. These are important and overdue components of a mature DeFi ecosystem, and I appreciate the coordinated effort by the Cardano Foundation, IOG, EMURGO, Midnight Foundation, and Intersect to bring forward a unified plan.

However, while I recognize the strategic value of these integrations and support the objective at a high level, the governance structure and information available at this stage leave significant uncertainties. The request is exceptionally large, consuming nearly the entire remaining Net-Change Limit, and is framed as a broad discretionary budget rather than a set of well-defined, independently scoped integrations. Vendor confidentiality and NDAs limit the ability to assess cost efficiency, partner selection, commercial risk, or the mechanism by which downstream obligations will be managed. These constraints are understandable given the nature of commercial negotiations, but they restrict the transparency and evaluative clarity I normally require for a budget of this magnitude.

The Steering Committee composed of the ecosystem’s founding entities is a strong signal of alignment, yet it also centralizes decision-making at a scale that warrants careful scrutiny. While milestones, audits, and bi-annual reporting provide oversight at the structural level, they do not fully resolve questions around precedence, risk distribution, and the longer-term implications of authorizing such a substantial, opaque, multi-domain funding pool.

In short, I support the intention behind this proposal and acknowledge the urgency of improving Cardano’s foundational integrations. At the same time, I do not believe I have enough visibility into the scope, commercial structure, or risk profile of the underlying integrations to confidently vote Yes, nor do the concerns rise to the level of justifying a No given the ecosystem importance and community alignment.

I am voting Yes on this governance action. This proposal seeks to reimburse the deposit lost during one of the very first on-chain governance submissions following the Chang hard fork, where a Cardano node bug allowed an unregistered stake key to submit an Info Action but prevented the deposit from being recoverable. The loss was not due to user error or misuse; it resulted directly from a protocol-side issue during the earliest days of governance. The community has long acknowledged that this should be corrected once Treasury mechanisms allowed for it.

Now that the tooling and processes are in place, this action provides a straightforward and fair remedy. The requested amount is modest relative to the Treasury, fully constitutional, and immediately auditable. Compensating for the protocol-caused loss reinforces trust in the governance system and honors the individuals who participated at a time when risks were higher and the tooling was still maturing. Addressing such outliers strengthens the legitimacy of governance rather than setting a broad precedent.

Although the additional 3,000 ADA for lost staking rewards and opportunity cost is somewhat subjective, it is reasonable in context and does not materially alter the low-risk nature of the request. The total amount remains small, and the intent is clearly to make the proposer whole rather than to profit.

As a general governance best practice, and without questioning the proposer’s integrity, I believe it would be beneficial for the proposer to sign a simple verification transaction from the original affected address. This would provide on-chain confirmation of ownership and serve as a clean procedural pattern if similar edge cases ever occur in the future. However, this is a suggestion for administrative clarity, not a precondition for supporting the action.

Given the unique circumstances, the clear fairness of the remedy, and the need to maintain confidence in the governance process, RCADA votes Yes.

I am voting No on this Treasury Withdrawal. While I appreciate the significant work undertaken by the Snek Foundation to advance Cardano-native assets and acknowledge the improvements made since the earlier Budget Info Action, the fundamental issues I raised during that prior vote have not been resolved. This action now seeks to move ₳5,000,000 directly out of the Treasury, and at this stage the remaining structural risks are too substantial for me to support.

My concern is not with the ambition of the initiative. I respect the effort, the achievements to date, and the desire to create a sustainable model for ecosystem loans. I would welcome a mature loan framework for Cardano that future projects can rely on. However, this agreement does not yet establish the standards needed to create a healthy precedent for treasury lending.

The loan contract confirms that the facility is entirely unsecured, enforceable only through off-chain legal processes in Cayman Islands courts, with no collateral, no on-chain protections, and no meaningful repayment requirements for the first three years. A formal repayment schedule will only be created after that period. The documents also describe the arrangement as a “high-trust facility” with no guarantee of repayment, and allow for potential partial or full write-off through a future governance action. These design choices present a materially elevated risk profile for public funds.

Cost structures remain intentionally undisclosed, drawdown occurs in a single tranche, and repayment ultimately depends on the long-term performance of a private token foundation whose revenues are inherently volatile. None of this aligns with the level of financial discipline or risk management I would expect when moving millions of ADA from the Treasury, nor does it provide a replicable template for other projects seeking loans in the future.

My decision is therefore not a judgment against Snek or its team, nor a rejection of ecosystem loan models as a concept. It is simply a recognition that the current loan structure does not sufficiently mitigate risk, does not address the core concerns I raised previously, and does not yet represent the kind of precedent Cardano should set for treasury-backed lending. I sincerely hope the project succeeds, but I must remain consistent, objective, and cautious when evaluating Treasury withdrawals.

For these reasons, RCADA votes No.

I am choosing to Abstain on this Info Action. While I understand the strategic interest in securing the .ada and .cardano top-level domains, and I recognise that this proposal is constitutionally sound and funded entirely by the Cardano Foundation, there are important areas of uncertainty that prevent me from endorsing it at this stage.

Although gTLD ownership may offer long-term benefits to Cardano’s digital identity and public presence, the proposal leaves several key aspects of future governance undefined. The Cardano Foundation positions itself as the long-term operator of these domains, yet the framework for how this control will be exercised has not been clearly established. Issues such as policy-making authority, pricing, dispute resolution, and integration with on-chain identity systems remain open-ended. The proposed Community Advisory Group is mentioned, but its role, selection process, and actual influence are unspecified.

These gaps may seem minor today because this action does not enact anything directly. However, the implications for Cardano’s future identity infrastructure are significant. Without clarity around stewardship, accountability, and the boundaries of centralized authority, I am not comfortable offering an explicit endorsement. My abstention reflects the need for a more detailed governance structure before moving from community sentiment-gathering to implementation.

This decision should not be read as opposition to the idea itself. Rather, it signals caution. The action is framed as a simple request for community support, but I sense that its downstream impact could be more substantial than the proposal communicates. Until there is more transparency around how these domains will be governed and how the community’s interests will be protected, I cannot vote Yes with confidence.

For these reasons, RCADA Abstains, and encourages clearer governance definitions and oversight mechanisms before future steps are taken.

I am choosing to ****abstain ****on this Info action for Constitutional Committee compensation.

First, I want to be clear on principle: I fully support the idea that Constitutional Committee (CC) members can and should be compensated for their work. The Cardano Constitution explicitly anticipates compensation for governance roles, including CC members, and the reality of the workload is well known to anyone who has followed governance closely. Reviewing governance actions for constitutional alignment, drafting rationales, and operating across time zones is demanding work. It is neither sustainable nor fair to expect long-term, high-quality service to be carried out indefinitely on a purely voluntary basis.

My abstention is therefore not a rejection of CC compensation, but a response to the way this particular budget has been framed and introduced.

There are three broad concerns that prevent me from voting Yes:

Lack of clear justification for the requested amount.
The proposal asks for up to 200,000 ₳ per seat, but the on-chain metadata does not explain how this number was derived. There is no visible model of expected hours, rate assumptions, or comparison with similar public-service or governance roles. Without a transparent breakdown of workload and costing, it is very difficult for DReps or the wider community to judge whether the amount is proportionate.

Missing accountability and performance framework.
Several DReps have rightly pointed out that a durable compensation model should sit on top of a clear, public framework that describes the CC’s duties, minimum participation standards, and conditions for non-payment. This proposal relies primarily on smart-contract mechanics and peer oversight at the contract level, but does not yet define what “good performance” looks like from a constitutional governance perspective. I believe a CC code of conduct / SLA-style document should either precede or accompany a budget like this.

Fairness, precedent and ecosystem coherence.
CC work is important, but so is the work done by DReps and SPOs. Approving a relatively large, CC-only compensation package—especially for a committee that accepted its term without an explicit compensation promise—risks setting an uneven precedent. Many in the community quite reasonably ask why CC compensation is being addressed in isolation instead of as part of a broader, coordinated framework for rewarding all governance roles. I share that concern and would prefer to see this discussion evolve into a more comprehensive, ecosystem-wide approach.

I do want to acknowledge the positive aspects of the design. Using per-member smart contracts with vesting, clawback, and peer-controlled pause mechanisms is a strong architectural choice. Unused funds being swept back to the Treasury after expiry aligns with good stewardship of common resources. In many ways, the technical and contractual structure is ahead of the political and economic framing.

However, the combination of an under-explained amount, the absence of a clear accountability framework, and the limited prior socialisation of this proposal means I cannot actively endorse it in its current form. A No vote from me would risk being interpreted as opposition to CC compensation itself, which is not my position. Instead, I am abstaining to signal conditional support for the principle while urging a revised, more mature proposal.

I would be open to supporting a future submission that:

Provides a transparent cost model for the requested amounts, including estimated workload per governance action type and per epoch;

Is paired with a public-facing CC responsibilities and accountability framework, including minimum participation expectations and conditions under which compensation may be withheld;

Is developed alongside, or at least clearly situated within, a broader conversation about compensation for other governance roles such as DReps; and

Is better socialised with the community before submission, so that key details live in the proposal itself rather than scattered across social media threads.

This proposal has started an important conversation about how we sustain our governance institutions. My abstention is intended as a constructive contribution to that conversation: yes to CC compensation in principle, but not yet, and not quite like this.

RCADA votes YES on this Treasury Withdrawal, implementing the previously approved ₳1.15 M GovTool budget.

We recognize GovTool as essential public-good infrastructure that underpins DRep registration, proposal submission, and voting across Cardano’s governance pillars. The proposal satisfies Article IV of the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution through:
– clear administrative designation under Intersect,
– milestone-based disbursement via audited smart-contract framework,
– third-party oversight and on-chain auditability, and
– proper non-delegation of custodial funds.

We note, however, community concerns regarding budget proportionality and long-term sustainability. To reflect fiscal prudence and reinforce transparency, RCADA expects:

Publication of milestone hashes and acceptance criteria before each disbursement;

Quarterly progress and expenditure reporting through the public dashboard;

Delivery of cost-optimization and self-hosting capabilities to reduce future funding requirements; and

Documentation of conflict-of-interest management within the oversight committee.

This vote affirms support for open, verifiable governance tooling while echoing the community’s call for efficiency and accountability.

I am abstaining on the Cardano 2030 Vision & Strategy Info Action.

This document articulates an ambitious and largely well-aligned framework for Cardano’s development toward 2030. It touches on many areas RCADA supports — ecosystem sustainability, developer education, SPO diversification, enterprise adoption, and measurable KPIs. The intent is positive: to provide a unified strategic compass for Cardano’s post-Voltaire evolution.

However, this particular submission carries procedural and authorship ambiguities. While the content originates from the Product Committee, this on-chain action was submitted independently by a community member rather than the Committee itself. Product Committee members have since clarified that this version was not formally sanctioned. For governance legitimacy, strategy-level documents should reflect verified authorship, internal sign-off, and transparent public consultation prior to appearing on-chain.

Substantively, while the document presents a structured and cohesive outline, much of its content consolidates initiatives already underway rather than introducing forward-looking strategies suited for the 2030 horizon. It offers limited discussion of emerging priorities such as advanced privacy technologies, quantum resilience, AI-integrated governance, or frameworks for regional governance participation. These omissions make the document more of a state-of-progress summary than a true roadmap for the next era of the ecosystem.

The inclusion of transaction-volume KPIs (e.g., a target of 250,000 daily transactions) further reflects a narrow measure of success. Transaction count is a poor proxy for adoption; it can be inflated, cyclical, and disconnected from real-world impact. More meaningful indicators would measure user engagement, active governance participation, decentralized infrastructure health, and real-world integrations. These would better capture the Constitution’s intent for accountable, participatory growth.

My abstention should therefore not be read as opposition to the Cardano 2030 vision itself. I view this proposal as a valuable starting point that deserves refinement and formalization. It demonstrates an ecosystem moving toward strategic cohesion, but governance excellence requires both clarity of process and depth of foresight.

I encourage the Product Committee and Intersect to resubmit this initiative officially — with validated authorship, broader community involvement, and a roadmap that extends beyond current programs into truly future-oriented innovation.

This vote follows RCADA’s established principle of constructive abstention: supporting intent and direction, while signaling the need for greater procedural rigor, constitutional alignment, and visionary scope in Cardano’s long-term strategy.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approval threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not opposition. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

The ₳5M SNEK loan proposal is ambitious, innovative and represents a first-of-its-kind request from the Treasury. I want to acknowledge up front that the Snek Foundation has already demonstrated commitment and execution capacity, having self-funded over $4.5M for previous listings and achieving the first Tier-1 exchange placements for any Cardano-native token. The proposal is also structured as a loan rather than a grant, which I consider a healthy evolution in our funding model. In principle, I support repayable mechanisms that encourage accountability and replenish the Treasury over time.

That said, my decision to abstain is based on the same criteria I have applied in past votes: constitutional alignment, fiscal sustainability, process rigor and precedent setting. Constitutionally, the proposal does meet the requirements of Article IV: it names an administrator (Intersect), sets aside an allocation for audits and falls well within the Net Change Limit. These are important strengths. But constitutionality alone is not enough; the structure of the loan must also be financially sound and enforceable if it is to become a precedent for future proposals.

On that front, this proposal falls short. Repayment is enforced only through an off-chain contract administered by Intersect, with no on-chain mechanisms or collateral to safeguard Treasury funds. In the event of default, our recourse is unclear and dependent on legal processes outside the governance system. Moreover, the 2.44% APR mirrors baseline staking returns, which underprices the risk of an unsecured loan and does not reflect the higher risk profile the Treasury assumes here. In past assessments I have raised concerns about proposals that rely on “trust us” assurances rather than enforceable safeguards and I see the same weakness at play now.

There is also the question of precedent. By approving this as-is, we would effectively establish that unsecured, low-interest loans are an acceptable use of Treasury funds. That standard could open the door to many similar requests without adequate protections, which runs counter to the principles of sustainability and fairness outlined in the Constitution. This is especially important given that SNEK’s benefits, while potentially significant for visibility and liquidity, remain speculative in terms of measurable on-chain impact — something we have also critiqued in previous large budget actions where KPIs and accountability were insufficiently defined.

For these reasons, I am abstaining. This abstention should not be interpreted as opposition to the idea of Treasury loans, which I believe could become a powerful and sustainable tool if designed with proper guardrails. What I want to see in future proposals are higher interest rates that account for credit risk, clearer on-chain enforcement or collateral mechanisms and milestone-based disbursements tied to independently auditable results. These refinements would strengthen accountability, reduce downside exposure for the Treasury and ensure that the first loan sets a standard worthy of repetition.

In short, I support the concept and recognize the effort and potential of this initiative, but I cannot vote Yes on the current structure. Abstaining allows me to register both conditional support and a call for stronger governance design going forward.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approval threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not opposition. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to** abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline**. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

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VOTING UPDATE

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Vote: ✅ YES
Constitutional and Procedural Basis:
This governance action fulfills the mandate of Article VII, Section 2 of the Cardano Constitution, requiring the renewal of the Constitutional Committee (CC) through elections with staggered terms.
The interim committee was always intended to be temporary; its term ends at epoch 580. Failure to confirm the new CC would create a governance vacuum where no body exists to ratify actions, risking paralysis of Cardano’s on-chain decision-making.
The election was audited, transparent and verifiable, with staggered term lengths (73 and 146 epochs) ensuring continuity and avoiding a full turnover of membership at once.

Ecosystem Alignment:
This transition is not only constitutionally required but also symbolic of Cardano’s governance maturation. Founding entities (Cardano Foundation, IOG, EMURGO, Intersect) stepping back from their interim stewardship in favor of an elected committee demonstrates decentralization in action.
The incoming committee includes both continuity members (e.g., Cardano Atlantic & Eastern Cardano Councils) and new representatives, striking a balance of experience and renewal.

Concerns and Minority Perspectives:
RCADA recognizes the “No Confidence” votes (17.8%) and critiques raised by some community members:
Low DRep turnout in the election process.
Concentration of influence in a small number of DReps.
Concerns that not all ADA holders could directly exercise their constitutional rights to propose or select CC members, as outlined in Article III, Section 3.
While these concerns are valid and must inform future improvements to governance participation, RCADA does not believe they invalidate this specific election or its outcomes. The election process followed constitutional guardrails, was independently audited, and represents the only viable mechanism to ensure continuity at this stage.

Conclusion:
RCADA votes YES because:
It is constitutionally mandated and prevents a governance gap.
It enhances decentralization by moving beyond the interim period.
It strengthens the legitimacy of Cardano governance by operationalizing the first fully elected Constitutional Committee.
At the same time, RCADA urges the community, Intersect and governance tooling providers to address inclusivity and participation barriers so that future elections better reflect the full voice of ADA holders.

RCADA is voting **YES **on this proposal because it meets constitutional requirements for treasury withdrawals by providing a legal contract, milestone-based delivery and third-party oversight. Its purpose — improving Cardano’s presence at major exhibitions — is a legitimate and valuable activity within the scope of ecosystem growth.

While RCADA’s primary funding priorities are often focused on upstream infrastructure, developer tools and dApp enablement, we recognize that strategic marketing can be a critical growth driver. This proposal aims to close the visibility gap for Cardano projects in global markets, giving them affordable access to events where investors, developers and users make decisions. By partially subsidizing participation costs, it enables smaller projects to gain exposure they might otherwise miss.

The proposer, operating under Supplyoneers FZ-LLC but widely known in the community as Discover Cardano, has a track record of sustained, self-funded marketing efforts. They have hosted educational spaces such as Cardano Over Coffee, created onboarding materials for new users, organized IRL events and represented Cardano at industry exhibitions even without treasury support. Their past initiatives — including giving multiple projects stage presence at a Dubai TradFi innovation event — demonstrate a commitment to filling marketing gaps left by founding entities, making them a credible operator for this initiative.

There are centralization concerns around Intersect’s role in administering these funds, but Intersect remains an open membership organization where any community member can participate in governance and contribute to operational oversight. The vendor’s shared-cost approach also helps mitigate risk by ensuring projects have their own stake in the effort rather than relying entirely on treasury funds.

The vendor’s decision to reduce the request from ₳1.11M to ₳889,500 shows responsiveness to community concerns. However, we expect to see clear and publicly verifiable participant selection criteria, post-event reporting that measures tangible outcomes such as leads, partnerships, or developer sign-ups and coordination with other treasury-funded marketing to avoid duplication of effort.

The sustainability of this initiative will depend on how effectively it equips participating projects with the skills and knowledge to maximize exhibition ROI without requiring repeated subsidies. The educational model at the core of this proposal gives it potential long-term value, but those benefits will only materialize if results and lessons learned are documented and shared openly with the community.

For these reasons, RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal on the condition that it delivers transparent impact metrics, inclusive access for participants and effective coordination within the broader marketing strategy. If these conditions are not met, it will directly influence RCADA’s stance on similar proposals in the future.

RCADA is voting **NO **on GA51, the ₳3,126,000 treasury withdrawal for Flowdesk’s exchange listing and market making program, because while we recognize the value of improving liquidity and exchange access, the proposal fails to provide sufficient verifiable detail and does not align with our funding priorities, thus does not address core ecosystem priorities and carries structural risks we have flagged in prior related votes.

The governance action lacks clearly published, objective selection criteria for which Cardano Native Tokens (CNTs) will benefit, measurable ROI metrics and transparent delivery timelines. This creates a risk of centralized discretion and decision-making dependency on a single vendor, Flowdesk and on Intersect’s administrative control, rather than fostering a competitive and open-access market-making environment.
I believe treasury funding should first address foundational ecosystem needs — such as scaling infrastructure, improving developer experience and supporting dApp growth — which would naturally generate high-quality tokens and organic demand for exchange listings.

This proposal prioritizes a downstream outcome over the upstream growth that drives long-term value. Furthermore, RCADA previously abstained on the ₳275M Intersect-administered budget Info Action due to concerns about bundling and Intersect’s dual role in budget facilitation and execution; GA51 inherits those same structural issues despite being more narrowly scoped.

The proposal also fails to present a clear sustainability plan for maintaining liquidity and exchange access after this one-time funding, creating a risk of repeated treasury withdrawals for similar services. For these reasons — lack of verifiable detail, misaligned priorities, risk of centralization, consistency with our prior stance and absence of a long-term model — RCADA cannot support GA51.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to** abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline**. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to** abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline**. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to** abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline**. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to** abstain at this time while reserving the option to review and update this vote prior to the voting deadline**. This approach allows RCADA to allocate focus where immediate evaluation is most impactful, particularly on proposals that are close to threshold or raise significant procedural or constitutional concerns. If this proposal reaches the approv-al threshold prior to our review, the abstention will stand as a neutral signal of deferral, not op-position. Should further analysis be warranted, RCADA will update this vote accordingly.

RCADA has chosen to **abstain **from voting on this proposal, as it has already met the required threshold for approval at the time of review. In alignment with our governance methodology, RCADA prioritizes focused attention on undecided or contentious actions where our evaluation can meaningfully contribute to the outcome. This abstention should not be interpreted as a position for or against the proposal, but rather a reflection of strategic resource allocation and respect for community consensus already reached.

RCADA has reviewed the governance Info action proposing a six-month development and infrastructure budget of 380,000 ADA to support ongoing work by Tempo.Vote. After applying our methodology — which considers constitutional alignment, financial clarity, procedural integrity, historical context and community precedent — I have chosen to **abstain **from this vote.

Firstly, RCADA commends the work Tempo.Vote has delivered so far. I actively use their platform to cast on-chain votes and value their efforts to improve accessibility, especially for mobile and wallet-based governance. Their technical setup — running a full Cardano node and independent indexer — supports decentralization and aligns well with the principles outlined in the Cardano Constitution.

That said, RCADA applies consistent expectations when proposals indicate future treasury withdrawals or tool development budgets. While this Info action itself has no immediate on-chain effect, it signals intent for public funding and must be evaluated accordingly.

The proposal outlines cost estimates — 200k ADA for infrastructure and 180k ADA for development — but lacks deeper financial detail. There is no milestone-based roadmap, no cost model and no mechanism described for performance monitoring or budget oversight. Additionally, the administrative responsibility is delegated to Selfdriven, a foundation that promotes self-organizing systems and educational tools. While their mission aligns with Cardano’s values, their specific role in managing this budget remains undefined. From RCADA’s perspective, proposals touching the treasury must include clear accountability structures for any fund administrator, including terms of oversight, reporting cadence and risk mitigation.

Historically, RCADA has supported similar initiatives — such as the GovTool Info Action — when they demonstrated greater transparency, coordination and defined governance responsibilities. Approving this action without such clarity risks setting a precedent where future treasury-related Info actions are submitted without sufficient due diligence.

It’s also notable that the Constitutional Committee is currently split on this action. While Info actions cannot be blocked by the committee, this division (43% support at time of writing) reflects community-level concerns that warrant consideration.

In conclusion, while I support the spirit of this initiative and Tempo.Vote’s role in improving governance UX, I must abstain from supporting this Info action in its current form. RCADA encourages the team to resubmit a revised proposal with:
• a granular breakdown of costs and deliverables,
• a milestone-linked timeline,
• and a clearly articulated administrative and audit process for Selfdriven or any entity overseeing treasury funds.

Such a revision would likely earn my support and reinforce the values of responsible, transparent and community-driven treasury governance.

RCADA is abstaining from voting Yes or No on this Info Action, while signaling general support for the continuation of GovTool as a cornerstone of Cardano’s decentralized governance. This decision is made in the spirit of constructive feedback, intended to encourage improvements before a follow-up Treasury Withdrawal proposal is submitted.
GovTool plays a vital role in enabling open, non-custodial and inclusive participation in on-chain governance. Its development to date has been largely community-led and the proposal’s updated modular budget structure, combined with working group feedback mechanisms, is a step in the right direction. The value provided—both through its interface and API infrastructure—is real and has been critical in onboarding new DReps and participants.

That said, I remain concerned about aspects of the proposal’s execution plan. The Level 2 incentives remain too vague in their allocation criteria, lacking specificity around expected outcomes or eligibility. The milestone-based funding disbursements could benefit from stronger definitions of deliverables and while the proposal references smart contract safeguards, it does not make clear how unused funds will be transparently returned. I also remain cautious about the current governance structure of GovTool, which—though community-led in principle—relies heavily on a small, tightly coordinated group of builders. If this is to scale as public infrastructure, decentralizing its stewardship must become a priority.

Importantly, the current DRep approval rate is now over 44%, which is encouraging and suggests growing confidence in the proposal. My abstention is not opposition—it is a constructive request for clarity. With stronger articulation of milestone criteria, incentive logic and guardrails, I would be prepared to vote Yes on a follow-up Treasury Withdrawal.

RCADA Rationale 02.08.2025 - Update:

I would like to thank the GovTool proposers for thoughtfully addressing the concerns raised in my previous rationale. Their clarifications regarding the Level 2 incentives—particularly the use of bounty-based platforms like Andamio for open-source contributions—and their commitment to define clearer milestone-based disbursements ahead of any Treasury Withdrawal proposal are encouraging signs of a responsive governance process.
I also acknowledge their clear intent to decentralize development and scale community participation and I recognize the current modular architecture as a strong foundation for long-term resilience.

In light of these clarifications, I am updating my vote to a Conditional Yes, in support of the value GovTool brings to the ecosystem and its importance as public digital infrastructure. However, my continued support for any Treasury Withdrawal proposal remains contingent on follow-through: specifically, the inclusion of measurable deliverables, transparent fund allocation and a clearer roadmap addressing long-term financial sustainability and a strategy for reducing ongoing reliance on Treasury funding. It will be important that GovTool does not become a permanent funding dependency without cost controls or alternatives for long-term maintenance.

I offer this vote as a signal of cautious optimism and constructive collaboration.

Side-note for proposers:
I’d like to recommend that future iterations of this proposal or its roadmap include a structured campaign to address the ongoing issue of low governance participation across the Cardano community.
While GovTool is a vital infrastructure layer, its impact is ultimately limited unless we grow the number of ADA holders actively participating—through delegation, proposal review, and voting.
I encourage the proposers and Intersect to incorporate a community engagement and onboarding strategy within the funding scope or support it as a parallel initiative, possibly via Level 2 incentives.
Addressing this gap will improve representation and strengthen the legitimacy of on-chain decisions.

RCADA supports this treasury withdrawal as a continuation of the Amaru Node Development 2025 budget we voted YES on earlier this year. We see this proposal not just as a funding action, but as a critical milestone in Cardano’s progression toward resilient, decentralized infrastructure. The Amaru team’s goal of building a Rust-based, modular block-producing node addresses a long-standing centralization risk: dependency on a single node implementation. Their technical plan and delivery track record gives me confidence in the project’s potential impact.

This proposal also marks the first true treasury disbursement under a community-approved budget. The use of smart contracts to manage funds—with multisig permissions, expiration constraints and CIP-100 metadata—demonstrates strong execution maturity. While the final smart contract audit is pending, I acknowledge the presence of an already-audited fallback contract to maintain operational integrity.

I have reviewed the on-chain parameters and confirmed the proposal meets constitutional requirements, including Articles IV.1 to IV.5 and current Net Change Limit constraints. Peer DReps overwhelmingly support this proposal and I agree with many who highlighted its clarity, technical soundness and symbolic importance: a capable, independent developer group funded by the Cardano community itself.

RCADA previously flagged a need for clearer project milestones and reporting metrics and I continue to encourage the Amaru team to lead on that front. Treasury-funded work must be auditable—not only by specialists but by the broader community.

That said, this proposal honors a pre-approved plan, strengthens the ecosystem’s decentralization and sets a strong precedent for future governance funding. RCADA believes treasury withdrawals must meet a high bar of justification, transparency and constitutional alignment. This proposal does that. RCADA votes **YES **and will continue monitor execution in alignment with the values of accountable governance.

This was a very difficult decision to make, but I have chosen to abstain from this Budget Info Action. This proposal is undeniably ambitious and represents a tremendous effort by Intersect and the broader community to coordinate funding for 39 initiatives that support the Cardano 2025 Vision and Roadmap — a proposal I previously voted in favor of. I also recognize that at the time of voting, most DReps appear to be leaning toward approval, suggesting a clear mandate to proceed. My abstention should therefore not be mistaken as opposition to progress, but rather as a principled response to the way this proposal has been structured and processed.

I genuinely support many of the individual projects listed — including the IOE Core Development Plan and the Catalyst 2025 proposal — and I want to see them succeed. They are well-aligned with Cardano’s strategic goals, include detailed deliverables and in many cases incorporate smart contract oversight and milestone-based disbursements. The overarching budget proposal itself adheres to Article IV of the Constitution, sets clear temporal scope (73 epochs), identifies an Administrator (Intersect) and does not authorize immediate spending — each Treasury Withdrawal still requires its own governance action.

However, the all-or-nothing bundling of 39 proposals into a single vote is a fundamental limitation that prevents me from supporting or opposing individual initiatives on their own merits. This format forces DReps to overlook important distinctions between project scopes, budgets and execution risks. Furthermore, Intersect’s dual role — both as the intake facilitator and appointed Administrator — from the information currently available lacks sufficient definition of its vetting procedures, dispute mechanisms and long-term accountability. While I respect Intersect’s contributions, this ambiguity raises valid governance concerns.

The proposal also relies heavily on off-chain temperature checks via Ekklesia, which, although anchored on-chain via a hash, remain unverifiable in terms of voter identity and weight. As we evolve our governance systems, more transparency and traceability must be built directly into the on-chain process. Additionally, the 275M ADA requested consumes nearly the entire 350M Net Change Limit currently in effect — leaving limited fiscal agility for emergent or late-year proposals.

In short, my abstention reflects conditional support for the broader vision but urges a higher standard for governance design. Going forward, I would like to see proposals of this nature handled with more granularity, modular voting options, clearly defined administrator roles, and verifiable participation mechanisms. These enhancements would empower DReps to make more informed decisions and strengthen the legitimacy of governance outcomes across the ecosystem.

I am choosing to **abstain **from voting on this proposal, not out of opposition to the individual initiatives it includes—many of which I support—but due to concerns around the structure, process and constitutional clarity of the proposal as a whole. While I recognise the community support for specific sub-proposals such as Midgard, zkFold, and Dolos, the decision to package them into a single Governance Action introduces governance ambiguity and limits my ability to vote accurately on each initiative’s merits. More concerning is the lack of explicit administrative confirmation from all included projects, such as Starstream, which raises legitimate constitutional questions—something reflected in the Cardano Foundation’s “No” vote and IOG’s assessment of unconstitutionality.

Moreover, this proposal arises amidst overlapping budget Governance Actions, which, while well-intentioned, are contributing to confusion and procedural fatigue among DReps and the wider community. I appreciate the proposers’ attempt to correct earlier threshold misapplications in the budgeting process, but I am not convinced this bundling and resubmission fully addresses those concerns without introducing new ones.

Casting a “Yes” would endorse a flawed procedural model; casting a “No” risks sending a signal of rejection to community-led initiatives that deserve support and funding. Neither outcome reflects my position accurately. Therefore, I am abstaining from this vote to signal the need for future budget proposals to be more procedurally sound, clearly administered and unbundled where possible, allowing for more precise and principled decision-making in line with Cardano’s constitutional standards.

I am voting **No **on the proposal to set a 300 million ADA Net Change Limit (NCL) for Epochs 563 to 635. While the intent to provide continuity for treasury spending into 2026 is reasonable, this proposal fails to address several foundational concerns I've raised in previous votes and rationales.

First, this proposal overrides a previously supported 200 million ADA NCL—one I voted for—without a clear justification or explanation of how overlapping NCLs are reconciled. The lack of a structured fiscal framework remains a key issue. I continue to believe that Cardano would benefit from defining a loosely coordinated fiscal year to align treasury budgeting, project timelines and NCL enactments. While this need not be rigid, it would enhance transparency, predictability, and stewardship of treasury resources.

Moreover, this proposal sets the new NCL to take effect immediately after the info action expires, which feels rushed. It suggests a queue of budget proposals ready to flood the governance process, eager to tap into the treasury. That sense of urgency, absent clear prioritization or safeguards, undermines the principle of sustainable and equitable resource allocation—especially when we know the Treasury cannot fund all the proposals that will come forward.

I’m also uneasy with the proposal’s use of **projected **treasury inflows as its benchmark. Treasury governance should be grounded in conservative, **realized **inflows from the prior fiscal period IMO, not optimistic forward-looking estimates that may not materialize. Spending based on future projections increases the risk of over-allocation and funding gaps, especially if treasury income slows due to market or protocol-level variables.

Finally, while the proposal meets constitutional requirements procedurally, it still lacks the modeling rigor, phased allocation strategies, or contingency safeguards that would make such an NCL both practical and responsible.
For these reasons, I cannot support this proposal in its current form and will vote No.

I am voting No on the proposal for a DeFi Liquidity Budget due to a critical procedural flaw: the hash values of the submitted proposal and the linked content do not match. This hash mismatch breaks the integrity of the proposal process and violates the governance standards established to ensure accountability and verifiability on-chain. The Constitutional Committee has already deemed the action unconstitutional, and the proposer has acknowledged the issue, stating their intention to resubmit the proposal once this one expires. Given this context, the decision to vote No is straightforward and procedural, not a judgment on the merits of the proposal itself.

I am voting **Yes **on the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Budget proposal for Amaru Node Development 2025. I believe this initiative represents a strategically important step toward strengthening Cardano’s decentralization and network resilience. Introducing a second block-producing node written in Rust addresses a critical concern around single-node dependency and improves system redundancy, interoperability and overall security. The project’s emphasis on modular architecture and industry-standard observability will also support a better operational experience for SPOs and infrastructure contributors.

I have confidence in the team behind this proposal. The members of PRAGMA, including TxPipe, Sundae Labs, Blink Labs, and others, have demonstrated a consistent commitment to Cardano’s growth and have delivered meaningfully on past initiatives. Their leadership in developing Amaru is reassuring and lends credibility to the projected outcomes.

The budget request of ₳1.5M, which covers the second half of 2025, appears reasonable and well justified. At approximately ₳750K USD equivalent for 6 FTEs, the per-FTE cost falls well within industry norms. I also appreciate the transparency in breaking out previously Catalyst-funded components, ensuring there is no overlap in funding.

That said, my support is not without caveats. First, the smart contract framework proposed for fund administration is still incomplete. While I recognize the intention to finalize and audit it before the first disbursement, its current state introduces execution risk. Second, I believe the project would benefit from clearer, quantifiable KPIs or milestones that allow the community to objectively assess progress. Finally, as one of the first budget-oriented Info Actions under Voltaire, this proposal sets an important and excellent precedent. Future actions should ensure even greater transparency, early community input, and enhanced reporting frameworks.

Despite these reservations, I find the proposal’s alignment with Cardano’s constitutional values and its potential long-term impact compelling. I am casting a Yes vote and will monitor future developments closely, particularly the implementation of the smart contract and progress reporting. I look forward to seeing this project contribute meaningfully to the robustness and decentralization of the Cardano network.

After reviewing the proposal and associated commentary, I am voting YES on the governance action to establish a 200M ADA Net Change Limit (NCL) for the remainder of 2025.

This proposal reflects a meaningful improvement over previous attempts. It avoids retroactive application, proposes a conservative cap below projected inflows, and adheres to the constitutional framework. It enables Cardano’s first budgeting process while maintaining a cautious approach to treasury access.
In my previous rationale, I emphasized the need for clarity, prudence, and phased implementation. While definitional gaps around “Net Change Limit” remain, I believe the risk of inaction now outweighs the risk of approving a well-scoped, time-bounded cap.

This NCL allows the community to begin operationalizing governance and observing real-world impacts without overexposing the treasury. With future adjustments possible, and continued emphasis on transparency and accountability, RCADA supports this proposal.

After reviewing the rationale, related governance metadata, community commentary and constitutional implications, I am voting No on this action.
Let me start by saying that I appreciate the intent behind this proposal. It takes a more conservative approach than the previous 350 million ADA proposal and aligns the 2025 limit with estimated treasury inflows. On the surface, this is a positive move toward preserving the treasury’s long-term sustainability. However, several key issues prevent me from supporting the proposal in its current form.
First, the proposal sets a full-year limit despite being introduced in mid-March, with the vote running through April. By the time any withdrawals are assessed against it, we will be nearly halfway into the year. A 300 million ADA ceiling applied retroactively or over a compressed timeframe creates the risk of rushed spending or poor allocation simply to “use” the cap, which undermines responsible treasury governance.
Second, the proposal also sets a limit for 2026, which I believe is premature. While I understand the desire for predictability, locking in a fixed cap a full year in advance reduces our ability to adapt to evolving conditions. Even if the 250 million number is reasonable, we should be making that decision with the benefit of 2025’s learnings, not in advance of them.
Third—and most significantly—this proposal continues to suffer from lack of definitional clarity. As raised by fellow DRep Martin Lang and others, the term “Net Change Limit” is not yet precisely defined in practice. Is it the total sum of treasury withdrawals? Is it the delta between starting and ending treasury balances? Does it account for inflows from protocol rewards? And when exactly does the “year” begin in operational terms? Without resolving these foundational questions, we risk implementing a rule that is both unenforceable and open to interpretation—which weakens governance, not strengthens it.
Additionally, I share the constitutional concerns raised by the Cardano Atlantic Council. The proposal sets its own ratification threshold at 67%, while the Constitution clearly specifies that NCL proposals require only a majority (>50%) of active voting stake. Regardless of intention, changing procedural thresholds outside of a formal amendment process risks undermining the constitutional order we've just established. Governance must lead by example in following its own rules.
To summarize, while I support the direction of this proposal in terms of fiscal restraint and decentralization, I cannot support its current form. It asks for too much commitment too soon, lacks clarity in key areas and doesn’t comply with the constitutional threshold process. I would welcome a revised submission that:
1_Applies a prorated or adjusted cap for the remainder of 2025,
2_Defers the 2026 limit for a future vote,
3_Clearly defines what the NCL is—with accounting specifics and operational boundaries,
4_Aligns fully with constitutional voting requirements.
Voltaire’s success depends on precision, transparency and adherence to shared rules. I believe Cardano can lead in decentralized treasury governance, but we must get these foundational elements right.

I’ve taken the time to review the proposal to set the 2025 Net Change Limit at 350 million ADA. While I support the broader principle of placing structured limits on treasury withdrawals, I’ve decided to vote No on this specific proposal.
One key reason is the timing. We’re already in April, a full quarter into the year. Setting a fixed annual limit this late in the cycle raises concerns about how the remaining allocation would be managed and monitored over a shortened period. A more adaptive or phased approach would allow for better oversight and responsiveness.
Another important factor is the amount itself. Historical on-chain data indicates that Cardano’s treasury inflows for 2025 are projected to be around 300 million ADA. Approving a limit above that number risks depleting treasury reserves instead of maintaining a balanced flow. As someone who advocates for long-term sustainability—both economic and ecological—I see this as a red flag.
Additionally, may I suggest exploring the option of a dynamic method of setting the Net Change Limit, such as tying it to a percentage of actual treasury inflows, rather than hardcoding an absolute ADA figure. This approach could offer greater flexibility and better reflect the performance of the ecosystem over time. It would also help smooth out volatility and adapt automatically to growth or contraction in network usage.
Economic impact is also worth considering. Treasury withdrawals inevitably lead to spending and spending often involves converting ADA into fiat. Without proper emission pacing or vesting structures, these withdrawals could create sell pressure that affects the health of the ADA market, especially in the absence of safeguards to manage outflows more gradually.
Lastly, I share the concerns voiced by several community members regarding the process itself. The rationale for selecting 350 million ADA hasn’t been made sufficiently clear. For a decision this impactful, I believe we owe it to the community to back proposals with transparent data and modeling assumptions, whilst leaving room for further discussion.
For all these reasons, I cannot support the 350 million ADA cap as it stands. I encourage the submission of a revised proposal—ideally one that is better aligned with inflow-based calculations, includes more transparency around how the figure is derived and reflects the values of fiscal responsibility, inclusivity and decentralization that we aspire to uphold.

RCADA supports the Info Action regarding the 2025 Cardano Product Roadmap. The roadmap outlines a solid direction for improving Cardano’s scalability, performance and infrastructure through initiatives like Leios, Mithril enhancements, modular node architecture and Actively Validated Services. These are meaningful developments for the health and resilience of the network.
As a member of the Climate Neutral Cardano Alliance, I encourage the Product Committee to collaborate with CNC to model the energy and hardware implications of protocol changes like parallelization early in the process. This would support informed decisions and reinforce Cardano’s commitment to sustainability.
Clearer delivery milestones—particularly for Leios—would help the ecosystem plan more effectively and track progress. I also recommend that governance-linked documents use immutable references such as IPFS, rather than mutable URLs, to ensure long-term integrity and transparency.
The roadmap’s inclusion of a zero-knowledge bridge to Bitcoin is promising. This initiative, connected to the BitcoinOS project, has the potential to link Cardano’s smart contract platform with Bitcoin’s liquidity in a secure and decentralized way. I recommend naming BitcoinOS directly in the roadmap to better communicate its relevance and technical rationale.
Finally, I support the introduction of governance-enabled parameters like a minimum margin and adjustments to the a0 pledge-benefit curve. These changes would help rebalance incentives and create a healthier, more decentralized staking environment. Giving this work more visibility in the roadmap would demonstrate a commitment to supporting smaller, yet highly active, stake pools.
Overall, I support the direction of the roadmap and look forward to seeing it evolve with continued community input.

RCADA acknowledges the intent behind this governance action and recognizes that reducing the treasury cut from 20% to 10% aligns with the goal of increasing staking rewards and improving incentives for delegators. The ability to fine-tune Cardano’s economic parameters through governance is a valuable mechanism that ensures the ecosystem remains adaptive and responsive to network needs. Furthermore, this proposal carries a reasonably low technical risk and can be reverted if needed, which provides confidence that any unintended consequences could be addressed through future governance actions.

That being said, I feel that a step-down approach, such as reducing the treasury cut to 15% before considering a further reduction to 10%, could have provided a more measured transition. Such an approach would have allowed for real-time observation of its effects on staking participation, treasury sustainability, etc., while still achieving the intended benefits. A phased reduction would have helped mitigate concerns regarding treasury underfunding, particularly in prolonged bear market conditions where ADA’s price might not appreciate as expected.

Additionally, while this proposal remains within the constitutional framework, there is concern that approving a governance action of this scale without sufficient empirical data and structured economic analysis sets a precedent for procedural erosion. Governance actions that significantly impact the ecosystem should be supported by more robust data, including treasury sustainability projections, staking behaviour analysis and transaction volume trends. While the rationale provided outlines theoretical justifications, the lack of a clear quantitative impact assessment introduces an element of speculation. Even if the speculation in this case turns out to be correct, I believe that establishing rigorous governance processes is crucial for maintaining long-term confidence in on-chain decision-making.

In my opinion, the responsibility of gathering supporting evidence and conducting detailed economic analysis should not fall on DReps. Governance proposals, especially those that impact Cardano’s economic parameters, should come with comprehensive data and modelling to help the community and network participants to make informed decisions.

I’m generally in favour of the proposal, but given the above-mentioned considerations, RCADA is abstaining from this vote. This decision reflects support for the broader goal of optimizing economic parameters while also emphasizing the need for structured governance processes.
RCADA encourages future governance actions to prioritize data-driven decision-making and to consider phased implementation strategies when making impactful economic adjustments.

As a Delegated Representative (DRep), I have carefully reviewed the Delegate-Endorsed Cardano Constitution, its development process and its implications for governance. After considerable reflection, I am voting in favour of adopting this framework to replace the Interim Constitution. While I support this important step forward, I recognise that governance must remain dynamic and like any constitution, this document will require refinement as the ecosystem matures.

The ratification of this governance model marks progress over the Interim Constitution, which was never put to a community-wide vote. This version has emerged through a more open and participatory process, shaped by global workshops and broad community engagement, of which I attended myself in person as well. The introduction of a three-body governance system—comprising DReps, Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) and the Constitutional Committee—establishes safeguards aimed at preserving decentralisation and accountability. Additionally, its approval would allow for future governance actions, including constitutional amendments, restructuring of the Constitutional Committee and motions of no confidence.

While this framework represents a significant advancement, certain areas require further attention to ensure its long-term effectiveness. A large portion of the voting stake remains unengaged, posing a risk to meaningful representation. Increasing education and outreach efforts will be key to strengthening participation. Additionally, clearer guidelines for the election and replacement of the Constitutional Committee are needed to prevent unintended concentration of authority. Treasury management also requires more structured safeguards to promote sustainable financial policies.

Despite these challenges, this Constitution provides a solid foundation upon which to build. Effective governance is an iterative process and this framework enables the community to refine and improve decision-making structures over time. The inclusion of amendment mechanisms ensures that governance remains adaptable and responsive to the evolving needs of the ecosystem. I remain optimistic that by adopting this Constitution would be a step toward a more decentralised and transparent governance model.

For these reasons, I am voting in favour of its adoption. While there is still work to be done, this marks an important milestone in Cardano’s governance journey. The responsibility now falls on all of us to engage, refine and uphold the core principles that originally drew us into the space and lead us to become the strongest community in the ecosystem!