Update Constitutional Committee 2026
Discussed in the Governance Review for epochs 650 to 652.
On-chain changes
- New threshold67%
- AddedkeyHash 0af99047…2ad361 term to epoch 799
- AddedPhil_uplckeyHash 13493790…46f4d4 term to epoch 799
- AddedCardano CuriascriptHash 16feefc2…c12542 term to epoch 799
- AddedscriptHash 7c34e024…b1f5b4 term to epoch 799
- RemovedCardano Atlantic CouncilscriptHash 349e55f8…815558
- RemovedCardano Japan CouncilscriptHash 9cc3f387…ad41e2
- RemovedKtorZkeyHash dc0d6ef4…f85f2a
Abstract
This governance action updates the four Constitutional Committee seats whose terms expire at the end of Epoch 653 by appointing the candidates elected through the 2026 Constitutional Committee election. The successful candidates will serve new terms ending at Epoch 799, in accordance with the current committeeMaxTermLength protocol parameter.
Motivation & rationale
The Constitutional Committee must be renewed as members' terms expire to maintain a functioning committee at or above the minimum size required by the committeeMinSize protocol parameter. This action replaces the four seats expiring at Epoch 653 with the candidates elected by the community through the 2026 Constitutional Committee election, facilitated by Intersect. The election included candidate registration, a public voting period, an independent audit of the results, and publication of the audited outcome before submission of this governance action.
In accordance with the Cardano constitution, Article III, Section 3 (2), Intersect has facilitated a public “process… for [the] election of members of the CC consistent with the requirements of the Guardrails”, to update the positions due to expire at Epoch 653. The four candidates who received the most votes, by voting power, are elected. In this round, all four elected members are seated for the same term of 146 epochs (approximately two years), which is the current limit of the committeeMaxTermLength protocol parameter.
This governance action officially endorses the results of that electoral process and updates the Constitutional Committee accordingly. No changes are made to the quorum, which will remain ⅔.
Note on the expiration epoch and enactment timing.
An Update Committee governance action sets each new member's expiration epoch as a fixed on-chain value. A member's actual term is the difference between that expiration epoch and the epoch in which the action is enacted, and the ledger requires this term to be no greater than the committeeMaxTermLength protocol parameter, which is currently 146 epochs.
Because this action sets the term to that maximum of 146 epochs, it cannot be enacted before the final epoch of its lifetime, even if all voting thresholds are met earlier. This is counterintuitive but follows directly from the expiration epoch being a fixed end-date: since the term is measured backwards from that fixed epoch, enacting the action earlier makes each member start sooner while still ending on the same epoch - that is, a longer term, not a shorter one. A term longer than 146 epochs exceeds committeeMaxTermLength and is rejected by the ledger, so the only epoch at which the term is a valid 146 (or less) is the last one. With a 6-epoch action lifetime, the action can only be enacted at Epoch 653, giving each member a term that expires at Epoch 799. Ratification will therefore occur in the action's final epoch regardless of how quickly thresholds are reached.
It should be noted - whilst this quirk is a feature of the ledger rules - it does not impact vote timing. DReps, SPOs and the Constitutional Committee should continue to vote as they normally would.
Re-election and the term limit.
committeeMaxTermLength caps each individual term, measured from the epoch of enactment. It does not cap cumulative or continuous service across terms. Cardano Curia and Philip DiSarro (Phil_uplc) are being re-elected, but each receives a fresh maximum-length term measured from this action's enactment; the time already served on their current seats (which expire at Epoch 653) does not count toward the 146-epoch limit. Their new term begins where the current one ends, so this is a seamless renewal rather than an extension stacked on top of the existing term.
The outgoing members whose terms expire at Epoch 653, alongside with the retired member whose term would otherwise expire on the same epoch, removed by this action, are:
| Member | Cold credential | Cold Credential (CIP-129 Bech32) | Expiration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cardano Japan Council | script-hash-9cc3f387623f45dae6a68b7096b0c2e403d8601a82dc40221ead41e2 | cc_cold1zwwv8uu8vgl5tkhx569hp94sctjq8krqr2pdcspzr6k5rcsxw2az4 | 653 |
| Phil_uplc | key-hash-13493790d9b03483a1e1e684ea4faf1ee48a58f402574e7f2246f4d4 | cc_cold1zgf5jdusmxcrfqapu8ngf6j04u0wfzjc7sp9wnnlyfr0f4q68as9w | 653 |
| KtorZ | key-hash-dc0d6ef49590eb6880a50a00adde17596e6d76f7159572fa1ff85f2a | cc_cold1ztwq6mh5jkgwk6yq559qptw7zavkumtk7u2e2uh6rlu972slkt0rz | 653 |
| Cardano Curia | script-hash-16feefc225e06f75a3c917f4aa50acffde7631ea0355721f2ac12542 | cc_cold1zvt0am7zyhsx7adreytlf2js4nlaua33agp42usl9tqj2ssazjmn9 | 653 |
| Cardano Atlantic Council | 349e55f83e9af24813e6cb368df6a80d38951b2a334dfcdf26815558 | cc_cold1zv6fu40c86d0yjqnum9ndr0k4qxn39gm9ge5mlxly6q42kqmjmzyj | 653 |
The incoming members, in no particular order, are:
| Member | Cold credential | Cold Credential (CIP-129 Bech32) | Term | Expiration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marek Mahut | key-hash-0af99047bc90e0d9073467548a19a85089b766e73eb807748a2ad361 | cc_cold1zg90nyz8hjgwpkg8x3n4fzse4pggndmxuultspm53g4dxcgjkqykp | 146 | 799 |
| Phil_uplc | key-hash-13493790d9b03483a1e1e684ea4faf1ee48a58f402574e7f2246f4d4 | cc_cold1zgf5jdusmxcrfqapu8ngf6j04u0wfzjc7sp9wnnlyfr0f4q68as9w | 146 | 799 |
| Leandros BSP | script-hash-7c34e0240b84029e0932f5e8d81af42a63f55de6da31f16e19b1f5b4 | cc_cold1zd7rfcpypwzq98sfxt673kq67s4x8a2aumdrrutwrxcltdq9jkwn2 | 146 | 799 |
| Cardano Curia | script-hash-16feefc225e06f75a3c917f4aa50acffde7631ea0355721f2ac12542 | cc_cold1zvt0am7zyhsx7adreytlf2js4nlaua33agp42usl9tqj2ssazjmn9 | 146 | 799 |
Term = term length in epochs. Expiration = Expiration epoch.
Note. This action changes only the four expiring seats. The remaining three committee members - Eastern Cardano Council, Tingvard, and Ace Alliance, whose terms expire at epoch 726 - are unchanged and are not included in this action.
Committee after enactment:
Marek Mahut, Cardano Curia, Philip DiSarro, Leandros BSP, Eastern Cardano Council, Tingvard and Ace Alliance
Election Results
| # | Candidate | Voting power (ada) | DRep Votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philip DiSarro | 1,979,047,586.427 | 24 |
| 2 | Leandros BSP | 1,964,850,507.458 | 23 |
| 3 | Marek Mahut | 1,370,113,895.267 | 28 |
| 4 | Cardano Curia | 1,288,633,576.302 | 27 |
| 5 | Asia Africa Cardano Coalition | 1,142,561,765.138 | 16 |
| 6 | Bosco Ribeiro | 197,409,335.579 | 10 |
| 7 | Gbiri Oluwaseun | 121,192,048.252 | 3 |
| 8 | NexTrium Global Innovations Ltd | 34,298,868.077 | 4 |
| 9 | Ian Njuguna | 1,324,683.789 | 2 |
| 10 | Meek Owen | 0 | 0 |
Election details
The Constitutional Committee election working group under the Civics Committee designed the election process to be:
- Adhering to the Cardano Constitution: ensuring all procedures were compliant with the foundational rules of the ecosystem.
- Accessible: allowing any ada owner to register as a candidate.
- Transparent and verifiable: building trust through an open process with verifiable, on-chain results.
Four candidates are elected to the Constitutional Committee, each serving a 146-epoch term, replacing the four credentials that expire at Epoch 653. DReps cast stake-weighted votes, approving up to four candidates. The election ran to the following timeline:
- Candidate registration: 8 May 2026 to 21 June 2026
- DRep voting period: 28 June 2026 (9:45 PM UTC) to 23 July 2026 (9:45 PM UTC)
- Voting power snapshot: 23 July 2026, 9:45 PM UTC
- Independent audit of results: 23 to 26 July 2026
- Audited results published: 26 July 2026, 12:00 PM UTC
The results of the DRep vote were independently audited by DQuadrant.
Rationale highlights
Why some of the largest DReps voted for and against, in their own words. About vote rationales
Yoroi DRep votes YES on Update Constitutional Committee 2026. Yoroi recognises that a functioning Constitutional Committee is essential to the continuity of Cardano governance. Position Update: Yoroi previously voted ABSTAIN on this proposal. At that time,...
Yoroi DRep votes YES on Update Constitutional Committee 2026. Yoroi recognises that a functioning Constitutional Committee is essential to the continuity of Cardano governance.
Position Update: Yoroi previously voted ABSTAIN on this proposal. At that time, we chose to withhold our vote while considering the responsibility entrusted to us by our delegators. Following further consideration, Yoroi is changing its vote to YES.
Governance Continuity: The Constitutional Committee must remain operational so that it can continue to carry out its constitutional responsibilities when needed. This proposal renews the seats whose terms are expiring and implements the outcome of the 2026 Constitutional Committee election.
For these reasons, Yoroi supports the proposal and votes YES.
I vote YES on "Update Constitutional Committee 2026". On the incoming members (Cardano Curia, Phil_uplc, Marek Mahut, and Leandros BSP): they are the same candidates I voted for in the CC election, so I have no objection. I support this action as a faithful...
I vote YES on "Update Constitutional Committee 2026".
On the incoming members (Cardano Curia, Phil_uplc, Marek Mahut, and Leandros BSP): they are the same candidates I voted for in the CC election, so I have no objection. I support this action as a faithful enactment of the election results.
On the outgoing members, KtorZ and the Cardano Japan Council: my sincere gratitude for their patience and contribution in continuously carrying a demanding role, unpaid.
「Update Constitutional Committee 2026」にYESを投票します。
新たに就任するメンバー（Cardano Curia・Phil_uplc・Marek Mahut・Leandros BSP）について：私自身がCC選挙で投票した顔ぶれと同じであり、異論はありません。選挙結果をそのまま反映する本アクションを支持します。
任期満了となるKtorZとCardano Japan Councilについて：責任の大きい役割を無償で、継続的に引き受けてくださった忍耐と貢献に、心から感謝します。
Phil is not a professional that should have any constitutional role. He attacks community members, uses racial slurs and has potentially use defamatory language against multiple community members/projects.
BKIND votes No, to stop this action. The election could have given the committee eight voting members and a six-hand constitutional check; the action fixes seven and five, and its abstract never says so. A five-for-five update with the audited candidates has...
BKIND votes No, to stop this action. The election could have given the committee eight voting members and a six-hand constitutional check; the action fixes seven and five, and its abstract never says so. A five-for-five update with the audited candidates has my Yes. I vote to keep power dispersed.
Action: update committee 729daaf2f9f89f...0850#0, Update Constitutional Committee 2026.
What is being decided.
One action does three things: it removes three credentials from the constitutional committee (Cardano Atlantic Council, Cardano Japan Council, KtorZ), it seats four members with terms ending at epoch 799 (Marek Mahut, Philip DiSarro, Leandros BSP, Cardano Curia, the latter two re-elected), and it leaves the approval threshold at two thirds. Five seats expire at the end of epoch 653 and four are refilled, so the committee goes from eight seats to seven. The three members whose terms run to epoch 726 are untouched. (One of the eight current seats has stood vacant by resignation since epoch 597; I return to what that means for the count in section 2.)
I verified the document I am voting on. The blake2b-256 digest of the bytes retrieved from ipfs://bafkreif22553h3reaedrd376hzgkjng6kxnb3o7ycu3j4pzjbcjerv2bce equals the anchor hash recorded on chain, 6014f3e6c052eb1e83ce344bda1ee5262000a83d1d1aa62d63726d91316e6647. The credentials and expiration epochs in the document match the on-chain payload entry by entry. The action's predecessor reference, 4dab331457b61b...b704#0, is indeed the last enacted committee action, enacted at epoch 602; the one committee action submitted in between expired at epoch 607 without ratification. The term arithmetic holds: 799 minus 653 is 146 epochs, exactly committeeMaxTermLength, and the document's explanation of why the action can therefore only be ratified in its final epoch is correct.
I also verified the committee's current voting composition, because the objection below turns on it. The committee holds eight seats today, established by two enacted actions: the committee action enacted at epoch 581 seated seven members, and the committee action enacted at epoch 602 seated an eighth, Cardano Curia. One of those eight, Cardano Atlantic Council (cold credential 349e55f8...), resigned its seat on chain in epoch 597; that is the only committee resignation in the chain's history, recorded 2025-11-26 and cross-checked against a second, independent decode. The seat remains in the committee map but, by committeeAcceptedRatio, a resigned member is excluded from both the numerator and the denominator of every vote. The working committee has therefore been seven voting members since epoch 602, and six for the interval between the resignation and Curia's seating. This fact governs how I state my objection, and I state it against the fact rather than around it.
- What I support.
The chamber must be renewed or it stops working: committeeMinSize stands at 5, and without this action the committee falls to three members at the end of epoch 653. An election was held, with open candidate registration, a published timeline, and results audited by a third party. Two sitting members were confirmed in their seats and two new members were elected. None of that is my objection, and had this action refilled the seats it retires, it would have had my Yes.
- The objection this vote records.
The action retires five expiring seats and refills four, and the abstract never says so. It speaks of updating "the four Constitutional Committee seats" whose terms expire; in fact five expire, four are refilled, and one seat is left empty. That empty seat is Cardano Atlantic Council's, the member who resigned in epoch 597: the action removes a seat that has been vote-empty since epoch 597 and does not restore it. The reduction of the committee's ratified size from eight seats to seven is visible only by counting the names in two tables, and the abstract does not state it.
Seven seats at a two-thirds threshold is the more concentrated of the two chambers this election could have produced. Seated five for five, with the audited fifth candidate alongside these four, the committee would have held eight voting members, and approval of a constitutional change, a treasury withdrawal or a hard fork would have taken six hands, for the first time in the committee's history. As submitted, the action fixes seven voting members and a five-hand check through epoch 799, each seat weighing a seventh instead of an eighth. Choosing the smaller chamber, and choosing it silently, is the objection this vote records.
Two facts have to be stated against overreading that objection, and I state them myself. First, because Cardano Atlantic Council resigned in epoch 597, committeeAcceptedRatio in Ratify.hs lines 143 to 163 has excluded that seat from every count since: a resigned member leaves both numerator and denominator, so the working committee has been seven voting members, and the working bar five of seven, since epoch 602, and six members in the interval before Curia's seating. This action lowers no bar that operates today. Second, the eight-seat committee ratified at epoch 602 already contained the resigned seat, and no committee in the chain's history, the interim committee included, has held more than seven voting members. The eight-member chamber is therefore not a past state this action abolishes; it is the option this election put within reach for the first time, and the action declines it. My objection is exactly that and no more: offered a more dispersed chamber and a less dispersed one, the action fixes the less dispersed, for two years, without saying so.
The eighth seat did not have to stay empty. The committee's seat count was last set by a ratified vote at the committee action enacted in epoch 602, which brought it to eight; the seat Cardano Atlantic Council had resigned in epoch 597 was already vacant within that eight; and the 2026 election was the moment to fill it. The election's fifth candidate, the Asia Africa Cardano Coalition, polled 1,142,561,765 ada of voting power, 146 million ada behind the fourth seat, ready to be seated; I verified the election tally in full, ballot by ballot against the chain, as set out under Sources. Instead the action refills four of five expiring seats and fixes a seven-member committee in place through epoch 799, a term of some two years. The chamber's size was decided by the election working group, off chain, when it opened four seats against five expiries; the choice between eight voting members and seven was never put to the voters of this election, on chain or off. The only ratified parameter vote touching committee size, the change enacted at epoch 643 that lowered committeeMinSize from 7 to 5 (c75bb221...#0), rules itself out as that ballot in its own text: it "does not directly affect the current number of Committee members", nor does it "imply that reducing Constitutional Committee size is desired". It is, by its own description, an operational buffer, not a mandate for a smaller chamber. An earlier proposal of the same change was dropped at epoch 614 without ratification.
My DRep registration states my mandate in one sentence: "I vote to keep power dispersed." An eight-member chamber disperses the constitutional check across more hands than a seven-member one, and this election put both within reach. A Yes on the action that fixes the more concentrated of the two, unannounced and unasked, is not a vote I can cast under that sentence.
- Two questions, one button.
This is the same structure I voted No on at action 154, where a fee-floor cut I opposed was bundled with a memory increase I supported. Here the bundle is renewal, which I support, and reduction, which I oppose. The vote admits no separation: Yes endorses the reduction, No is recorded against the renewal, and abstention, because abstained stake leaves both numerator and denominator, helps the action pass without saying anything at all. No reading of the counting rules produces a vote that says what I mean, so the rationale must carry what the ballot cannot.
The contradiction deserves to be named in full, because every voter on this action faces it: passage fixes the more concentrated of the two reachable chambers, failure halts essential governance for an unbounded time. Whichever way the vote falls, one of the two goes under. That choice was constructed by bundling the two into one action; it is not a law of nature, and a five-for-five update would have dissolved it entirely. My vote answers the half my mandate binds me to.
- What this No is for, and what it costs.
I vote No because I want this action, in this form, not to pass. I am precise about what that means, because the consequence of failure is serious and I do not wish to be misread as dismissing it.
Under the ledger's counting rules a DRep who does not vote counts as No, and a pool that does not vote counts as No unless its reward account delegates to the always-abstain DRep. My stake is therefore counted against this action whether I speak or not; what casting the vote adds is that the opposition is voted rather than silent, on the record and argued, and that other voters can weigh these arguments and join it. Recounted at cast time, 31 August 2026, in epoch 652: the action stands at 66.2% weighted Yes on the DRep side against a threshold of 0.67, and at 39.9% on the SPO side against a threshold of 0.51. Of the stake counted as No on the DRep side, only 12 million ada is a voted No; 1,561 million ada is 233 registered DReps who have not voted, and 150 million ada is the always-no-confidence DRep. On the SPO side, 219 pools holding 4,480 million ada have voted Yes, one pool holding 60 million has voted No, and 6,684 million ada of pool stake has not voted.
If the action fails, the consequence is the one CIP-1694 states: with the committee below its minimum size, "the constitutional committee will be unable to ratify governance actions." Parameter changes, hard forks, treasury withdrawals and constitutional amendments would wait until a new committee action passes, and nothing in the protocol forces that repair or sets its date. I know that price and I vote No with it in view, because the remedy for a failed committee update is not this committee update again: it is a corrected one. Committee actions need no committee approval, so that road stays open even with the chamber below strength, and a replacement that seats five members for five expiring seats, with the audited fifth-placed candidate alongside these four, repairs the committee without shrinking it. The freeze lasts exactly as long as it takes to submit and ratify the version that should have been submitted first.
Sources.
The committee's current composition, the expiring seats, the predecessor action and its expired sibling, the epoch-597 resignation of Cardano Atlantic Council (the only committee resignation in the chain's history), the protocol parameters cited (committeeMinSize 5, committeeMaxTermLength 146, the 0.67 and 0.51 thresholds, the two-thirds committee threshold), and the vote tallies were measured on a cardano-db-sync instance and cross-checked against an independent from-scratch decode of the chain bytes. Both sources return the same current committee, eight seats of which Cardano Atlantic Council's is recorded resigned, and the same single resignation at epoch 597. Both sources also return the same committee actions (seven members seated at epoch 581 in place of the interim committee, one member added at epoch 602, one proposed addition expired unratified at epoch 607) and the same single resignation; the interim committee's seven seats are confirmed by the Conway genesis file itself and by the genesis-derived state in db-sync. Together these give the membership history behind section 2: at no point has the committee held more than seven voting members. The two sources agree, voter by voter, on the cast votes reported in section 4; those counts are the cast-time recount of 31 August 2026, in epoch 652. The sources agree on the weighted SPO tally to the displayed digit. On the DRep side they agree to within rounding, with one classified difference found and explained: one DRep holding 14 thousand ada is recorded as expired in one source and active in the other, an expiry-refresh difference that does not move the percentages. The DRep weights for epoch 652 exist in db-sync only; the same method on both sources at epoch 651 agrees as stated. The committee counting rule is cited from cardano-ledger-conway-1.22.1.0. The committeeMinSize parameter change (7 to 5, enacted epoch 643) and the quotations from its anchor document were verified against the document's on-chain hash. The off-chain election tally I verified in full. All thirty-eight ballots in the published audit bundle were retrieved by content identifier, and each matches its blake2b-256 hash in the bundle's own ledger; the per-candidate head count matches the published result exactly; every ballot carries a valid ed25519 signature over the ballot's own content; on thirty-seven of the thirty-eight, the signing key's blake2b-224 digest is the voting DRep's on-chain credential, the thirty-eighth being a script DRep whose link to its ballot rests on the voting platform's account layer; and summing each voter's on-chain DRep stake at the epoch-645 boundary, the announced snapshot of 23 July 2026, reproduces the proposal's voting-power table to the lovelace for all ten candidates, independently on both chain sources. Two limits remain. Completeness is not provable from the published data: the bundle proves that every published ballot is genuine, not that every cast ballot was published. And the published results file itself states a voting power of zero for every candidate; the quantity that decided the seats is reproducible only by redoing the computation against the chain, as done here. Election dates and the audit attribution are taken from the proposal document.
BKIND votes No, and votes No to stop this action.
The candidates are not the objection and the renewal is not the objection. The objection is that this election could, for the first time in the committee's history, have widened the constitutional check on every parameter change, treasury withdrawal and hard fork to eight voting members and six approving hands, and that this action instead fixes seven members and five hands for a full term (the seat vote-empty by resignation since epoch 597 retired rather than refilled), inside an action whose abstract never mentions it, while an audited fifth candidate stood ready. The ballot offers no way to consent to the renewal without consenting to that choice. Against today's depleted chamber the bar does not move; against the chamber this election put within reach, the check stays narrower by one hand, for two years, by a choice made off chain and put to no ballot. Silence would be counted as No just the same, but silence shows no one why. A committee update that seats five members for five expiring seats, with these candidates, brings the chamber to eight and has my Yes the day it is submitted. I vote to keep power dispersed, and this No is that vote (govActionId 729daaf2f9f89f...0850#0).