PFMS: Bringing Government Scale Adoption to Cardano by Trivolve Tech
Discussed in the Governance Review for epochs 660 to 662.
On-chain changes
- 9,600,000 ₳paid tostake1uyy...0gl7gy6y
Abstract
This proposal requests a milestone gated treasury withdrawal of 9,600,000 ADA to fund the design, development and deployment of the Police Force Management System (PFMS). PFMS is an evidentiary management system for police forces developed by Trivolve Tech, built as an open source evidence layer for policing and justice systems globally, with an Indian state government as its first deployment. PFMS secures and strengthens the chain of evidence by providing verifiable records secured on the Cardano mainnet, so cases no longer collapse over doubts about whether evidence has been altered. In a state where cases currently take an average of more than 7.5 years to resolve, the system is estimated to reduce case resolution times by around 30%. It is also projected to drive approximately 1.5 million transactions annually and growing with wider adoption, demonstrating Cardano’s capacity as a state scale trust layer while directing 70% of verification revenue to the Treasury, 20% to core Cardano library maintenance, and 10% to Trivolve Tech.
Motivation & rationale
This proposal transforms Cardano into an integral component of a state government’s criminal justice system, with the potential to exponentially benefit Cardano adoption.
The Police Force Management System (PFMS), developed by Trivolve Tech, is a state scale infrastructure layer that secures the entire chain of evidence across five distinct stages: Pre-Crime Evidence, Crime Investigation (FMS), Evidence Storage Facility (Malkhana), Prosecution, and the Courts.
The FMS component is already proven on Cardano and ranks among the top ten applications by transaction count on the Cardano transaction leaderboard. Building on this, the initiative is preparing for nationwide scaling across India, with active government support. If funded, this proposal will make PFMS ready for its first deployment, beginning with the Indian state of Telangana. The government will cover transaction costs, maintenance and infrastructure thereafter.
1. Problem Statement
The PFMS addresses a critical vulnerability in the criminal justice chain of evidence, where police records are managed by the same department that creates and uses them to prosecute crimes. In the existing systems, police records pass through five distinct stages: pre-crime gathering, investigation, evidence storage, prosecution, and courtroom presentation. The associated records can be altered, backdated, deleted, or quietly swapped at almost every step. This has created a trust gap in the justice system. Because the records cannot independently prove their own original state or creation time, defense attorneys need only raise a reasonable doubt about potential tampering. When the prosecution cannot adequately disprove these allegations, authentic evidence is frequently declared inadmissible. This problem is not confined to a single state or country, it is a challenge faced by justice systems around the world.
The PFMS tackles this challenge by creating a unified evidence layer that automatically fingerprints and timestamps every police record publicly on the Cardano blockchain. Operating across all five stages of a criminal case, an edge agent hashes raw data from cameras, control room call logs, station diaries, storage facilities, and court filings, binding the record together with the specific device identity and officer credentials on duty. Because only cryptographic fingerprints and no actual file content or personal data are committed to Cardano, no sensitive evidence ever leaves the department. When police records are later used in court, a verification application checks the cryptographic fingerprint against the immutable Cardano record to confirm tamper evident proof of evidence data within moments.
One stage of PFMS has already been deployed successfully on Cardano. With FMS, we have proven the core concept and are currently doing roughly 11,000 mainnet transactions per month or 156,000+ transactions in its lifetime. The PFMS is projected to generate over 1.5 million mainnet transactions in its first year, while returning 70% of verification revenue to the Treasury, 20% to core Cardano library maintenance and 10% to Trivolve Tech.
2. The Components that Make PFMS Work
Every record, at every stage of a case, passes through the same six engines.
Source Engine: CCTV, bodycams, call logs, ANPR readers, station diaries, armouries, the Malkhana and court filings each produce records of a different kind. Each kind of record is defined once, so the system always knows what a record is and what its timestamp means.
Capture Engine: The moment a record is written, a local agent takes its fingerprint (hash), reading from police systems without ever changing them. If a station loses its network, the agent keeps signing and queuing records in numbered order, then sends them to Cardano the moment connectivity returns. PFMS is built as a store and forward resilient system, which means an outage never breaks the chain, and a deleted record leaves a visible gap.
Identity Engine: Every device, such as a camera, recorder, terminal, etc. gets its own digital identity (DID), and every officer gets a credential showing their role, station and validity period. Personal data stays in existing systems (CCTNS, NAFIS and PIS).
Stamping Engine: Each fingerprint is signed together with the device that made the record and the officer on duty, so the record always shows who really made it. Fingerprints are then combined into a summarized string of hashes (a Merkle root), along with a count of the records expected, so silent hardware failures are caught.
Commit Engine: Cardano mainnet smart contracts enforce stage specific rules, such as capture limits, transit handovers, custody of Malkhana exhibits under QR linked tamper evident seals, and versioning of chargesheets and witness statements. The batch hashes are written permanently as an immutable reference.
Verification Engine: When a file or exhibit is requested, the verification layer recalculates its fingerprint and checks it directly against Cardano mainnet records. The prosecution and the defence receive the same evidence trail confirming whether the record matches, what changed if it does not, and whether the officer held valid authorization when it was stamped.
Stage modules: A record can start at any of the five stages in the chain of evidence, and from there it always goes through the six engines and onto Cardano, where it remains available for verification at any time. Each stage then has its own specific modules on top of these shared engines, built for the records that stage produces. In our first deployment, this core will connect around 3,500 facilities, 1.81 million devices, 113,000 personnel and 3.2 million evidence items, all linked into a single chain of evidence.
3. Revenue Streams and Reasoning for a Treasury Withdrawal
This proposal does not request Treasury funding to pay for software that is specific and proprietary to one Indian state. We request funding for building open source PFMS software as an open source evidence layer that runs on Cardano, is a public good and has significant potential use cases that reach beyond India and police work. Treasury funding is what puts the chain of evidence on Cardano mainnet, and keeps the core open for every project that follows. Simultaneously, this mitigates vendor lock-in concerns for the state government, making it a win-win-win for Cardano, the state government and Trivolve Tech.
As the end user of the PFMS implementation for Telangana the state government has committed to paying for the Cardano transaction fees resulting from PFMS usage and operating the off-chain deployment infrastructure.
Trivolve Tech and its subcontractors will not receive any fees or compensation from the state government for the development of the PFMS software. However, Trivolve Tech and its subcontractors will receive maintenance fees from the state government under a separate agreement, covering bug fixes, security updates, and ongoing technical support.
Each additional state that adopts PFMS will contribute its record volume to the Cardano blockchain, expanding on-chain activity and introducing more government institutions to the Cardano ecosystem.
4. Projected Impact on Cardano Mainnet Transaction Count
The projected transaction volume is driven by the continuous flow of operational data generated across the deploying policing and justice ecosystem in Telangana. Station activity, control room operations, traffic enforcement, evidence creation and custody transfers, forensic processes, prosecution records, and court side verification will all generate data that must be fingerprinted, time stamped and anchored on-chain.
The transaction volume is therefore distributed across multiple high frequency workflows that operate every day across the system. Each record, evidence event, movement, verification, and institutional interaction is committed on-chain in batches. This contributes directly to significant usage of Cardano mainnet. The batching is specifically designed to preserve evidence integrity, based on requirements by the state government about how quickly the evidence should be secured on Cardano. Batching intervals are randomised for security reasons rather than fixed, so no source commits on a predictable schedule. The projected transaction count is a result of this process.
Based on the expected volume of data that will be stamped across all of the above workflows, the system is projected to generate more than 1.5 million Cardano mainnet transactions in its first year. We expect this figure to grow with wider adoption. This projection is based on the state's own record volumes for the first year, one stage and one source at a time. It counts only the sources and record types that are part of PFMS at launch. As such, we consider it to be conservative. Based on current average cardano mainnet network activity, we estimate significant transaction growth from this project to be around 18.2%.
Revenue Beyond Transactions
PFMS will offer a paid service for authorized parties (e.g. registered defense lawyers, prosecution etc.) to verify the chain of evidence. This paid verification is an optional, fast tracked service. It will run alongside the regular verification process, not in place of it. Anyone who does not use it can still have records checked through the existing process. We commit the following usage of all revenue generated through this service: 70% will be returned to the Cardano Treasury, 20% to core Cardano library maintenance and 10% to Trivolve Tech. For this paid verification service, we have defined a pricing model. Each verification request carries a charge, starting at a minimum of USD 1.89 for the smallest and simplest requests. Pricing scales with the size, complexity and volume of the dataset being verified, so a single request involving large datasets or extensive case histories can reach several hundred dollars. To keep this fully transparent, every paid request is stamped through the verification layer on cardano mainnet with its fee and price tier, without any case details or requester identity.
5. Cardano 2030 KPI Alignment
The PFMS directly supports the Cardano 2030 KPIs and Strategic Pillars by driving substantial mainnet transaction volume, expanding decentralized identity usage, and generating recurring protocol and verification revenue.
| KPI / Metric | 2030 Target | PFMS Contribution | Alignment & Direct Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Transactions | >27 Million / month | ~127,500 transactions/month in Telangana alone during Year 1 ( 1.53 Million annually) | Adds 18.2% to today's Cardano mainnet monthly transaction baseline. Grows further as more districts, record types, and additional Indian states are onboarded. |
| Annual Protocol Revenue | > 16 Million ADA | 100% of transaction fees paid by the state government, plus 70% of data verification revenue returned to the Cardano Treasury | Transaction commit fees are paid continuously by the state government regardless of market cycles. Data verifications generate revenues for Cardano Treasury. |
| Pillar | How PFMS Aligns | Contribution Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Pillar 2: Adoption & Utility | Invisible Technology: Runs quietly in the background without altering existing officer workflows. Decentralized Identity: Registers ~5.1 Million DIDs across facilities, hardware, personnel, and evidence items, keeping sensitive personal data off-chain. Provenance: Secures end to end evidence chain provenance from pre-crime capture to court verdict.Open-source Incentives: 20% of revenue from verification layer is directed to maintaining the open-source Cardano libraries, supporting a sustainable builder ecosystem. | Primary |
| Pillar 4: Community & Ecosystem Growth | Demonstrates Enterprise Value: Scales chain of evidence tracking across an entire state government ecosystem. Reusable Model: Open source core engine allows easy expansion to rest of India's 35 states and union territories without additional build costs to the Treasury. | Strong |
| Pillar 5: Sustainability & Resilience | Financial Stewardship: The Cardano Treasury funds a one time build, while ongoing transaction fees, infrastructure, and maintenance are funded entirely by the state government. | Strong |
6. Teams & Track Record
Trivolve Tech
This project is spearheaded by Trivolve Tech. Trivolve Tech is a blockchain and AI development studio focused on building and deploying enterprise grade solutions across government, healthcare, fintech, decentralized finance, and real world assets.
Over the past three years, our team has delivered 30+ projects for enterprises, governments, venture capital firms, and Fortune 500 companies. Our experience is not limited to prototypes or proof of concepts. We specialize in taking complex operational systems and deploying them at production scale, where reliability, auditability, security, and long term maintainability are critical.
Our track record on Cardano demonstrates this ability.
01 Trivolve Tech built a Forensic Management System that became the first ever enterprise grade project on Cardano to surpass both the 100,000 and 150,000 transaction milestones on Cardano Mainnet. This deployment demonstrates our ability to operate blockchain infrastructure at production scale.
02 We subsequently delivered another large-scale government deployment through IndianChain, bringing an entire Indian state government’s agriculture sector onto Cardano. Launched on Cardano Mainnet in September 2026, it has already processed over 15,000+ transactions and ranks among the top ten applications on the Cardano transaction leaderboard. This gives us direct experience in navigating government requirements, institutional stakeholders, operational workflows, and blockchain infrastructure within a live public sector environment.
03 Our experience also extends beyond software deployments. Trivolve Tech was the first blockchain company involved in the tokenization of granite on Cardano, giving our team practical experience in bringing physical real world assets and industrial processes into blockchain based systems.
Today, Trivolve Tech has a dedicated team of 42 professionals with deep expertise spanning: Blockchain infrastructure and enterprise deployments
- Government systems and policy requirements
- Artificial intelligence and data systems
- DeFi and Web3 infrastructure Enterprise software
- Fintech and financial infrastructure
- Healthcare technology
- Real world asset tokenization
- Systems integration and automation
This combination of technical depth and implementation experience allows us to work across the full lifecycle of a project, from architecture and development to integration, deployment, and production operations.
Quixy (Vivid Minds Pvt Ltd)
Trivolve Tech is complemented by Quixy as a subcontractor, a leading no code and low code application development and business process automation platform serving governments and enterprises worldwide.
Quixy's experience provides the enterprise application and workflow layer required to transform complex organizational processes into scalable digital systems. The platform has enabled the development of 27,000+ applications, serving 200,000+ users across 15+ industries.
This brings a critical capability to the project: the ability to translate complex institutional processes into practical, scalable applications that can be adopted by large organizations and government stakeholders.
7. The Treasury Withdrawal Request
We are requesting 9,600,000 ADA over 15 months. That covers everything described in this proposal. Building all five stages of PFMS. Integrating with the systems the state already runs and launching on Cardano mainnet.
At a planning rate of USD 0.23 per ADA, that is USD 2,208,000. The amounts in this proposal are fixed in ADA. The dollar figures are planning references only. Project expenditure is hard capped at USD 0.30 per ADA, which is USD 2,880,000 on the 9,600,000 ADA ask, and any value above that cap is returned to the Cardano Treasury.
7.1 Payment Schedule
This proposal is divided into five milestone payments with distinct work packages as follows:
| Tranche / Milestone | Timing | ADA |
|---|---|---|
| Milestone 0 (Kickoff) | On administrator contract signing. | 1,800,000 |
| Milestone 1: Foundations | Month 3 | 2,000,000 |
| Milestone 2: Proven on Cardano Preprod | Month 8 | 2,000,000 |
| Milestone 3: Tested and on Mainnet | Month 12 | 2,000,000 |
| Milestone 4: Sustained Usage | Month 15 | 1,800,000 |
Tranches for Milestones 1 to 4 are released only after the deliverables for the milestone have been verified by the independent assurer and the administrator and reported to the community.
A detailed breakdown of work packages, associated milestones and deliverables is available separately here and attached to this proposal.
7.2 Budget Allocation
The budget funds the design, development and deployment of PFMS. It covers end to end testing, mainnet load proving, the final handover package, penetration testing, an audit, the Cardano Foundation administration, and overall project delivery and management.
| Line Item | ADA | USD (0.23 per ADA) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core blockchain and identity infrastructure | 2,688,000 | $618,240 | 28% |
| Stage module engineering | 2,112,000 | $485,760 | 22% |
| Integration test engineering, load proving and handover | 1,536,000 | $353,280 | 16% |
| Systems integration | 1,152,000 | $264,960 | 12% |
| Edge capture and resilience engineering | 960,000 | $220,800 | 10% |
| Security testing | 472,000 | $108,560 | 4.92% |
| Project management & audit | 480,000 | $110,400 | 5.00% |
| Administration | 200,000 | $46,000 | 2.08% |
| TOTAL | 9,600,000 | $2,208,000 | 100% |
8. Risk Management
This section describes the main risks in the PFMS programme and how we mitigate them.
Build failure risk: Delivering six engines and modules across five stages within 15 months is a substantial build. Three things reduce this risk. First, the modular architecture: the six engines are built once and shared by every stage, so each stage is a module on a common core rather than a separate system. Second, experience: this is not our first large government deployment, as we have already taken state government systems into production on Cardano mainnet. Third, staged delivery: every work package is defined by its deliverables, evidence and dependencies in the published milestone document, record definitions are fixed at M1, Stages 1 to 3 are proven on preprod at M2, and nothing reaches mainnet before penetration testing at M3. Because funds are released only against verified milestones, the Treasury’s exposure is limited at every stage. Risk Level: Low to Moderate.
Data feed accessibility risk: PFMS depends on access to real time data from state police systems (CCTNS, NAFIS, PIS, DVR/NVR, ANPR, control rooms). Required data feeds have already been acquired from the state, substantially mitigating possible integration delays. Risk Level: Low.
Adoption: PFMS only creates value if the government uses it beyond the funded period. This is mitigated because the government is commissioning PFMS for its own daily operations, and the same model already works with FMS, which the state has run on its own infrastructure for over a year. The PFMS project agreements contain confidential state information and cannot be shared publicly. They have been viewed by the Cardano Foundation as administrator. Risk Level: Low.
ADA Price Risks: Upon withdrawal, the ADA price risk will be professionally hedged insofar as possible to ensure cost coverage over the course of the proposal. We have managed this before: when the ADA price dropped sharply during development of IndianChain under Project Catalyst, we continued delivery without reducing scope. To manage ADA appreciation, the total expenditure is capped at USD 0.30 per ADA with all remaining unspent ADA returned to the Treasury. Risk Level: Low
9. Governance and Withdrawal Management
We meet the requirements of the Cardano Constitution, as follows:
Article II §6 Governance action standards and immutable document: This proposal is submitted in a standardised, legible format containing a title, abstract, rationale, budget, milestones and supporting material, with a URL and hash of all off chain content. The signed CIP-100/108 anchor metadata is pinned to IPFS, and its CID is the on chain anchor providing the immutable reference. The metadata embeds the blake2b-256 hash of this proposal document, so the chain from on chain anchor to IPFS metadata to document allows any served copy to be byte verified against the immutable record regardless of where it is hosted.
Article II §7.1 Terms of the withdrawal: The purpose of the withdrawal, the 15 month delivery period and the costs and expenses of the proposed activities are set out in Sections 7. The withdrawal is fixed at 9,600,000 ADA, and project expenditure is hard capped at USD 0.30 per ADA, which is USD 2,880,000. Any value above that cap is returned to the Cardano Treasury. We commit to returning Treasury ADA in four circumstances:
- Unspent ADA at programme end. Any funds not spent are returned to the Cardano Treasury according to the final published reconciliation.
- Material milestone failure. Where a milestone is not delivered and not remediated, undisbursed tranches are not released.
- Fraud.
- Scope abandonment.
A final reconciliation is published as part of the oversight reporting cycle.
Article II §7.2 24 month prior receipt disclosure: Trivolve Tech and Quixy (Vivid Minds Pvt Ltd) have not received ADA from the Cardano Treasury through a Treasury Withdrawal Action under Article II §7 in the prior 24 months. Separately, we disclose our Project Catalyst funding history: six community funded engagements across Fund 12 and Fund 14. These community funded engagements total ~1.49M ADA of Catalyst work to date, with 5 completed, and 1 in active delivery.
Article II §7.3 Within the Net Change Limit: The 9,600,000 ADA requested sits within the ratified 500,000,000 ADA Net Change Limit covering Epoch 613 to Epoch 713, both on its own and in aggregate at the time of submission.
Article II §7.4 Audit and oversight metrics allocation: An Admin and Audit allocation is included in the budget, covering the Cardano Foundation’s administration costs (which also covers necessary taxes and expenses) and the costs of competitively procured independent third-party assurer. The assurer will review the quality of the delivered work and also conduct independent audits. Procurement will begin as soon as the first tranche is released, with the procurement published, and audit reviews at M1, M2, M3 and M4 in line with the milestone gated disbursement schedule. The same allocation funds the oversight metrics on the use of the ADA.
Article II §7.5 Named administrator: The Cardano Foundation is the named administrator of this proposal.
Article II §7.6 Custody plan: Funds withdrawn under this Treasury Withdrawal Action are held by the administrator’s multi-sig wallet address. The address is not staked to a Stake Pool and is delegated to the auto abstain predefined DRep. Treasury funds cannot therefore be used to influence governance votes or stake distribution while held.
Treasury Withdrawal Guardrails
| Guardrail | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| TREASURY-02a | Withdrawal shall not exceed the Net Change Limit for the relevant period | Compliant. Does not exceed the NCL at the moment of submission |
| TREASURY-03a | Withdrawal denominated in ada | Compliant. All amounts denominated in ₳. USD figures are reference only, at a planning rate of $0.23, with expenditure capped at $0.30 per ADA |
10. Administration
The Cardano Foundation will serve as the constitutional administrator of this proposal. The Cardano Foundation will conclude an off-chain legal contract with Trivolve Tech for delivery in line with the commitments of this proposal.
Delivery of milestones and acceptance thereof will be visible to the Cardano Community via a dashboard for this proposal, such as at treasurywithdrawals.cardanofoundation.org. Subsequent payments, once milestones are accepted, will also be publicly visible. The Cardano Foundation will utilise a multi-sig wallet address for the receipt of funds, which shall not be staked with a Stake Pool Operator and are delegated to the auto abstain predefined DRep.
All funds not disbursed by the end of the delivery period are returned to the Cardano Treasury. All amounts are denominated in ada (₳9,600,000 total ask). The total USD figure of $2,208,000 is a planning reference based on $0.23 per ADA.
Rationale highlights
Why some of the largest DReps voted for and against, in their own words. About vote rationales
I vote NO on “PFMS” because I think it is unlikely to achieve either of these two things: ① Transactions or revenue that flow back to the treasury and the community. ② A boost to Cardano’s credibility and standing that ADA holders can actually feel, in the...
I vote NO on “PFMS” because I think it is unlikely to achieve either of these two things:
- ① Transactions or revenue that flow back to the treasury and the community.
- ② A boost to Cardano’s credibility and standing that ADA holders can actually feel, in the short or long term.
① Return to the treasury and the community
The proposer expects PFMS to create 1.53 million transactions in its first year, with the state paying the fees, and to send 70% of the revenue from a paid verification service to the treasury. Even if that happens, the fees would be about 350,000 ADA a year: about 70,000 ADA to the treasury and about 280,000 ADA to stake pool operators and delegators. The proposal gives no estimate of how much the paid verification service would be used. I see three problems.
1-1. The same team’s earlier forecast fell far short. The team already runs FMS, a system that records police evidence on Cardano, funded by Catalyst (550,000 ADA; all six milestones were delivered). Its Catalyst proposal expected about one million cases a year. After 13 months, FMS has recorded about 9,100 evidence items (about 1% of that forecast) and about 150,000 transactions a year (about one seventh), paying about 45,000 ADA a year in fees, of which about 9,000 ADA reaches the treasury. PFMS asks for about 17 times as much money, covers five stages of the evidence process instead of one, and is for a different state. If PFMS reaches its forecast to the same degree FMS did, it would create 15,000 to 220,000 transactions a year, or 3,000 to 50,000 ADA in fees.
1-2. The transaction count is easy to inflate. How many transactions there are depends on what is recorded, in how much detail, and how often records are bundled together. The proposer has said the forecast assumes recording CCTV footage, body-camera footage and emergency calls, and that the bundling interval will be set by the vendor for each type of evidence and varied at random; that policy will only be published at milestone M3. The payments are tied to the same count: 5.8 million ADA is paid at signing and the first two milestones (M0 to M2) without any usage requirement, and 7.8 million ADA in total, up to M3, is paid once 100,000 transactions are reached, which FMS would reach in about six months at its current pace. FMS’s records on the chain contain nothing an outsider can check, such as case numbers or police stations (understandable for confidentiality), and every step for each item is signed by the same key. From the chain alone, it is impossible to tell whether the records come from real police work or from the vendor’s own staff.
1-3. Projects like this have not paid off anywhere. I looked at 173 cases in which governments or companies used a blockchain to make certificates or records tamper-proof, on Cardano and on other blockchains. None of them pays $5,000 or more in fees every three months today; the highest is Malta’s education certificates at $3,347, and FMS is second at $2,513. All of them together pay about $39,000 a year. To avoid looking only at well-known successes, I also checked a full list of 242 such projects; only 7 (2.9%) could be shown to still be active in the last three months. At FMS’s current pace, it would take about 1,000 years for 9.6 million ADA to come back to the treasury, or about 200 years counting what goes to stake pool operators and delegators. Even if the proposer’s forecast came true, it would take about 27 years.
② Effect on Cardano’s credibility
The proposal says PFMS would be Cardano’s first large government deployment and would raise credibility and interest from institutions. To test whether such news moves prices, I looked at 103 past announcements of this kind with a known date. For each one, I removed the price movement explained by the overall market (Bitcoin and the ten largest other cryptocurrencies), checked whether the blockchain’s own token still moved, and compared the result with 18,000 randomly chosen days with no news.
- 10 of the 103 showed a clear move, while chance alone would produce about 6. Among the blockchains’ own tokens, only one case (Hedera) could not be explained by something else; two more matched moves across the whole crypto market or a weak statistical fit. The rest were small tokens issued by the vendors themselves, or general market moves.
- Of 42 Cardano cases, none showed a clear move (chance alone would produce about 2.5). Even the 2021 announcement with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education (five million students) showed only +4.7% once that week’s general rise in crypto prices is removed, which is within ADA’s normal day-to-day swings. Around the day FMS went live, ADA was −2.3%, and around the day PFMS was submitted, −2.2%.
- In the long run, the cases that drew the most attention (Factom, Georgia’s land registry, Ethiopia) have either stopped or cannot be measured. None of the 173 cases both moved the token’s price and still pays meaningful fees today.
The idea that “news of a government adopting Cardano raises Cardano’s credibility and therefore the value of ADA” has almost never been borne out.
Should the treasury pay for this at all?
The proposer says a government should not own the system that checks its own records, so the treasury should fund it as a neutral public good. But neutrality comes from recording on a public blockchain and publishing the code, not from who pays to build it. A state can hire a company to build open-source software. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs had its National Informatics Centre build eSakshya, an app for recording evidence, and rolled it out to the states; as of February 2026 it was used at about 15,900 police stations. For FMS, the proposers built the system itself as a project for the state, and Catalyst paid only for connecting it to Cardano. The proposer has also said that a normal contract in which the state pays for development was discussed at the start. Neutrality is not a reason for the treasury to pay for development.
「PFMS」について、次の 2 つを満たせる可能性が低いと考えるため、No を投票します。
- ① 取引や売上が、トレジャリーとコミュニティに戻ること。
- ② Cardano の信用と評価を高め、短期・長期のいずれかで、ADA を持つ人がその効果を実感できること。
① トレジャリーとコミュニティへの還元
提案者は、PFMS が 1 年目に 153 万件の取引を生み、その手数料は州が払い、有料の検証サービスの売上の 70% をトレジャリーに戻すと見込んでいます。見込みどおりでも、手数料は年約 35 万 ADA で、トレジャリーに約 7 万 ADA、ステークプール運営者（SPO）と委任者に約 28 万 ADA です。有料の検証サービスがどれだけ使われるかの見込みは、提案に書かれていません。問題は 3 つあります。
1-1. 同じチームの前の見込みは、大きく外れています。このチームは、警察の証拠の記録を Cardano に残す「FMS」という仕組みを、Catalyst の資金（55 万 ADA・6 つのマイルストーンはすべて完了）で動かしています。その Catalyst の提案では、年約 100 万件を見込んでいました。13 か月たった実績は、記録された証拠品が約 9,100 件（見込みの約 1%）、取引が年約 15 万件（約 7 分の 1）で、手数料は年約 4.5 万 ADA、そのうちトレジャリーに入るのは年約 9 千 ADA です。PFMS は、その約 17 倍の資金を求め、証拠の流れの 1 段階だけだったものを 5 段階に広げ、対象の州も別です。FMS と同じ程度にしか見込みが実現しなければ、取引は年 1.5 万〜22 万件、手数料は年 3 千〜5 万 ADA になります。
1-2. 取引の件数は、数え方しだいで増やせます。件数は、何を記録するか、どこまで細かく記録するか、どのくらいの間隔でまとめて書き込むかで決まります。提案者は、監視カメラやボディカメラの映像、通報まで記録する前提で見込みを立てており、まとめる間隔は証拠の種類ごとに事業者が決め、無作為にずらすと説明しています。その方針は、支払いの区切りの M3 まで公表されません。支払いもこの件数に結びついています。契約時と最初の 2 つの区切り（M0〜M2）の 580 万 ADA は、利用の実績を問わずに支払われます。M3 までの合計 780 万 ADA も、10 万件に届けば支払われ、FMS の今のペースなら約半年で届く数です。また、FMS がチェーンに残している記録には、事件番号や警察署名のような、外から照合できる情報がありません（秘密を守るためなのは理解できます）。証拠品ごとの全段階を、同じ 1 本の鍵が署名しています。そのため、チェーンの記録だけでは、実際の警察の業務なのか、事業者の社員の作業なのかを見分けられません。
1-3. この種の使い方で、元が取れた例はどこにもありません。政府や企業が、証明書や記録の改ざんを防ぐためにブロックチェーンを使った事例 173 件を、Cardano と他のチェーンの両方で調べました。今、3 か月で 5,000 ドル以上の手数料を払っている事例は 1 つもありません。最も多いのはマルタの教育の証明書で 3,347 ドル、FMS は 2 番目の 2,513 ドルです。全部を合わせても、手数料は年約 3.9 万ドルです。有名な成功例だけを見ないように、一覧から漏れなく集めた 242 件も調べましたが、直近 3 か月に動いていると確かめられたのは 7 件（2.9%）だけでした。FMS の今のペースでは、960 万 ADA がトレジャリーに戻るまで約 1,000 年、SPO と委任者の分を含めても約 200 年かかります。提案者の見込みどおりに進んでも、約 27 年です。
② Cardano の信用への効果
提案は、PFMS が Cardano で初めての大規模な政府の導入になり、信用と機関投資家の関心を高めると言います。そこで、この種の発表が値段を動かすかを、発表日が分かる過去の 103 件で調べました。それぞれについて、相場全体の動き（ビットコインと、時価総額上位 10 の暗号資産）で説明できる分を差し引き、それでもそのチェーンのトークンが動いたかを見て、何も起きていない日を無作為に選んだ 18,000 日と比べました。
- 103 件のうち、はっきり動いたのは 10 件で、偶然だけでも約 6 件は出る数です。チェーンのトークンで、ほかの理由で説明できないのは Hedera の 1 件だけでした。ほかの 2 件は、暗号資産全体の動きか、計算上の当てはまりの悪さによるものです。残りは、事業者自身の小さなトークンか、相場全体の動きでした。
- Cardano の事例 42 件では、はっきり動いたものは 1 件もありません（偶然だけでも約 2.5 件は出る数です）。2021 年のエチオピア教育省（学生 500 万人）の発表でさえ、その週の暗号資産全体の上げを差し引くと +4.7% で、ADA のふだんの値動きの範囲に収まります。FMS の本番開始の日の前後は ADA が −2.3%、PFMS の提出日の前後は −2.2% でした。
- 長い目で見ても、大きな注目を集めた事例（Factom、ジョージアの土地登記、エチオピア）は、止まっているか、今の稼働を確かめられません。173 件の中に、値段を動かし、しかも今も十分な手数料を払っている事例は 1 つもありません。
「政府が Cardano を採用したという話が、Cardano の信用を高め、ADA の価値を押し上げる」ということは、過去にほとんど起きていません。
そもそもトレジャリーが払うべきものか
提案者は、「政府が自分の記録を確かめる仕組みを所有すべきではない。だから中立の公共財として、トレジャリーが開発費を出すべきだ」と言います。しかし中立性は、誰でも見られるチェーンに記録し、ソースコードを公開することで生まれるもので、誰が開発費を払うかとは関係がありません。州が会社に依頼してオープンソースで作ることもできます。インド内務省は、国立情報センター（NIC）に証拠記録アプリ「eSakshya」を作らせて各州に配り、2026 年 2 月時点で約 1 万 5,900 の警察署で使われています。FMS も、本体は提案者らが州向けの仕事として作り、Catalyst が出したのは Cardano につなぐ費用だけでした。提案者自身も、州が開発費を払う通常の契約が、最初は検討されていたと認めています。中立性は、トレジャリーが開発費を出す理由になりません。
Summary Yoroi DRep votes YES on the treasury withdrawal for ""PFMS: Bringing Government Scale Adoption to Cardano by Trivolve Tech"". We believe the strategic scale, proven operational track record, and structured treasury return warrant our support....
Summary
Yoroi DRep votes YES on the treasury withdrawal for ""PFMS: Bringing Government Scale Adoption to Cardano by Trivolve Tech"". We believe the strategic scale, proven operational track record, and structured treasury return warrant our support.Rationale
Real-World Institutional Utility
Transitioning state-level legal and forensic evidence tracking onto Cardano represents genuine enterprise adoption. By connecting thousands of facilities and managing millions of decentralized identity (DID) anchors, PFMS establishes Cardano as a foundational trust layer for high-stakes public sector systems.Measurable Network Value & Sustainable Economics
With a projected volume of over 1.5 million annual mainnet transactions paid by state operational budgets and a revenue-sharing model returning 70% of verification fees to the Cardano Treasury, the proposal delivers clear economic value back to the network rather than functioning as an unrecouped grant.Accountable Milestone Governance
Oversight by the Cardano Foundation ensures transparent legal accountability, clear delivery milestones, and responsible fund disbursement, safeguarding delegator confidence and treasury capital.Conclusion
Yoroi supports this initiative as an exemplary demonstration of real-world Cardano adoption and therefore votes YES.We are voting NO on the 9,600,000 ADA treasury request for PFMS, Trivolve Tech’s proposed police evidence management system. Our judgment is that the proposal has not demonstrated enough value to Cardano to justify the treasury funding the full development...
We are voting NO on the 9,600,000 ADA treasury request for PFMS, Trivolve Tech’s proposed police evidence management system. Our judgment is that the proposal has not demonstrated enough value to Cardano to justify the treasury funding the full development cost.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
Why we are voting NO on PFMS
We are voting NO on the 9,600,000 ADA treasury request for PFMS, Trivolve Tech’s proposed police evidence management system. Our judgment is that the proposal has not demonstrated enough value to Cardano to justify the treasury funding the full development cost.
Our platform places the burden on applicants to demonstrate demand, delivery, and value to ADA holders. PFMS deserves credit for its existing delivery record, proposed open-source release, independent milestone assurance, and government participation. These are meaningful strengths. The funding decision still requires a convincing explanation of why this use of community capital deserves priority.
1. The treasury’s responsibility for the entire development bill has not been justified.
The proposal assigns the full software build to the Cardano treasury. The government would fund infrastructure, transaction fees, and ongoing maintenance, with maintenance payments going to Trivolve and its subcontractors under a separate agreement. That is a meaningful government contribution, but it leaves ADA holders financing the entire development programme. Source: full proposal, §5.4.
A customer’s willingness to operate a system does not, by itself, establish that ADA holders should pay to build it.
We need a stronger explanation of how development costs should be shared among the government customer, commercial beneficiaries, and Cardano.
Open-source licensing and independently verifiable records can be requirements of a customer-funded or jointly funded project. If treasury funding secures additional benefits—broader reuse, a commitment to Cardano, or favourable revenue-sharing terms—those benefits should be identified and valued against alternatives requiring less treasury support.
The relevant question is how much additional public value this subsidy buys.
2. Transaction commitments need an economic valuation.
Trivolve has recently offered to put a minimum of 1.53 million first-year transactions, followed by annual growth for ten years, into its administrator contract. That strengthens the offer. The proposed government payment of network fees represents real demand for Cardano’s services.
However, a transaction target does not establish the value of a development subsidy.
We still need to assess the resulting fee income, durability of usage, value of the reusable infrastructure, and benefits to the wider ecosystem relative to the capital committed. A system can generate substantial, legitimate activity while delivering an insufficient return on the resources required to create it.
We should evaluate what the activity is worth to Cardano before paying millions of ADA to enable it.
3. The verification revenue model still requires validation.
The proposal commits 70% of optional paid-verification revenue to the treasury and 20% to Cardano library maintenance. Trivolve has also described automatic revenue allocation and independent reconciliation. These commitments improve accountability.
The remaining question is the amount of revenue customers will actually generate.
The founder has published a financial scenario based on assumptions about case volumes, paid uptake, verification frequency, and average prices. Those assumptions need evidence that users will purchase this particular optional service at the proposed scale, together with a credible explanation of when those payments will arrive. Source: the founder’s revenue scenario and subsequent clarification.
A mechanism that distributes revenue correctly cannot establish customers’ willingness to pay.
Our platform requires that the economic case be sufficiently evidenced before committing treasury funds. The existence of a financial model is a starting point; its consequential assumptions still need validation.
4. The milestones leave a material gap between successful delivery and demonstrated economic value.
The published schedule would release 5.8 million ADA cumulatively through M2, approximately 60.4% of the request, while the system is being demonstrated on preprod. 7.8 million ADA, or 81.25%, would be released through M3, before the final sustained-use milestone.
These payments are associated with substantive engineering work, security testing, deployment, and usage requirements. Funding development before production is normal. The concern is that the published acceptance criteria do not require a minimum level of paid-verification uptake or a minimum amount returned to the treasury. Source: work packages and milestone acceptance criteria; percentages calculated from the published tranches.
The programme could therefore satisfy its published delivery milestones while the financial assumptions used to justify funding remain unproven.
That does not automatically disqualify a public good. It means the independently useful infrastructure must justify the expenditure even under a weak revenue outcome. We do not believe that case has been established sufficiently for this request.
5. Open-source benefits must be proportionate to the cost—and compete with our stated priorities.
We support funding shared infrastructure. That includes work whose value comes from security, developer productivity, or widespread reuse rather than direct revenue.
PFMS’s proposed reusable components deserve consideration. The funding case should clearly identify which components other builders or institutions will use, what evidence supports that demand, and how much of the budget is necessary to deliver those shared benefits.
Publishing useful code does not settle the appropriate size of the grant.
Our platform prioritises stablecoins, liquidity, lending, trading, wallets, bridges, risk tools, and infrastructure that strengthens Cardano’s financial ecosystem. We also support security and developer infrastructure with clear network-wide benefits. That creates an opportunity cost: every allocation reduces the capital available for other work.
A proposal outside our highest-priority areas must make a persuasive case for the value it delivers per ADA committed. We do not believe the present PFMS request clears that bar.
What would justify reconsideration?
A revised proposal would be stronger with:
- A clearly costed separation between reusable infrastructure and deployment-specific work, with an appropriate contribution from customers or commercial beneficiaries.
- Independently reviewable evidence supporting paid demand and a realistic year-by-year cash-flow model.
- Publicly attestable customer obligations, final contractual commitments, and clear consequences if promised outcomes are not achieved.
- Funding conditions that test the economic assumptions—or a sufficiently strong public-infrastructure case to justify the expenditure without relying on those assumptions.
Our responsibility is to decide whether the evidence warrants committing this amount of treasury capital.
We do not need to prove that PFMS will fail to conclude that the present funding request has not met our standard. On the evidence available, the full development subsidy remains insufficiently justified.
Our vote is NO.
Fund the proof, not the promise.
Summary EMURGO as a DRep votes YES on the treasury withdrawal titled ""PFMS: Bringing Government Scale Adoption to Cardano by Trivolve Tech"", with the rationale outlined below. Rationale While EMURGO has maintained a cautious, selective approach to...
Summary
EMURGO as a DRep votes YES on the treasury withdrawal titled ""PFMS: Bringing Government Scale Adoption to Cardano by Trivolve Tech"", with the rationale outlined below.Rationale
While EMURGO has maintained a cautious, selective approach to discretionary treasury spending during ongoing ecosystem considerations, we recognize this proposal as a high-impact strategic imperative for Cardano's global institutional footprint.The deployment of the Police & Forensic Management System (PFMS) represents a tangible milestone for real-world enterprise adoption. Securing state-level criminal justice workflows on Cardano validates our layer-1 architecture as institutional-grade infrastructure while generating over 1.5 million verified mainnet transactions annually. Furthermore, the engagement of the Cardano Foundation as the off-chain administrator provides the necessary accountability, milestone gating, and operational rigor required for capital allocations of this magnitude.
Crucially, the economic model aligns with long-term treasury sustainability by returning 70% of third-party verification revenues back to the Cardano Treasury and allocating 20% to core open-source library maintenance. Supporting this proposal directly advances Cardano's competitive enterprise position and drives measurable utility. For these reasons, EMURGO votes yes.