The Plomin hard fork is ratified with 66.0% of pool stake

All seven committee members find Plomin constitutional

Hard Fork to Protocol Version 10 (“Plomin” Hard Fork) was ratified at the start of epoch 536 with 66.0% of counted pool stake behind it against a 51% bar. Pool shares in this edition are yes stake over counted pool stake: abstaining stake is left out, and on a hard fork stake that did not vote counts as no, whatever a pool’s reward account is delegated to. All seven committee members found it constitutional: Input Output and the Cardano Japan Council in epoch 534, the Cardano Atlantic Council, the Eastern Cardano Council, the Cardano Foundation, the Intersect Constitutional Council and Emurgo in epoch 535. Pools had been voting on it since epoch 529.

Input Output wrote in epoch 534 that more than 90 days had passed since the Chang hard fork, that the technical review in that time had included monitoring of live networks, independent testing, a regression suite and benchmark reporting, and that at least 85% of pools by active stake ran a node able to process the new rules. The Intersect Constitutional Council wrote in epoch 535 that the readiness report of Intersect’s hard fork working group showed 86% of blocks produced with the safe node release, and that it read the 85% target as a recommendation rather than a hard rule. It also found that the minimum of 18 epochs the interim guardrails gave DReps to register and campaign had passed. The Cardano Atlantic Council added that tooling, applications and a majority of centralized exchanges by managed liquidity had indicated readiness. The Eastern Cardano Council found the action constitutional on a 5 to 1 vote among its members, acknowledging “meaningful risks regarding DRep participation” and finding that the action’s technical compliance outweighed them.

The HEPHY pool voted yes in epoch 535 after its own readiness check: 61.3% of exchange liquidity reported ready and another 24.8% in progress, 86% of that epoch’s blocks validated by nodes on the new release, and most tooling, wallets and applications ready. It named DRep distribution and ada holder participation as “the only reservation remaining” and counted 16 DReps that together could reach the 60% threshold a future hard fork needs.

Plomin takes effect and DReps get a binding vote

The hard fork took effect at the start of epoch 537, ending the bootstrap phase of Cardano governance and making DRep approval a requirement for every kind of action that can be enacted, a treasury withdrawal, a committee change and a new constitution among them.

DReps cast 146 votes on the constitution proposal

From epoch 529 to epoch 536 no DRep cast a vote, while the hard fork, on which DRep votes did not count, was the only proposal open. At epoch 536, 575 of the 673 DReps holding delegated power had no vote in the previous twelve epochs.

Cardano Constitution to Replace the Interim Constitution, the first proposal filed under the new rules, was submitted in epoch 537. Its document gives the date as 30 January 2025, one day before the interim constitution’s deadline for submitting its replacement on chain. DReps cast 146 votes on it in that epoch, 142 yes, 3 no and 1 abstain, and its voting could run until the start of epoch 544.

The count of DReps with a vote in the previous twelve epochs rose from 99 at epoch 536 to 190 at epoch 537, and 137 DReps cast a final vote in the window. At the epoch 537 reading, 686 DReps held ₳3.00B of delegated power, ₳161.4M more than at epoch 535 and the highest reading up to then. Power delegated to the always abstain option, which that total leaves out, rose from ₳1.76B to ₳2.39B over the same two readings. The window holds 243 votes with superseded votes included, 146 from DReps, 92 from pools and 5 from committee members. The treasury reading rose ₳8.9M to ₳1.66B, with no withdrawal paid.