Power delegated to Cardano DReps jumps ₳190.1M in one epoch, and concentration falls with it

Power delegated to DReps rises ₳190.1M at epoch 609

The revised constitution took effect at the start of epoch 609, and between the epoch 608 and epoch 609 readings the power delegated to DReps rose ₳190.1M, from ₳5.62B to ₳5.81B, the largest single epoch increase in the series of readings from epoch 589 to 611. Delegated power is the ada delegated to a DRep, so the total moves when new delegations arrive or when the balances behind existing delegations change.

At the same reading the share held by the ten largest DReps fell from 49.8% to 47.5%, and the smallest number of DReps that together held half the delegated power rose from 11 to 12. The Gini figure for the whole spread fell too, from 0.9367 to 0.9344. All four measures show the distribution widened at the top, none identifies the delegations behind the change.

The largest single decline listed for one DRep over the stretch from epoch 608 to 611 is measured across four epochs while the jump happened in one, so the two are not measurements of the same movement. A snapshot of totals cannot follow a delegation from one DRep to another, and the predefined options are excluded from the totals entirely, so stake moving between a DRep and always abstain changes the figure without leaving a destination anywhere in it.

DReps with a vote in the last twelve epochs fall from 320 to 273

The count of DReps with a vote in the last 12 epochs fell from 320 at epoch 608 to 273 at epoch 611, and 864 DReps held power at epoch 611. Neither figure is a measure of current turnout. The rolling count looks back twelve epochs, so it falls whenever a busy stretch ages out of it, and the epochs with hundreds of votes on the first spending round were now well behind. Inside this window 109 distinct DReps cast a final vote across the proposals open in it.

The new constitution takes effect, and DeltaDeFi’s trading infrastructure budget expires at 12.0%

CARDANO BLOCKCHAIN ECOSYSTEM CONSTITUTION v2.4 took effect at the start of epoch 609, one epoch after the ratification the review of epochs 606 to 608 covers. From that boundary the budget information action is gone as a separate step: a treasury withdrawal carries the requirements itself, so the sequence that had sunk two requests earlier in the series no longer applies. Definitions and immutable proposal documents came with it, and the audit and oversight requirements for treasury requests carried over into the withdrawal rules.

DeltaDeFi: Hydra Trading Infrastructure Budget (₳1,500,000) was exactly such a budget information action, filed in epoch 603 under the rules the new constitution replaced. It closed at the start of epoch 610 with 12.0% of DRep power behind it, on 37 yes votes, 114 no and 18 abstain, and pool votes of two yes, five no and 22 abstain. It asked for ₳1.5M over six months to take an order book exchange running on Cardano’s layer two from beta into production, so that ada and the larger Cardano native tokens would have a venue with the latency and data feeds traders expect, with 20% of the sum set aside for a programme measuring Cardano’s markets against the targets of the 2030 strategy framework endorsed one window earlier.

Yoroi W₳llet wrote that the proposal “does not clearly explain how this directly benefits” ada holders in practice. YUTA wrote that a withdrawal dilutes holders, so the benefit to them has to be shown, and that layer two products “tend to have a hard time justifying this” because their adoption does not increase the number of transactions on the main chain. EMURGO wanted “clear and durable ecosystem-wide benefits” from anything framed as infrastructure. CardanoYoda (MANDA Pool) objected to a fifth of the sum going to a measurement programme when public dashboards for the same metrics already existed. The Cardano Foundation voted yes, writing that a production ready exchange on that layer would “validate” its utility for decentralised finance.

One stake pool abstained, writing that budget information actions “were a mandatory requirement under the previously active on-chain Constitution” and that the new version “no longer” requires one, “which now ultimately renders this proposal redundant”, a side effect of changing a central piece of governance “while processes and proposals are currently running in parallel”. Tingvard abstained on the committee for the same reason from the other side: the constitution “contains no transition provisions” for proposals submitted under a prior understanding, no grandfathering and no grace periods, so the committee cannot preserve prior expectations. At 12.0% it is among the weakest results in the series, and it was the last budget information action to be decided.

Two ceilings for the same period

Net Change Limit of 300 Million ADA for Epochs 613 to 713 was filed in epoch 611, proposing a ₳300M ceiling for exactly the period that Net Change Limit (Epoch 613 to Epoch 713) already covers at ₳350M, which as of the close of epoch 611 was in its last epoch of voting. Both take the ₳306.9M that flowed into the treasury between epochs 532 and 604 as their reference. The earlier proposal sets its ceiling at about 115% of that because it counts in the ₳50M liquidity budget the DReps endorsed before this window and nobody had yet drawn on, and it was filed for the budget committee of Intersect. The later one stays just under the inflows, gives no other reason, and says it would supersede any limit agreed for the same period. Two ceilings for one period is a pattern from the review of epochs 545 to 547 onwards, and the review of epochs 612 to 614 has the first result.

The naming signal for the next hard fork, the first half of the memory increase and the untitled ₳500,000 withdrawal, the first draw against that same liquidity budget, were also open. The window recorded 446 votes, 305 from DReps, 130 from pools and 11 from committee members. The treasury reading rose ₳7.7M to ₳1.63B.