Cerkoryn submits the 75 ada minimum pool fee cut on its own

The bundled fee cut gets 34.5% of pool stake, short of 51%

Reduce minPoolCost to 75 ada and increase Plutus Memory Limits (Part 2), written by Intersect, expired at the boundary to epoch 653. It combined a cut of the minimum pool fee from 170 ada to 75 with higher Plutus memory limits per transaction and per block.

The DReps cleared the 67% it needed, at 68.6% of DRep power. Five of the seven committee members voted yes, meeting the two-thirds requirement. The pools gave it 34.5% of stake against 51%, on 147 yes votes, 59 no and 41 abstain. More pools voted yes than no, but the pool share is measured in stake, and a pool that did not vote counts as no by default.

Pools had a vote on the action because it also changed the Plutus memory limits. A parameter change needs pool approval only when it touches a security parameter, and the document behind the fee cut on its own states that a change of the minimum pool fee alone does not. Hephaestus Stake Pool (HEPHY), voting yes on the bundle, had written that the fee “is not actually voted on by SPOs” and that bundling it with the memory change “muddies the waters about who is actually voting on what”.

The fee cut alone needs no pool approval

One epoch after the bundle expired, in epoch 654, Reduce minPoolCost to 75 ada was submitted with the same cut and nothing else. The proposal, written by Cerkoryn, describes the cut as an interim step toward a proportional minimum margin. It needs 67% of DRep power and two thirds of the committee. Pool approval is not required. Voting on it runs until the boundary to epoch 661.

Cerkoryn’s proposal links an on-chain survey, Minimum Fees, which the wallet that submitted the proposal published in the same epoch. On X, Cerkoryn called it “a little easter egg” and wrote that readers might have to find a tool that supports it. The questions and every answer are recorded on chain, so anyone can count them, and the answers do not count toward ratification. DReps, pools, committee members and stakeholders may answer through epoch 660, so pools, which have no vote on the fee cut, can still put their view on record. The survey asks whether the fee should go to zero before a proportional minimum margin exists, and what that margin’s first value should be.

By the close of epoch 655, Leandros BSP had voted yes in the committee. YUTA, yes on the bundle, abstained. Yoroi W₳llet, EMURGO, CryptoCrow and the Eternl DRep Committee, all yes on the bundle, had not voted.

Martin Lang, a DRep and pool operator, wrote that a minimum margin parameter has to come before any further cut. hix_coffeepool☕️ wrote that 75 ada per epoch is below the cost of running a pool and that the previous cut did not resolve the same pressure. SIPO called its abstention constructive: it voted yes on the bundle, then looked at what the previous cut from 340 ada to 170 achieved, and does not endorse this one in its current form.

On the yes side, Cerkoryn wrote that the fee “props up pools that cannot operate as cost-efficiently”.

A tally read in epoch 656, just after this window, had the fee cut at 6.2% of DRep power, on 20 yes votes, 13 no and 2 abstain, with ₳533.9M of power abstaining.

For pools and their delegators the minimum fee stayed at 170 ada through these epochs.

Pitkind and Leandros BSP join the Cardano committee

Update Constitutional Committee 2026 was ratified at the boundary to epoch 653 and took effect at the boundary to epoch 654, with 72.0% of DRep power and 56.2% of pool stake. The committee does not vote on its own composition. Four seats now run through epoch 799: Phil_uplc and Cardano Curia stay on with new terms, Leandros BSP and Pitkind are new. Pitkind is the name under which Marek Mahut, founder of Blockfrost, sits on the committee. Tingvard, Eastern Cardano Council and Ace Alliance keep terms through epoch 726. The outgoing members, as YUTA wrote in its yes rationale, were KtorZ and the Cardano Japan Council.

Pitkind’s first votes, as of the close of epoch 655, were two no votes, each with a finding of unconstitutionality. On the Ikigai reimbursement Mahut wrote that the action allocates no ada for the audits and oversight metrics the constitution requires of every withdrawal. On the incentives request the rationale cited a missing disclosure of earlier treasury funding and no designated administrator. Leandros BSP voted yes on all four open actions.

Ikigai’s deposit reimbursement stands at 65.2% at close, short of 67%

Ikigai’s deposit reimbursement asks for ₳103,000. Its document describes a ₳100,000 deposit on an early info action that a node bug kept from being returned, plus ₳3,000 for staking rewards forgone. Its voting ends at the boundary to epoch 656. As of the close of epoch 655 it held 65.2% of DRep power against the 67% a withdrawal needs, on 129 yes votes, 5 no and 7 abstain. The committee stood at 71.4%, with Pitkind the one no vote and Phil_uplc not voting.

The same ₳103,000 has now been put to a vote three times. An info action asking for it closed at the start of epoch 597 with 68.2% of DRep power, as the review of epochs 597 to 599 reports, but an info action cannot pay anything out. The first withdrawal request expired at the start of epoch 643 with 63.0%, covered in the review of epochs 642 to 646.

Yoroi and EMURGO were among the 7 abstentions, which together took ₳805.8M of power out of the count. Yoroi wrote that it was withholding its vote “in light of the current situation” and would reassess later. EMURGO wrote that it prefers to withhold judgment until the situation reaches resolution. The Cardano Foundation voted yes. It wrote that this is a resubmission with no change to metadata or reward account, after an earlier submission fell short of the DRep threshold.

The incentives request stands at 1.7% at close

Governance Incentives Framework 2026 asks for ₳4.2M. Its document describes research, modelling and a controlled pilot to evaluate governance incentive mechanisms before any of them goes to governance for adoption. As of the close of epoch 655 it stood at 1.7% of DRep power and 14.3% in the committee. Tingvard, Ace Alliance, Eastern Cardano Council and Pitkind found it unconstitutional.

Five of the ten largest DReps voted no. The Cardano Foundation wrote that its principal deliverable “duplicates research the treasury has already funded”. YUTA wrote that it does not build consensus formation, which it calls the real bottleneck, into its success conditions.

OpenZeppelin asks for ₳11.8M

In epoch 654, the OpenZeppelin request was submitted. It asks for ₳11,787,063 over 12 months: reference implementations of a liquid staking protocol, self-repaying loans and a tokenized money market fund, an audited contracts library and a security retainer. It prices delivery at $1,831,000 at $0.16 per ada and adds a 3% fee for Intersect as administrator. Its document states that OpenZeppelin received no treasury ada in the prior 24 months and no Project Catalyst funding, and calls this its first request to the treasury.

By the close of epoch 655, YUTA had voted no. CardanoYoda (MANDA Pool) wrote that an Input Output repository already describes a reusable contracts library of this kind. wolf31o2 (Chris Gianelloni) saw “too much overlap” with a funded developer experience proposal. hix_coffeepool☕️ wrote that it votes no on every withdrawal until total withdrawals are back within a limit it considers sustainable.

A tally read in epoch 656, just after this window, had the request at 0.9% of DRep power, on 6 yes votes, 23 no and 1 abstain.

At ₳11.8M the request fits under the ₳42.6M left below the ₳500M spending limit for epochs 613 to 713. No withdrawal was paid in these epochs, and the treasury rose by ₳7.5M, from ₳1.35B at the start of epoch 653 to ₳1.36B at the start of epoch 655.

DReps voting in the last 12 epochs fall to 271

At epoch 655, 271 DReps had voted at least once in the last 12 epochs, down from 292 at epoch 652 and the fewest since epoch 628.

Delegated power rose ₳86.9M to ₳5.27B while the Gini coefficient of DRep power reached 0.943, its highest since epoch 508. Yoroi’s delegated power fell ₳32.5M between epoch 652 and epoch 655, the largest drop among DReps.