Blockfrost's transformation to not-for-profit
192 DReps voted · 63 with a rationale · 14 changed their vote · 1 re-voted unchanged
Open a row to read the rationale.
Changed votes: 10 to yes, 2 to no, 2 to abstain, together voting with 654.5M ₳ of voting power.
Voting concentration
7 of 192 DReps cast half of the voted power.
Largest voter 12.9%, top 5 combined 41.5% of 4.5B ₳ voted.
The 8 largest voters together held as much voting power as the 67.0% threshold required in yes votes.
- YesChanged182.7K ₳History
Earlier votes
No2mo agoSuperseded
- Yes171.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain169.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes163K ₳No rationale
- Abstain161.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes157.8K ₳No rationale
- No157.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes155.7K ₳No rationale
- No149.8K ₳Rationale
Even though this is a great team and product it currently does not pass my criteria given the current ADA macro circumstances:
- Treasury runway is shrinking rapidly and must be protected. The 350M ADA 2026-27 NCL already risks ~21% drawdown. Aggressive prior spending + ADA weakness demands selectivity to avoid depletion before real adoption.
- Infrastructure is important, but it is not the primary bottleneck. Cardano's core tech is solid. The ecosystem stalls on adoption, liquidity, developer experience, and compelling use cases (DeFi, RWAs, revenue-generating apps). Broad infrastructure funding without adoption KPIs won't drive organic ADA demand.
- Hoskinson's concerns deserve respect, but governance requires balance. Core maintenance matters for competitiveness. DRep duty is long-term sustainability: not unlimited spending. Past allocations often failed to yield proportional TVL/users/ADA utility. Prioritize evidence-based proposals.
- Better capital allocation strategy: Favor high-leverage use-case initiatives, especially RWAs and revenue generating applications that commit to direct revenue or ADA return mechanisms back to the treasury, with clear milestones, private co-funding, and proven traction. Target specific tech unlocks only when tightly tied to measurable adoption impact. This builds real value without creating dependency.
- Yes144.7K ₳Rationale
I agree with SIBO recommendations
- Yes142.9K ₳No rationale
- No138.3K ₳Rationale
Blockfrost's Transformation to Not-for-Profit — Voting Rationale
Governance Voting Rationale GAID gov_action12su...457vgq Title Blockfrost's transformation to not-for-profit Type of GA Treasury Withdrawal Amount ₳9,832,979 (~$1,868,266 at $0.19/₳) · 18 months · staffing 79.1% · ops/infra 19.3% · legal/accounting 1.6% Proposer Input Output (IOG) Date submitted Epoch 639 (Jun 23, 2026) Expiration Date Epoch 646 (Jul 28, 2026)
Contents
- 1.0 Introduction
- 1.1 Summary
- 1.2 Description of Governance Action
- 2.0 Discussion
- 2.1 Method
- 2.2 The sort, published
- 2.3 The good, stated as a relation
- 2.4 The wall, and the entrenchment test
- 2.5 Reversal, and the transfer that inverts leverage
- 2.6 The floor, and the six rights
- 2.7 The private-surplus burden
- 2.8 What the vote does not reach
- 2.9 Fiduciary verification (external instrument)
- 3.0 Conclusion, and what would make this a YES
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Summary
We are voting NO on this governance action. The NO is remediable, not terminal — the register is instructional, and this section is written to be read alongside §3.0, which names precisely what would make a resubmission earn a YES.
The distinction matters here more than usual, because the thing this proposal is trying to do is right. Blockfrost is the access layer through which a majority of Cardano's transactions are submitted and the great majority of its developers read the chain, and it currently sits inside a single commercial entity. Recognising that as a structural risk and moving to place it under community ownership is exactly the kind of response the derivation would ask for. The failure the proposal names is real, and the kind of remedy it reaches for — a commons genuinely constituted rather than a commons enclosed — is the correct kind.
The NO is about the structure of the remedy, not its intent. As drafted, the action transfers critical-infrastructure IP — source, trademarks, domains — irreversibly into a newly created entity before the governance that is supposed to protect the commons has been elected or proven; it concentrates stewardship of that commons in a board four of whose five seats are reserved for infrastructure companies, several of whom are candidate commercial beneficiaries of the entity's own contemplated future; it lets the entity report on its own governance integrity through its own dashboard; and it reframes a public-good grant as an investment expected to return profits to the treasury. Each of these is a property of this action, each fails a published test, and each is fixable. A proposal that fixed them would not be a different idea — it would be this idea, structured so that it guards the failure it exists to prevent rather than reconstituting it in a distributed form.
Because the defects are structural and the transfer they concern is irreversible, the honest token is a NO that deploys against this structuring while naming the structuring that would earn assent — not an abstention, which would lower the passage bar for exactly the irreversible move most in need of scrutiny. An external fiduciary read, run independently, reaches the same conclusion from the capital-allocation side.
1.2 Description of Governance Action
This is a Treasury Withdrawal of ₳9,832,979 (~$1.87M at a reference rate of $0.19/₳) funding an 18-month transition of Blockfrost from an IOG-owned service into a free, community-governed public API operated by a not-for-profit. Blockfrost provides a hosted REST abstraction over chain data and transaction submission; the proposal reports it as the number-one hosted platform in the ecosystem (71.5% developer adoption in 2025), serving ~1.84 billion monthly requests, with more than half of all transactions in most epochs submitted through it, and roughly 90% of its traffic on the free tier.
The action would establish a not-for-profit (newly formed, or hosted within an existing organisation such as PRAGMA), governed by a five-seat board — four seats reserved for open-source infrastructure entities, one community seat — elected on-chain by end of Q1 2027, with a named preliminary board seating it in the interim and IOG holding a non-voting advisory seat for the first year. All Blockfrost IP would transfer to the entity. The budget is 79.1% staffing (a team of six, salaries reported as averages), 19.3% ops and infrastructure (~$20k/month), and 1.6% legal and accounting. Administration runs through Intersect with a third-party assurer and the Sundae Labs treasury smart-contract framework, with a public dashboard, quarterly reports, a 99% uptime SLA, proportional refund on reduced scope, and unspent funds returned. Long-term sustainability — including a possible commercial tier with profits routed to the treasury, or a vendor-backed partner model — is explicitly deferred to the elected board.
2.0 Discussion
2.1 Method
Every governance action is sorted for depth before its merits are read and before any standing policy is applied. The sort returns a lane — how much analysis the action earns and which instruments run on it — never a verdict. The token is selected downstream, under the abstention-spine discipline, where the operative question is not whether a vote helps a proposal pass but whether a warrant has been derived to deploy delegated stake against it. The sort is published so that a reader who disagrees can locate whether the disagreement is about the sort or about the analysis; those are different arguments, and only one is about the proposal. For an action that builds a standing institution, the ordering is not a formality — it is what keeps the institution's evident usefulness from pre-deciding the structural questions.
2.2 The sort, published
Reading Axis 1 — wall / knob / wall-building Wall-building. The action does not tune a setting; it constitutes a new standing institution — a not-for-profit owning critical infrastructure, a reserved-seat board with an ongoing mandate over it. We considered and declined a Gate 2 arrest: that fail-state is reserved for a structural default installed through an instrument that does not acknowledge it, and this proposal openly declares the institution it builds. But the vehicle is a spending ballot, and the object is a permanent steward of the majority access layer — an instrument-fit gap carried below as a Spine 1 flag. Wall-building routes to the full lane and faces the entrenchment test in the confirming direction. Axis 2 — exit-remediability R1, decaying toward R0. Measured at the failure mode, not the money. The funding is R3 — sunsets, refunds, unspent returns. But the failure mode is a captured or drifting entity that now owns the infrastructure. Before transfer the community holds leverage (it funds the transition); after the IP transfer and board constitution, leverage inverts and there is no stated claw-back. Sort on the terminal band. Axis 3 — epistemic-dependency depth D2 operationally; D3 on governance integrity. A majority of transaction submission and most developer reads condition on this layer. More sharply: the entity reports on its own governance integrity through its own dashboard, and the parties positioned to capture it are also the parties reporting on it — a reading that conditions its own detection. A clear semiotic signature accompanies it: the reframing of a public-good grant as an investment returning profit. Lane Full lane + mandatory distal sensing + mandatory reflexive check + entrenchment test. The deepest routing the instrument produces. The sort earns its keep here by refusing the surface. By sector and ask-shape this reads as an infrastructure grant; three tiers of scrutiny separate it from one. What the axes catch is that this is not maintenance of a good but the constitution of the body that will own it, transferred irreversibly, depended on by a majority of the network, and reporting on itself.
2.3 The good, stated as a relation
The relation is real and it is large. Blockfrost is the maintained capacity to read from and write to the chain without operating one's own node — for most of the ecosystem's builders, and for the submission of a majority of its transactions. That capacity anchors settlement access (Right I, at the submission path specifically) and self-determination (Right VI, the ability to build without a rent-extracting gatekeeper). Kept free and non-enclosed, it is a genuine public good.
But the question the intake form asks — the good as a relation rather than a deliverable — surfaces that this proposal funds two goods, not one, and they sort differently. The first is the ongoing free public API: non-rival, non-excludable at the free tier, covering mainnet, preview, and preprod. The second is the governance structure that will own and steward it. The first is a commons relation. The second is an instrument-layer object — a standing administrator of critical infrastructure — and it is where the analysis concentrates, because the durability of the first depends entirely on the design of the second. A free public API owned by a body that can later enclose it is a free public API on a term the body sets.
2.4 The wall, and the entrenchment test
Wall-building is not presumptively good and not presumptively bad; it faces the entrenchment test in the confirming direction. A proposed wall must show that the failure it guards is genuinely irremediable or self-concealing — otherwise it is a knob welded shut, and a knob welded shut is a standing invitation to capture on the far side.
On the first half of the test the proposal does well: the failure it guards — a single commercial entity controlling the majority access layer, able to enclose it by raising prices or removing the free tier — is genuinely high on dependency and genuinely hard to reverse once enclosed. That is a failure worth building a wall against.
On the second half the proposal does not yet pass. The test is not whether a wall is justified but whether this wall guards the named failure. As designed, it risks reconstituting the enclosure it exists to prevent, in distributed form. Four of five board seats are reserved for infrastructure companies; the entity's own contemplated sustainability path adds commercial tiers and paid vendor memberships; the parties who would hold those seats are candidate beneficiaries of that path. The wall meant to end single-entity control of the access layer, built this way, could hand stewardship to a consortium of vendors with a live interest in the commercial surface — trading one enclosure risk for another and calling the trade decentralisation. Operationally the proposal does decentralise, and impressively — a hundred-plus Icebreakers, a federated operator model. But governance is being centralised into one entity and one board at the same moment operation is being spread out, and it is the governance layer, not the operator layer, that decides whether the good stays free.
2.5 Reversal, and the transfer that inverts leverage
The decay flag is the heart of the matter. At the moment of the vote the community has maximal leverage: it holds the funds the transition needs. The proposal spends that leverage to transfer the IP — source, trademarks, domains — into the new entity, and names no condition under which the transfer reverses. After enactment the leverage is gone and the entity owns the asset. If the board drifts commercial, aligns with vendor interests, or simply governs the commons poorly, the community's recourse is to contest a standing entity that now holds the infrastructure a majority of the network depends on — R1 at best, and decaying, because each operating cycle deepens the dependency and entrenches the entity. "Unspent funds returned" governs the money; nothing governs the asset. The absence of an IP reversion or claw-back tied to defined governance-integrity or free-tier conditions is the single most consequential gap in the proposal, because it is the gap that makes every other gap irreversible.
2.6 The floor, and the six rights
The Hippocratic floor asks whether the action, at minimum, does no harm to the commons relations it touches. Read on intent, it clears easily; read on structure, it does not clear cleanly, and the framework reads structure. The finding is a fitness gap, not an accusation: the action, as drafted, leaves material and inadequately controlled risk to the very relations it means to protect.
Right V — commons integrity — is the central right and the one with the most bite. The contestability test (can the arrangement be challenged and replaced?), the enclosure-trajectory test (does this trend toward enclosure?), and the reversibility test (can it be undone?) all read poorly against an irreversible IP transfer to a vendor-weighted entity with a contemplated commercial layer. Right III — governance participation — is touched by the board's concentration: a 4:1 reservation of stewardship of a commons asset to infrastructure companies is a concentration finding on its face. Right I — settlement access — is protected now by the free tier but placed at future risk by the contemplated commercial tiers and the absence of any binding free-tier covenant surviving to the elected board. Right IV — informational integrity — is met for uptime and usage, which register externally on-chain and on the dashboard, but not for governance integrity, which the entity reports on itself; and the investment-return framing engages the narrative-accuracy test. Right VI — self-determination — tracks Right I: protective if the free good holds, at risk if vendor membership fees reconstitute the gatekeeper. Only Right II is largely untouched, save that the "investment returning profit to treasury" language brushes the store-of-value reframing the ontology flags.
Several rights, then, are touched, and several in a corrosive-leaning or at-risk direction. This is not the clean protective profile of a maintenance grant. It is a genuinely mixed reading in which the good is real and the structure imperils it.
2.7 The private-surplus burden
The burden governs any treasury withdrawal and asks a question of claim structure, not of the recipient: is a commons relation maintained, stated in relation terms, or is a private surplus transferred? The recipient's non-profit form does not answer it — a non-profit funding an activity whose benefit is captured privately does not discharge the burden, and the framework does not ask the recipient's tax status.
The proposal attempts the burden and articulates the relation intelligibly: the free public API, the majority submission path, the developer onboarding it enables. That is real and it is to the proposal's credit. But the discharge is contested at more than the margin, for two reasons. First, the sustainability path introduces a private-surplus vector the proposal does not foreclose — commercial tiers and vendor membership fees flowing to board-adjacent companies, with the profits-to-treasury return stated only as something the board "could consider," which is to say not binding. Second, the proposal reaches heavily for exactly the arguments the burden says do not discharge it: the KPI section argues TVL, MAU, transaction volume, and protocol revenue, and the sustainability section reframes the grant as an investment expected to return profit. These answer a quantity question — will the number rise — in place of the relation question, and the burden is explicit that once that substitution is accepted the legitimacy question has been answered in the quantity's terms before it could be asked. Growth is answerable specifically: growth reflecting real productive activity serves the relation; growth in value locked, in revenue, or in attention does not. The proposal shows productive activity in its usage data, but rests its case on the disallowed frame.
2.8 What the vote does not reach
The full lane runs distal sensing and the mandatory reflexive check; several findings belong in the trajectory log rather than in the vote, and one is a reflexive disclosure owed to delegators.
The reflexive check (mandatory at D3). This DRep holds only the general participant interest — like everyone, our governance practice and chain reads may pass through the access layer this action concerns. General interest is the condition of participation and does not disqualify; we hold no specific interest, sit on no board, and benefit from no vendor structure. Carried plainly, as the discipline requires.
The proposal's own reflexivity — logged, diagnostic. The preliminary board seats vendors (BlinkLabs, TxPipe, Sundae Labs, Masumi/Begin) who are candidate beneficiaries of the vendor-backed model the same document proposes, and Sundae Labs appears in three roles at once — preliminary board member of the entity, member of the Oversight Committee verifying this withdrawal's administration, and author of the treasury smart-contract framework holding the funds. None of this is alleged as bad faith; it is a concentration and contestability signal (Right III, Right V) that a redesign should manage rather than merely disclose.
The semiotic and temporal signature. The investment-return reframing, and the sequence it opens — fund the transition, seat a vendor-weighted board, let the board add commercial tiers, let vendors become paid partners — is a trajectory in which no single step is the enclosure but the sequence is. This is precisely the aggregate-temporal-semiotic harm signature distal sensing exists to read, and it is why the reversibility gap in §2.5 is not a technicality.
The instrument mismatch (Spine 1, carried not cast). The ballot approves a spend; the object is the constitution of a standing steward of critical infrastructure. A revision might reasonably split these — a governance action ratifying the entity and its mandate with binding covenants, and a funding action sized to the transition — so that the community's approval of money is not silently read as approval of an institution and its seat structure. We carry this as a finding rather than a token because the action is not merely a trajectory signal; it has fixable defects the ballot can reach, and reaching for abstention where a remediable NO is owed is the rationalisation the spine's own guard warns against.
Portfolio note. IOG and affiliates disclose ₳130.7M in treasury allocations across projects to date. Disclosed and to the proposal's credit; logged as a concentration datum for the portfolio view the vote itself does not take.
2.9 Fiduciary verification (external instrument)
This DRep's framework reads the relational and structural question and by design does not read the capital-allocation question — price, instrument fit, size-calibrated discipline, upfront exposure, opportunity cost. Under our own field-fitness discipline an unexamined region raises vigilance rather than lowering it, so we ran the proposal through the DRep Treasury Rule Book v17 (credit: @InputEndorsers) as a fiduciary gate — one that can lower a merits-YES but cannot raise a merits-NO.
Scorecard selection is itself a judgment here and we state it as one: the primary value is transitioning critical infrastructure into a community public good, which routes to the Public-Good and Civic-Service scorecard with the governance-work and recurring-maintenance modules active — but the contemplated commercial arm is a material future workstream that, under the mixed-proposal rule, would have to pass its own gates and is presently unscorable because it is deferred to the future board. That deferral is itself a finding.
The gate does not clear, and it does not clear independently of the relational read. Classified Very Large by nominal request, the proposal faces the highest non-systemic bar — an exceptional public return, low upfront exposure, stress testing, and a clear opportunity-cost case — and several of those are absent: there is no risk register, no stress testing of the capture and commercial-drift scenarios, and no binding return. More decisively, the rulebook's own override discipline maps a wrong or contested instrument and a failed enforceability gate to No or defer regardless of score, and both fire here: the self-contained-withdrawal preflight is weak (entity form, board, IP mechanics, and sustainability model are all to-be-determined-later), asset-recovery and continuity rights are absent (the enforceability gate), the conflicts around the vendor board are disclosed but unmanaged (the governance module's independence red flag), and the sustainability story leans on the self-financing promise the maintenance module explicitly red-flags.
The substantive contribution is a convergence at the level of the conclusion, not merely the soft spot. From the capital-stewardship side, the gate reaches the same four defects the relational read reached from the rights side — the un-clawed-back transfer (enforceability), the vendor-board concentration (neutrality and conflicts), the deferred self-financing sustainability (the maintenance red flag), and the investment reframing (instrument fit and public return). Two instruments built on unrelated foundations arriving independently at No/defer is the strongest form the gate's corroboration takes, and it sharpens rather than merely seconds the resubmission specification below.
3.0 Conclusion, and what would make this a YES
We are voting NO — remediable. The idea is right and the ecosystem plainly wants it; the structure, as drafted, transfers a critical commons irreversibly into a vendor-weighted, self-reporting entity before the governance meant to protect it is proven, and rests its treasury case on an investment frame the burden does not admit. The register is instructional, and the token deploys against this structuring rather than against the transition itself, because the transfer at its centre is the kind that cannot be undone by inaction once made.
A resubmission would earn a YES by structuring the wall to guard the failure it names. Concretely, the specification is: bind the free public good with a covenant that survives to the elected board and cannot be removed without a defined community process; attach an IP reversion or claw-back triggered by defined governance-integrity or enclosure conditions, so the transfer is not the point of no return; rebalance the board so stewardship of a commons asset is not four-fifths reserved to companies that are candidate commercial beneficiaries, and manage — not merely disclose — the vendor and multi-role conflicts; provide governance-integrity verification that does not run through the entity's own reporting; replace the investment-and-KPI case with the relation case the burden asks for, showing productive activity rather than projected return; and consider splitting the institution's ratification from its funding so the ballot that approves money is not read as approving a permanent structure. Each item is reachable, and together they would convert this from a wall that risks reconstituting enclosure into one that ends it.
The vote answers the action; the log answers the trajectory. This action, as structured, we cannot assent to — and the structuring that would earn assent is within reach, which is why the NO names the path rather than closing it.
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- 1.0 Introduction
- Yes126.4K ₳No rationale
- No124.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes122.8K ₳Rationale
I am voting yes because Blockfrost has become one of the most important pieces of public infrastructure within the Cardano ecosystem. It serves as the primary access layer for a large portion of developers, wallets, and decentralized applications, dramatically lowering the barrier to building on Cardano. Preserving that accessibility is essential to maintaining developer momentum and ecosystem growth.
What makes this proposal particularly compelling is that it is not simply requesting operational funding. It fundamentally changes Blockfrost's governance model by transitioning it from a commercially owned service into a community-governed, not-for-profit public good. The transfer of its intellectual property, open governance through an elected board, transparent reporting, and a clear path toward long-term sustainability all align with Cardano's principles of decentralization and community stewardship.
I recognize that this is a significant Treasury request and that Blockfrost has previously received ecosystem funding. However, I believe maintaining critical developer infrastructure while reducing long-term dependence on a private entity represents a worthwhile investment. Strong public infrastructure benefits every wallet, dApp, developer, and user building on Cardano, making this an investment in the ecosystem as a whole rather than any single application or company.
- Yes107.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes102.4K ₳No rationale
- Abstain95.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes95.5K ₳No rationale
- No90.6K ₳Rationale
## Review Methodology Disclaimer [EN]
Due not only to the unusually high volume of Treasury Withdrawal Governance Actions and budget proposals submitted in April and May 2026, but also to the lack of meaningful incentives for DReps to perform proposal analysis work, it is not feasible to apply my full standard review framework and reporting template to every proposal.
My standard analysis process usually requires approximately four hours of work per Governance Action. During that process, I research the proposal, review supporting materials, compare different perspectives from DReps and other ecosystem participants, and weigh both positive and negative arguments before reaching a reasonably qualified decision. Even with the use of artificial intelligence to automate parts of the workflow and improve productivity, a responsible evaluation still requires substantial human review, judgment, and contextual understanding.
In addition, this work does not end with the vote itself. It also involves writing and publishing rationales, preparing reports or summaries, communicating the reasoning publicly, and socializing the analysis through public channels and social media. This creates a significant workload, especially when dozens of proposals must be reviewed in a short period.
At present, this work carries no clear financial incentive and only limited reputational incentive, despite requiring substantial time, attention, and accountability. In practice, it is not sustainable to dedicate near full-time effort over several weeks or months to this activity without any form of compensation or institutional support.
Since I have a clear standard for my work and do not want to lower the quality of my judgment, I will reduce the scope of my analysis where necessary rather than rush decisions or produce superficial rationales. This means prioritizing focused due diligence over exhaustive review.
Under these constraints, my methodology during this period will focus on identifying critical strategic, operational, governance, reputational, or execution-related risks that could materially compromise a proposal’s viability, accountability, or successful delivery. In practical terms, this means narrowing my research toward the most critical gaps that may make approval unjustifiable. Where such a serious risk is identified, I may use it as the basis for a rejection vote.
This approach also helps reduce review overload: proposals with clear and material gaps would likely require rework regardless, so voting against them when those gaps are significant can be a responsible way to preserve review capacity while maintaining minimum due diligence.
Examples of such high-priority concerns may include, but are not limited to:
- Serious delivery failures in previous funded proposals;
- Significant unresolved delays in ongoing work;
- Major reputational or accountability issues within the ecosystem;
- Lack of credible execution capacity;
- Structural governance or transparency concerns;
- Severe budgetary or coordination risks.
Where I do not have sufficient time for a deeper evaluation, and no significant red flags or imminent execution risks are identified, I may abstain rather than issue an underdeveloped approval or rejection rationale.
This does not mean that other dimensions of proposal quality are unimportant. It means that, under current constraints, I will prioritize a narrower but still responsible review scope that preserves minimum due diligence, avoids rushed decisions, and keeps the quality of my judgment at an acceptable standard.
Governance Action Review
1. Introduction
Blockfrost provides developers with a hosted REST interface for reading from and interacting with the Cardano blockchain without operating their own infrastructure or node. The governance action requests ₳9,832,979, equivalent to USD 1,868,266 at the reference rate of USD 0.19 per ada, to fund an 18-month transition and operational period.
The proposal would transfer Blockfrost’s source code, trademarks, domains, and associated assets to an independent, community-governed not-for-profit entity. This entity would operate a free public API for the Cardano mainnet, preview, and preprod networks. Governance would initially be conducted by a preliminary board, followed by an on-chain election for a five-seat community-approved board.
The planned deliverables include establishing the entity, conducting the board election, transferring services and intellectual property, consulting on a long-term sustainability model, maintaining a minimum monthly uptime of 99%, and publishing quarterly technical and budget reports.
2. Governance Action Analysis
Positive aspects
Blockfrost currently occupies a central and essential position within the Cardano ecosystem. Its infrastructure is widely used by developers, wallets, applications, and other services that depend on reliable access to blockchain data. This relevance makes preserving service continuity important, but it does not reduce the need for rigor when evaluating the use of Treasury resources.
The milestones related to establishing the entity, electing the board, transferring assets, and publishing reports are relevant for monitoring execution.
Negative aspects
The budget remains excessively aggregated for a request approaching ₳10 million. Approximately 79% of the resources are allocated to staffing for a six-person team, but the proposal does not provide costs by role, seniority levels, FTEs, hours, average individual compensation by category, overhead, or personnel allocation across the different milestones.
Operations and infrastructure costs also combine compute, hosting, tooling, and DevOps personnel without indicating how much corresponds to each component or clarifying whether there is any overlap with the staffing budget.
The proposal also presents almost no KPIs with concrete targets. The principal measurable indicator is the maintenance of a minimum monthly uptime of 99%. The other indicators related to transactions, active users, revenue, TVL, and throughput are mainly presented as direct or indirect contributions, without quantitative targets attributable to the project.
Clear targets have also not been established for financial sustainability, reduction of future dependence on the Treasury, coverage of operational costs through internally generated revenue, number and diversity of operators, traffic distribution, reduction of infrastructure concentration, or community participation in governance.
Risks and concerns
The lack of budget granularity prevents an adequate evaluation of whether the team size is proportional to the scope, whether the costs are consistent with the market, how much will actually be allocated to the institutional transition, and how much will finance the ordinary operation of the service.
The milestones related to establishing the entity, electing the board, transferring assets, and publishing reports do not replace KPIs capable of demonstrating whether the transformation will be sustainable, decentralized, and economically efficient.
3. Vote and Rationale
Vote: NO
Given the absence of sufficient budget granularity and the near absence of KPIs with verifiable targets, it is not possible to adequately evaluate the proportionality of the costs or the proposal’s expected impact.
Approximately 79% of the requested resources are allocated to staffing, but the information provided does not allow the costs of the six-person team to be evaluated by role, seniority, workload, compensation category, overhead, or milestone allocation. Operations and infrastructure costs are similarly aggregated and do not clarify the allocation among compute, hosting, tooling, and DevOps personnel or whether these expenses overlap with staffing.
The importance of Blockfrost as central and essential Cardano infrastructure makes service continuity relevant, but it does not remove the requirement for sufficient information to evaluate the use of Treasury resources.
Conditions or signals that could change the vote: Unknown.
4. Conclusion
Blockfrost’s central role in the Cardano ecosystem makes continuity of its infrastructure important. However, the aggregated budget does not permit an adequate evaluation of cost proportionality, and the proposed indicators do not establish sufficient measurable targets for impact, sustainability, decentralization, or economic efficiency. The vote is therefore NO.
Nota sobre metodologia e escopo de análise [PT]
Devido não apenas ao volume excepcionalmente alto de Treasury Withdrawal Governance Actions e propostas orçamentárias submetidas em abril e maio de 2026, mas também à falta de incentivos significativos para que DReps realizem o trabalho de análise de propostas, não é viável aplicar meu framework completo de revisão e meu template padrão de relatório a todas as propostas.
Meu processo padrão de análise normalmente exige aproximadamente quatro horas de trabalho por Governance Action. Durante esse processo, eu pesquiso a proposta, reviso materiais de suporte, comparo diferentes perspectivas de DReps e de outros participantes do ecossistema, e peso argumentos positivos e negativos antes de chegar a uma decisão razoavelmente qualificada. Mesmo com o uso de inteligência artificial para automatizar partes do fluxo de trabalho e aumentar a produtividade, uma avaliação responsável ainda exige revisão humana substancial, julgamento e entendimento contextual.
Além disso, esse trabalho não termina no voto em si. Ele também envolve escrever e publicar rationales, preparar relatórios ou resumos, comunicar publicamente a justificativa e socializar a análise por meio de canais públicos e mídias sociais. Isso cria uma carga de trabalho significativa, especialmente quando dezenas de propostas precisam ser avaliadas em um curto período.
Atualmente, esse trabalho não possui incentivo financeiro claro e oferece apenas incentivo reputacional limitado, apesar de exigir tempo, atenção e responsabilidade substanciais. Na prática, não é sustentável dedicar um esforço próximo de tempo integral durante várias semanas ou meses a essa atividade sem qualquer forma de compensação ou apoio institucional.
Como tenho um padrão claro para o meu trabalho e não quero reduzir a qualidade do meu julgamento, irei reduzir o escopo da minha análise quando necessário, em vez de tomar decisões apressadas ou produzir justificativas superficiais. Isso significa priorizar uma diligência focada em vez de uma revisão exaustiva.
Sob essas restrições, minha metodologia durante este período se concentrará em identificar riscos críticos estratégicos, operacionais, de governança, reputacionais ou relacionados à execução que possam comprometer materialmente a viabilidade, a accountability ou a entrega bem-sucedida de uma proposta. Na prática, isso significa concentrar minha pesquisa nos gaps mais críticos que possam tornar a aprovação injustificável. Quando um risco sério desse tipo for identificado, poderei usá-lo como base para um voto de rejeição.
Essa abordagem também ajuda a reduzir a sobrecarga de revisão: propostas com gaps claros e materiais provavelmente exigiriam retrabalho de qualquer forma, então votar contra elas quando esses gaps forem significativos pode ser uma forma responsável de preservar capacidade de análise enquanto se mantém uma diligência mínima.
Exemplos dessas preocupações de alta prioridade podem incluir, mas não se limitam a:
- Falhas graves de entrega em propostas anteriormente financiadas;
- Atrasos significativos e não resolvidos em trabalhos em andamento;
- Problemas graves de reputação ou accountability dentro do ecossistema;
- Falta de capacidade crível de execução;
- Preocupações estruturais de governança ou transparência;
- Riscos severos de orçamento ou coordenação.
Quando eu não tiver tempo suficiente para uma avaliação mais profunda, e nenhum alerta significativo ou risco iminente de execução for identificado, poderei me abster em vez de emitir uma justificativa de aprovação ou rejeição pouco desenvolvida.
Isso não significa que outras dimensões da qualidade de uma proposta não sejam importantes. Significa que, sob as restrições atuais, priorizarei um escopo de revisão mais estreito, mas ainda responsável, que preserve uma diligência mínima, evite decisões apressadas e mantenha a qualidade do meu julgamento em um padrão aceitável.
Revisão de Ação de Governança
1. Introdução
A Blockfrost fornece aos desenvolvedores uma interface REST hospedada para ler e interagir com a blockchain Cardano sem operar infraestrutura própria ou um node. A ação de governança solicita ₳9.832.979, equivalentes a US$ 1.868.266 pela taxa de referência de US$ 0,19 por ada, para financiar uma transição e um período operacional de 18 meses.
A proposta transferiria o código-fonte, as marcas, os domínios e os ativos associados da Blockfrost para uma entidade independente, sem fins lucrativos e governada pela comunidade. Essa entidade operaria uma API pública gratuita para as redes mainnet, preview e preprod da Cardano. A governança seria inicialmente conduzida por um conselho preliminar, seguido por uma eleição on-chain para um conselho de cinco membros aprovado pela comunidade.
Os deliverables planejados incluem o estabelecimento da entidade, a realização da eleição do conselho, a transferência dos serviços e da propriedade intelectual, uma consulta sobre o modelo de sustentabilidade de longo prazo, a manutenção de uptime mensal mínimo de 99% e a publicação de relatórios técnicos e orçamentários trimestrais.
2. Análise da Ação de Governança
Aspectos positivos
A Blockfrost ocupa atualmente uma posição central e essencial no ecossistema Cardano. Sua infraestrutura é amplamente utilizada por desenvolvedores, carteiras, aplicações e outros serviços que dependem de acesso confiável aos dados da blockchain. Essa relevância torna importante preservar a continuidade do serviço, mas não reduz a necessidade de rigor na avaliação do uso de recursos do Tesouro.
Os milestones relacionados à criação da entidade, eleição do conselho, transferência de ativos e publicação de relatórios são relevantes para acompanhar a execução.
Aspectos negativos
O orçamento permanece excessivamente agregado para uma solicitação próxima de ₳10 milhões. Aproximadamente 79% dos recursos são destinados a staffing para uma equipe de seis pessoas, mas não são informados os custos por função, níveis de senioridade, FTEs, horas, remuneração individual média por categoria, overhead ou alocação de pessoal entre os diferentes milestones.
Os custos de operações e infraestrutura também agrupam compute, hosting, tooling e pessoal de DevOps, sem indicar quanto corresponde a cada componente ou esclarecer se existe sobreposição com o orçamento de staffing.
A proposta também apresenta quase nenhum KPI com alvo concreto. O principal indicador mensurável é a manutenção de uptime mensal mínimo de 99%. Os demais indicadores relacionados a transações, usuários ativos, receita, TVL e throughput são apresentados principalmente como contribuições diretas ou indiretas, sem metas quantitativas atribuíveis ao projeto.
Também não foram estabelecidos alvos claros para sustentabilidade financeira, redução da dependência futura do Tesouro, cobertura dos custos operacionais por receitas próprias, número e diversidade de operadores, distribuição de tráfego, redução da concentração da infraestrutura ou participação comunitária na governança.
Riscos e preocupações
Essa falta de granularidade impede avaliar adequadamente se o tamanho da equipe é proporcional ao escopo, se os custos são coerentes com o mercado, quanto será efetivamente destinado à transição institucional e quanto financiará a operação ordinária do serviço.
Os milestones relacionados à criação da entidade, eleição do conselho, transferência de ativos e publicação de relatórios não substituem KPIs capazes de demonstrar se a transformação será sustentável, descentralizada e economicamente eficiente.
3. Voto e Fundamentação
Voto: NÃO
Diante da ausência de granularidade suficiente no orçamento e da quase inexistência de KPIs com alvos verificáveis, não é possível avaliar adequadamente a proporcionalidade dos custos nem o impacto esperado da proposta.
Aproximadamente 79% dos recursos solicitados são destinados a staffing, mas as informações fornecidas não permitem avaliar os custos da equipe de seis pessoas por função, senioridade, carga de trabalho, categoria de remuneração, overhead ou alocação por milestone. Os custos de operações e infraestrutura também estão agregados e não esclarecem a distribuição entre compute, hosting, tooling e pessoal de DevOps nem se essas despesas se sobrepõem ao staffing.
A importância da Blockfrost como infraestrutura central e essencial da Cardano torna relevante a continuidade do serviço, mas não elimina a necessidade de informações suficientes para avaliar o uso dos recursos do Tesouro.
Condições ou sinais que poderiam alterar o voto: Unknown.
4. Conclusão
A posição central da Blockfrost no ecossistema Cardano torna importante a continuidade de sua infraestrutura. No entanto, o orçamento agregado não permite avaliar adequadamente a proporcionalidade dos custos, e os indicadores propostos não estabelecem alvos mensuráveis suficientes para impacto, sustentabilidade, descentralização ou eficiência econômica. Portanto, o voto é NÃO.
- Yes68.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes65.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes63.1K ₳No rationale
- No62.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes56.1K ₳No rationale
- No48K ₳No rationale
- No45.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes36.9K ₳Rationale
Yes blockfrost should be free and public. It is very usefull for Cardano public.
- YesRevoted31.8K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes2mo agoSuperseded
- No26.7K ₳Rationale
Don't price the ADA at 0.19/A.
- No19.4K ₳No rationale
- Abstain15.7K ₳No rationale
- NoChanged6.8K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes2mo agoSuperseded
- No3.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes2.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.7K ₳No rationale
- No1.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes688.8 ₳No rationale
- No293.8 ₳No rationale
- Yes10.8 ₳No rationale
- Yes0 ₳No rationale