Cardano Critical Integrations V2
203 DReps voted · 61 with a rationale
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes 1.3M ₳ No rationale
- Yes 1.2M ₳ Rationale
I vote YES on Cardano Critical Integrations V2 because I consider these integrations part of the real infrastructure Cardano needs to stay useful for users, builders, exchanges, and institutions. The proposal is expensive and the budget transparency is not ideal, but I think stopping maintenance on live integrations like USDCx, LayerZero, Pyth, Dune, and Fireblocks would waste the earlier V1 investment and weaken Cardano’s ecosystem position. I expect the proposers to keep the reporting and accountability strong, especially because this looks like a recurring treasury obligation rather than a one-off purchase.
- No 1.2M ₳ No rationale
- Yes 1.2M ₳ No rationale
- Abstain 1.2M ₳ Rationale
I agree with the additional funding required for the Fireblocks native integration and for maintaining the integrations already delivered under Cardano Critical Integrations V1. I acknowledge that V1 already included the Fireblocks integration, but the reality is that the value of ada declined significantly between the submission of the V1 proposal and its execution.
I do think the maintenance request comes too early, however, as the oldest integrations were completed less than six months ago. In my view, funding for ongoing maintenance should be requested only after a few more months, under an updated NCL if necessary. Therefore, I will abstain on this proposal.
- Yes 1.1M ₳ No rationale
- Yes 1.1M ₳ No rationale
- No 1M ₳ Rationale
There’s a good point at the heart of this, but overall, this proposal is clouded by too much institutional jargon. Keeping live integrations up and running is just basic upkeep. I understand that. Circle, LayerZero, Pyth, and Fireblocks are serious tools, not toys. If Cardano wants to be seen as a serious piece of infrastructure, regular maintenance is just part of the deal. That much is reasonable.
What’s concerning is that this is **another ₳23M request AFTER the ecosystem already took on ₳70M for CCI V1 **. That’s an incredibly pricey way to say “just keep things running.” The proposal talks about necessity, but it lacks solid reasons for the budget without detailed vendor pricing, comparisons, or proof that these services aren’t being paid at top dollar while the community is just expected to trust the system.
The Fireblocks part is the most justifiable new addition, but I’d still like a clearer explanation of why it needs to be included in the same request instead of being handled separately. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Bundling makes things easier for proposers because it hides weaker aspects within stronger ones.
I believe in the importance of maintaining essential integrations, but this** request is too big, unclear, and too convenient in its bundling.**
- Yes 1M ₳ Rationale
Cardano Critical Integrations V2
We support this proposal because critical infrastructure integrations such as Circle (USDC), LayerZero, Pyth, Dune, and Fireblocks are important building blocks for Cardano’s long-term competitiveness and adoption. These services improve liquidity, interoperability, institutional accessibility, analytics, and developer experience, making the ecosystem more attractive for users, builders, and enterprises.
While the funding request is substantial, maintaining and expanding already-established integrations is often more valuable than continuously funding new experimental initiatives. We believe that ensuring these integrations remain operational, supported, and compatible with future Cardano upgrades is a worthwhile investment. Strong infrastructure and institutional-grade integrations are necessary foundations for sustainable ecosystem growth.
- Yes 988.4K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 985.7K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 955.2K ₳ No rationale
- No 952.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 947.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 922.9K ₳ No rationale
- No 922.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 874.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 860.4K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 818K ₳ Rationale
Impact Assessment (Pros/Cons)
Pros:
Infrastructure Sustainability: Protects the substantial capital sunk into CCI V1 by ensuring delivered primitives (Circle, LayerZero, Pyth, Dune) remain operational, performant, and fully maintained rather than orphaned.Institutional Onboarding: The addition of Fireblocks fills a major enterprise gap, allowing institutional market makers, asset managers, and corporate entities to securely hold and deploy Cardano native assets.
Risk Mitigation via Hedging: Capital management parameters mandate that funds are ring-fenced and converted into stablecoins by the administrator, mitigating treasury exposure to ADA market volatility during the 12-month execution window.
Accountability & Governance Oversight: Funds are gated behind Intersect's milestone-based smart contracts, requiring verified Statements of Work (SoWs) before execution drawdowns are released.
Cons:
High Treasury Concentration: A ₳23,000,000 withdrawal following a previous ₳70,000,000 disbursement represents a significant concentration of ecosystem reserves flowing into centralized infrastructure partners.Recurring Cost Trajectory: Transitioning from "launch readiness" to an annual "maintenance and enhancement" contract sets a precedent for long-term recurring liabilities against the Treasury, rather than establishing immediately self-sustaining commercial models.
Final Recommendation
Vote: YESRationale: Core infrastructure primitives like native stablecoin pathways (Circle/USDCx), secure oracle feeds (Pyth), cross-chain interoperability protocols (LayerZero), and professional data indexing matrices (Dune) represent the bare minimum technical requirements needed to compete in modern Web3. Allowing these integrations to lapse after the foundational investments made in V1 would result in severe ecosystem regression. Furthermore, adding Fireblocks addresses a critical bottleneck regarding institutional liquidity inflow. While the capital request is substantial, Intersect's use of milestone-based smart contract gating and stablecoin ring-fencing provides the necessary structural safeguards to protect community funds. The technical and economic utility of these integrations justifies the treasury expenditure.
Latin American Ecosystem Impact: For the Latin American community, this governance action is highly consequential. Access to reliable, low-friction fiat-to-crypto rails via native USDCx and LayerZero bridges dramatically lowers the barriers for local developers building decentralized applications tailored to local remittance, micro-finance, and inflation-hedging use cases. Furthermore, integrating Dune Analytics and Pyth oracles equips local universities, developers, and tech startups across LatAm with enterprise-grade data feeds and analytics toolsets necessary to build robust, secure, and globally competitive DeFi applications directly on Cardano.
- Yes 804.1K ₳ Rationale
LayerZero for cross-chain messaging, Circle's USDCx for stablecoin liquidity, Pyth for reliable price feeds, and now Fireblocks to bring institutional capital in through infrastructure they already trust. Letting these lapse would strand assets and users at the door. This is how ecosystems compound.
- No 793K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 785.2K ₳ Rationale
The proposal funds critical infrastructure that materially improves Cardano's competitiveness, institutional readiness, and long-term ecosystem value. While transparency could be stronger, the strategic importance of the integrations outweighs the concerns
- Yes 765.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 762.8K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 762.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 717.1K ₳ No rationale
- No 654.5K ₳ Rationale
Intersect, Cardano Foundation, IOG, EMURGO, and Midnight Foundation are once again asking for money from the Cardano treasury.
This time they want to withdraw 23,000,000 ADA for CCI V2 — the continuation of the Cardano Critical Integrations program.
Previously, CCI V1 already received 70,000,000 ADA.
And this is the main issue:
the first phase still does not look fully completed, some integrations are still ongoing, yet a new funding request is already being pushed.
🚫 I VOTE NO
This is becoming a dangerous trend for Cardano.
First, tens of millions of ADA are taken from the treasury.
Then the work is still not fully finished.
Then another request appears: “give more money or infrastructure may stop.”That is not how trust is built.
If CCI V1 received 70 million ADA, the community should first receive:
— completed results
— full transparency
— clear measurable value for the ecosystemOnly after that should another 23 million ADA request even be considered.
My position is simple:
results first — new money later.
DReps spend time analyzing proposals, voting, and carrying responsibility for the ecosystem, yet there is still no meaningful support for their work.
But somehow millions of ADA are always available for licenses, administration, legal structures, maintenance, and external integrations.
That is why my vote is NO.
I registered as a DRep and I am ready to help shape the future of the ecosystem.
Optimistic about building the largest digital community in the world. 🖤My DRep ID:
➡️ drep1y269ehxj30k4vfzfc2z84v0xykd3amuy2xn0kv9zf8rhcec2fg2jrMore details: https://t.me/PROCENT666/338
- Yes 624.8K ₳ Rationale
I voted YES on CCI V1, and I'm voting YES here, but with lower conviction and a direct flag to Intersect and the Steering Committee about what needs to improve in the eventuality of V3.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
I voted YES on CCI V1, and I'm voting YES here, but with lower conviction and a direct flag to Intersect and the Steering Committee about what needs to improve in the eventuality of V3.
The core case for this proposal is simple and I accept it: infrastructure doesn't run for free. Circle USDCx requires attestor operations. LayerZero requires DVN and endpoint operations. Pyth requires oracle feed continuity. Dune requires schema maintenance. These are the operating costs of live integrations that Cardano dApps and users are already depending on. Letting them lapse to prove a fiscal point would be a significantly more expensive decision than the maintenance cost. The ₳70M invested in V1 doesn't become worthless on its own; it becomes worthless if the ecosystem stops paying to keep it running.
The Fireblocks addition is legitimately compelling. Institutional custody is one of the real structural barriers to regulated entities, exchanges, and large tokenization projects building on Cardano. Fireblocks runs custody and operations infrastructure for over 1,800 financial institutions globally. Native Cardano support including the technical foundations for ADA staking and governance delegation isn't just about institutional ADA holdings; it's about making it operationally practical for banks, fintechs, and tokenization projects to interact with Cardano's full feature set. This comes later than it should have, but that's another argument for voting yes now, not for waiting longer.
That said, two concerns go on the record explicitly. First, the 90% budget opacity is a structural problem at this scale. I understand that commercial contracts with Circle, LayerZero, Pyth, Fireblocks, and Dune contain confidentiality provisions and this is standard in enterprise software, but the community is being asked to approve ₳20.7M on the basis of a percentage allocation and a trust relationship with the Steering Committee. Intersect and the Pentad should work to negotiate maximum disclosure rights into V3 commercial agreements from the start, not retroactively. Second, the KPI framework needs to mature significantly. "Continuation of SLAs" is not a milestone; it's a definition. By the V2 bi-annual report, I expect to see specific uptime targets, transaction volume data, adoption metrics for each integration, and a concrete Fireblocks completion milestone. V3, when it comes, should be built on that evidentiary foundation. I'm voting yes on the infrastructure and the track record of the administrative structure. I'm putting Intersect on notice that the accountability framework needs to catch up to the ask. - No 601.8K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 596.3K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 589.2K ₳ Rationale
My yes vote supports continued funding for critical Cardano integrations already delivered or underway, ensuring they are maintained, optimised and extended over the next 12 months. Going for #1
- Yes 587.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 559.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 534.3K ₳ Rationale
We must continue to blaze the path while the entire industry struggles along and continue to be the front runners.
- Yes 487.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 481.5K ₳ Rationale
- Yes 445.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 443.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 431.4K ₳ No rationale
- No 426.2K ₳ Rationale
Pentad V1 is 3/5 completed.
Complete V1 first, then we talk. Thank you. - Abstain 385.6K ₳ Rationale
Abstaining, as I’m part of the Cardano Constitution Committee Tingvard.
Reading proposals and staying updated, just like you.
Thanks to all fellow DReps who are also doing the hard work.
Follow and DM me on X: @kenerik if you have any questions. - Yes 382.6K ₳ No rationale
- No 377.3K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 365.3K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 328.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 314.4K ₳ Rationale
I vote YES on Critical Integrations V2. I don't like that 90% of the budget is bundled, but voting no will hurt Cardano and waste our initial 70M ADA investment from V1. This keeps our infrastructure alive. I dislike the lack of transparency due to NDAs, but I understand it.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
I vote YES on Critical Integrations V2.
What I Like
- Fast Progress: The Pentad worked very hard and delivered critical items much faster than standard Cardano development timelines.
- Necessary Infrastructure: These integrations—including stablecoins, cross-chain bridges, and oracles—are tools that Cardano absolutely needs to grow and compete.
What I Do Not Like
- Too Much Bundling: Around 90% of the ₳23,000,000 request is grouped into a single category for "Integration and maintenance costs". Because of NDAs, we cannot see the exact financial breakdown. I really do not like this fact and it makes me reluctant, but I understand it.
- Low Initial Usage: The real market demand for some of these tools is still unproven. For example, the actual transaction volume and liquidity for USDCx remain quite low.
- Fear of Yearly Fees: I am worried that these integrations will become a permanent burden that requires millions of ADA from the treasury every single year.
Final Decision
Even with these concerns, voting NO is not the right choice. Stopping now would hurt the ecosystem and completely waste the ₳70,000,000 we already invested in Phase 1. I am voting YES to protect our progress, but I ask that the Pentad also provide a report with clear data on real user adoption.
- Abstain 313.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 298.6K ₳ Rationale
Voting YES on Cardano Critical Integrations V2
Considerations
- USDCx has been nice
- We gave them ₳70M 6 months ago
- The Cardano Foundation is involved and I'm unhappy with them because they don't have a single community-elected board member
- Emergo is involved and I'm unhappy with them because they control an unhealthy amount of voting power
- It sounds like much of this ₳23M is going to be a recurring cost
- We just got USDCx, why are we paying for it again so soon?
- At 4 months old, USDCx has a supply of just over $19M
- USDM, which is over 2 years old, has a supply of just over $12M
- At over 3 years old Djed has a supply of about $3.3M
Statement
We've seen initial success with USDCx. We don't want to half-commit to initiatives. I'm voting in support of this proposal.
References
- Cardano Critical Integrations Budget - My Vote From November 29th 2025
- I voted YES
- Cardano Critical Integrations ₳70M Withdrawal - My Vote From December 29th 2025
- I voted YES
- Enacted
- Cerkoryn makes a good point
- Cardanoscan USDCx Details
- Cardanoscan USDM Details
- Djed Details From CoinMarketCap
Signed,
William DoyleYour friendly neighbourhood DRep!
$computerman
drep1yfpgzfymq6tt9c684e7vzata8r5pl4w84fmrjqeztdqw0sgpzw3nt
@william00000010 on 𝕏
contact@williamdoyle.ca - No 295.2K ₳ No rationale
- No 279.5K ₳ No rationale