Cardano dOSPO and OMF Program
161 DReps voted · 63 with a rationale · 6 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- No861.5K ₳No rationale
- No825.2K ₳Rationale
Impact Assessment (Pros/Cons)
Pros
Systemic Security: Mitigates critical single-point-of-failure vulnerabilities in core Cardano infrastructure by providing structured, long-term retention capital for open-source maintainers.Data-Driven Capital Allocation: Utilizes empirical dependency centrality data to objectively allocate maintenance funds, reducing political bias and cronyism.
Accountability Guardrails: Incorporates clear governance safeguards, including dual advisory council oversight (Technical and External) and a mechanism allowing the community to vote out the independent operator.
Cons
Excessive Financial Commitment: Requesting 12,000,000 ADA in a single, multi-year block locks up substantial treasury liquidity. Funding a 36-month horizon upfront eliminates the community's leverage to evaluate performance at shorter, critical intervals.Lack of Milestone-Gated Tranches: Committing the entire budget without formal milestone-gated tranches exposes the treasury to high capital risk if execution stalls, priorities shift, or ecosystem requirements evolve before 2029.
Final Recommendation
Vote: NORationale
While the technical intentions of establishing a dOSPO and securing core software dependencies are highly commendable, the financial structure of this proposal presents an unacceptable risk to the treasury. Requesting a massive 12,000,000 ADA payout covering a rigid 36-month horizon is a structural deal-breaker.Sound treasury management requires a high level of agility and ongoing accountability. Committing capital across a three-year period in a single governance action severely restricts the community's ability to pivot or halt funding if deliverables fall short. The proposers are strongly encouraged to restructure this initiative into smaller, sequential tranches—such as a 6-month or 12-month pilot phase—gated by explicit, verifiable milestones. Once a smaller tranche is successfully executed and validated by the community, subsequent funding blocks can be requested with confidence.
Latin American Ecosystem Impact Suffix
For the Latin American community, initiatives like the CodeForUs bounty program represent a vital opportunity to integrate local engineering talent into core protocol development. However, protecting the long-term financial health and decentralization of the global Cardano Treasury takes precedence. Demanding smaller, milestone-gated funding tranches sets a healthy governance precedent that ensures treasury resources remain equitably distributed, sustainable, and continuously accessible to regional builders throughout Latin America. - No798.6K ₳Rationale
The Cardano treasury already funds Intersect MBO, which was explicitly chartered to handle open source coordination, maintainer support, and contributor programs. This proposal acknowledges Intersect exists, states it was "not well suited" to the task, and proposes replacing it with a new independent entity — also funded by the treasury. Creating a parallel structure does not fix the problems identified; it duplicates governance overhead while leaving the root causes unaddressed. The appropriate response to Intersect underperforming is to reform Intersect or redirect its mandate, not to fund a competitor entity with 12M ADA.
- Yes798.4K ₳Rationale
Voting YES. Cardano’s ecosystem increasingly depends on critical open-source infrastructure maintained by too few people with weak long-term incentives and little succession planning. This proposal directly addresses a real systemic risk through dependency-driven maintainer funding, contributor pipelines, and ecosystem-wide sustainment mechanisms with strong transparency and governance safeguards.
- No794.5K ₳Rationale
Not against the idea or proposer at all, but the matrix of timing, scope, and risk make it a NO for me presently.
- No717.5K ₳No rationale
- No705.1K ₳Rationale
No.
- No605.7K ₳Rationale
📌 CARDANO VOTE: dOSPO + OMF PROGRAM — REQUEST FOR ₳12,000,000 ADA FROM THE TREASURY OVER 36 MONTHS
Another “ecosystem support” proposal where millions of ADA are requested from the treasury under the usual slogans about open source, sustainability, security, and growth.
👉 What they want:
• ₳6M ADA — developer and maintainer funding
• ₳3M ADA — training and onboarding new contributors
• ₳2M ADA — management, councils, legal and operations
• hackathons, bounties, reports, audits and more bureaucracyIn reality:
Cardano is once again being asked to finance a massive administrative structure instead of delivering direct value to the network.⚠️ Same cycle again:
• ask for millions
• publish presentations and reports
• create more councils and structures
• ask for more millions laterMeanwhile:
The treasury keeps shrinking.
ADA price and adoption do not magically grow from endless governance bureaucracy.🗣️ My vote: NO ❌
First deliver results.
First finish previous initiatives.
First prove real value for Cardano.
Then ask for another ₳12 million.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:
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https://mredgarcross.com/📌 Note: This post is purely informational and analytical. It does not contain calls for action, protests, or violations of the law. Everything stated reflects the personal opinion and analysis of the author.
#Cardano #ADA #DRep #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #CardanoGovernance #OpenSource #DeFi #Treasury #Governance #CryptoNews
- No590.5K ₳No rationale
- No589.7K ₳Rationale
I am voting no because the proposal identifies a genuine problem, but the 12 million ADA request is too broad and structurally complex for the evidence provided. A stronger approach would prefer more targeted, accountable funding for clearly identified critical maintainers and infrastructure.
- No587.6K ₳No rationale
- No533.9K ₳Rationale
No, Fiscal responsibility is critical right now. Cardano is the decentralization and we must fund other critical proposals ATM.
- No499K ₳Rationale
- Yes466.2K ₳No rationale
- No438.7K ₳No rationale
- Abstain385.2K ₳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. - No383K ₳No rationale
- No381.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes365.7K ₳No rationale
- No360.3K ₳No rationale
- No314.4K ₳Rationale
I am voting NO on the Cardano dOSPO and OMF Program. While I strongly support the mission of open-source sustainability, an upfront 36-month commitment of ₳12,000,000 is too large an ask for our treasury at this time.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
I deeply respect the intent behind this proposal; sustaining our open-source maintainers is undeniably critical for Cardano's long-term resilience. However, my guiding principle as a DRep is responsible and justifiable treasury spending.
The way we currently operate relies on an annual budget cycle. We cannot responsibly commit future years' funds within the current fiscal period, because doing so locks up liquidity and restricts those funds from being allocated to other projects and pressing needs in our ecosystem.
I encourage the proposers to return with a revised approach: a leaner proposal split into 12-month funding rounds. This would fit our annual budget structure and significantly reduce the upfront ask. Additionally, this approach allows the community to appropriately evaluate the program's effectiveness before renewing funding in subsequent cycles.
- No313.4K ₳No rationale
- No300.6K ₳Rationale
Proposal PDF not attached. Proposals must be submitted as an easy-to-read PDF file.
- Abstain298.9K ₳Rationale
Voting Abstain on Cardano dOSPO and OMF Program
Statement
This proposal is not going to pass regardless of how I feel about it. With 8 days to go and over 98% of votes being against it I don't feel the need to spend the time investigating this proposal. To reclaim my time I am abstaining.
Signed,
William DoyleYour friendly neighbourhood DRep!
$computerman
drep1yfpgzfymq6tt9c684e7vzata8r5pl4w84fmrjqeztdqw0sgpzw3nt
@william00000010 on 𝕏
contact@williamdoyle.ca - No294.4K ₳No rationale
- No279.8K ₳No rationale
- NoRevoted271.8K ₳History
Earlier votes
No1mo agoSuperseded
- No270.1K ₳Rationale
I am voting NO on the “Cardano dOSPO and OMF Program.” I agree that Cardano needs a more robust and sustainable approach to open-source maintenance, and I support the goal of a decentralised OSPO and Open Maintenance Fund. However, this proposal requests a large, multi‑year budget (on the order of 12M ADA over several years) for a still-early organisational structure, at a time when the 350M ADA Net Change Limit is already under pressure from multiple other high‑priority proposals. In the context of this year’s portfolio, I do not consider it prudent to allocate such a significant share of Treasury capacity to a long‑horizon programme that has not yet demonstrated outcomes at this scale under its proposed framework.
Compared with other 2026 proposals I have reviewed, this programme is less mature in terms of demonstrated delivery and phasing. The plan relies heavily on establishing new governance bodies, processes, and funding mechanisms, but offers relatively few concrete, near‑term milestones with measurable impact in the first 12–18 months, and limited evidence of prior results under the same structure. By contrast, I have already voted NO on other large proposals that had live mainnet usage and clearer KPIs, on the grounds of budget clarity, phasing, and Treasury risk. Maintaining a YES for a multi‑year dOSPO/OMF programme with a similar or larger cost profile, but less proven delivery, would be inconsistent with the standards I have applied elsewhere.
For a future proposal, I would look for a more phased approach: a smaller, tightly scoped initial Treasury allocation focused on a limited set of high‑impact maintenance targets, with clear 12–18 month milestones, public reporting, and an explicit review point before any multi‑year expansion. I would also expect clearer articulation of how this programme interacts with existing IO, Intersect, and community maintenance efforts to avoid overlap and double funding. Until those conditions are met, I cannot responsibly support this multi‑year Treasury withdrawal. - No261K ₳No rationale
- No260.2K ₳No rationale
- No245.5K ₳Rationale
The budget doesn't fully reconcile. WP2's line items sum to 5.7M, not the stated 6M - a 300K gap. The year-by-year summary does put WP2 at 6M, so the shortfall is specifically in WP2's own category table. Separately, the standalone Operations table totals 1.89M, while WP1's own category split is 1M staffing + 500K ops + 500K councils = 2M - two different breakdowns of the same budget. The top-line and year columns do reconcile to 12M, but these internals don't. WP3's 1M "program reserve" carries no treasury-return commitment, unlike WP2's portfolio reserve, WP5's activation reserve, and the operational contingency - so roughly 1M is discretionary spend with no return commitment. And "Mill Law Firm" is named as the auditor doing quarterly financial reviews, which is odd, since financial audits are typically an accounting-firm task rather than a law firm's.
- NoRevoted238.8K ₳Rationale
- Treasury runway is shrinking rapidly and must be protected. 1.51 - 1.62B ADA remains ($260M USD at ~0.16 USD/ADA). The 350M ADA 2026-27 NCL already risks ~21% treasury 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 with clear milestones, revenue/ADA return mechanisms, private co-funding, and proven traction. Target specific tech unlocks only when tied to measurable adoption impact. This builds real value without creating dependency.
Earlier votes
No1mo agoSuperseded
- Treasury runway is shrinking rapidly and must be protected. 1.51 - 1.62B ADA remains ($260M USD at ~0.16 USD/ADA). The 350M ADA 2026-27 NCL already risks ~21% treasury 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 with clear milestones, revenue/ADA return mechanisms, private co-funding, and proven traction. Target specific tech unlocks only when tied to measurable adoption impact. This builds real value without creating dependency.
- No234.2K ₳No rationale
- No233.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes232.7K ₳No rationale
- Abstain215.5K ₳No rationale
- Abstain207.6K ₳No rationale
- YesChanged200.5K ₳Rationale
I choose to trust Christian and support what he's trying to achieve with this.
Earlier votes
No2mo agoSuperseded
- No191.1K ₳No rationale
- No182.2K ₳No rationale
- No178.9K ₳No rationale
- No142.5K ₳Rationale
Funding in smaller and verifiable stages.
- No137.4K ₳No rationale
- Abstain131.9K ₳No rationale
- No110.9K ₳No rationale
- No92.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain69.4K ₳No rationale
- No55.9K ₳Rationale
i like this, because its a truly independent initiative. no intersect, no founding entities. great stuff. However, I have 2 critical problems with it that dont let me vote yes for this at this time. Please resubmit with the mentioned adjustments below.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
2m ada management overhead is a lot of overhead for 10m ada of total OS support budget. 500k usd in current ADAUSD terms is not a lot for 3y, granted, but the initiative is not a full time job and the upside for Christian, personally, is massive. Gambling on getting rich from the treasury should not be part of the proposal.. Also granted, Christian does just as likely take the risk of the downside of denominating it purely in ada, and I appreciate that he does.
To be clear: i dont say he shouldnt get a salary, but 3y is a long time, and if prices go up, the Cardano treasury is massively overpaying for what this should be worth. Thus, Id appreciate a clause on the upside of this proposal, like a cap in USD terms.I very much miss how this effort relates to parallel efforts of say Intersect's TSC retainer program, Intersect's OS support budget, CF budgets, Catalyst funding, and others. Given all the existing efforts, there is high change that projects could get double funded. Id rather see this proposal to fund projects, and the others to donate their budgets back to the treasury, but there is some highly coordinated effort needed to make that happen.
- No52.4K ₳No rationale
- No50.5K ₳No rationale