Governance Incentives Framework 2026
83 DReps voted · 39 with a rationale
Open a row to read the rationale.
- No1.1M ₳Rationale
I have been raising this issue since governance went live, so I understand and accept the underlying problem. What I reject is the cheque being presented as the solution.
There is credible evidence of an incentive deficit. Active DRep participation is declining, voting power remains heavily concentrated, and unpaid governance predictably favors wealthy, institutionally supported, or commercially interested participants. A remarkable discovery, if one has somehow avoided observing how incentives work in real life.
Cardano needs compensated governance. That part is not controversial.
What is difficult to justify is ₳4.2 million for a package consisting of research, modelling, engagement, data infrastructure, dashboards, administration, another paper, one controlled pilot, and a future CIP. Apparently, after all these years, the ecosystem still requires a multimillion-ADA expedition to determine that people participate more consistently when participation is not entirely unpaid.The proposal itself acknowledges 49 related initiatives, alongside separately funded IOR work. Yet coordination is offered after approval, rather than a clear division of labour being agreed before the Treasury is asked to fund the programme. That is a very convenient sequence. It protects the scope of the proposal, while leaving the Treasury to discover later whether the work overlaps with anything already funded.
The commercial case is equally difficult to assess. Workstream totals tell us almost nothing about staffing levels and roles, day rates and contractor costs, pilot rewards, infrastructure expenditure, ownership of resulting assets and intellectual property, decision-making authority, measurable delivery milestones, and conditions for stopping or reducing expenditure. This ain't trivial and it's already sloppy not to address these items.
Lastly, there is the 12% contingency, worth ₳437k, added before the basic cost structure is visible. Contingency is sensible when the underlying budget is transparent and the risks are defined. Here, it risks functioning as a fee for uncertainty, paid in advance by the Treasury. How convenient.
Cardano needs compensated governance; it does not need ₳4.2 million to rediscover payroll and construct dashboards explaining why unpaid work is unpopular.
- No928.6K ₳No rationale
- No925.5K ₳No rationale
- No800.9K ₳Rationale
NO — Strong strategic relevance, but insufficiently rigorous budget and delivery justification.
The proposal addresses an important and underdeveloped area of Cardano governance and contains several promising components, particularly the empirical pilot, public dataset, modelling and governance-integration pathway.
However, the ₳4.21m budget is not sufficiently substantiated at workstream level, with substantial allocations to administration, conceptualization and contingency. Several KPIs measure activity rather than outcomes, while the proposal does not provide sufficiently rigorous predefined criteria for validating incentive mechanisms or demonstrating causal effects on governance participation and decentralization.
The controlled pilot is potentially valuable, but its methodology, experimental controls, preregistration, statistical evaluation and independence safeguards are not sufficiently specified to justify treating it as strong empirical evidence.
I would support a revised proposal with a more granular budget, stronger outcome-based acceptance criteria, a more rigorous experimental design, clearer independent research capacity, and stronger linkage between expenditure and measurable governance outcomes.
- No795.8K ₳No rationale
- Abstain623.3K ₳Rationale
I understand the importance of research into sustainable governance participation and appreciates the proposal’s evidence based approach. I have reservations on the over 4 million $ADA budget, potential overlap with existing funded research and whether the proposed KPIs sufficiently measures real governance participation. I don’t have enough confidence to support or reject the proposal at this stage, so I am abstaining.
- No590.1K ₳No rationale
- No545K ₳Rationale
Feedback on the "Governance Incentives Framework 2026" Proposal
Thank you to the proposal team for introducing the Governance Incentives Framework 2026. I fully agree that the increasing concentration of voting power is an important governance topic that warrants thoughtful attention. However, after carefully reviewing the proposal details and the publicly available completion reports of the team's past projects, I remain hesitant to support this treasury withdrawal of ₳4,207,967 at this stage.
Public Completion Records and Verifiable Limitations of Past Projects
To ground this discussion in objective reference points, I reviewed the public pages and completion reports for the team's relevant completed Catalyst projects:
- Smart Pack: parcels damage verification system on Cardano
- Project ID: 1100259｜Catalyst Project Page
- Project Managers: Eric den Boer & Sebastian Pereira
- Timeline: 04/24/2024 – 02/15/2025
- Status: Marked as Complete; fully funded.
- Key Completion Details: Deliverables included freight calculation sheets, an AI photo database, ChatGPT damage evaluation demo videos, backend screenshots, test transaction hashes, UI mockups, workflow recordings, LiDAR tests, early app store links, and web demos.
- Reported Limitations: The “Next Steps” section explicitly notes: “We are in contact with a few agricultural producers in the US... These discussions are in a very early phase, so for now we do not have concrete plans to deploy this solution in a more realistic environment.” The team also thoughtfully pointed out: “Cardano is not very friendly to mobile devices... very slow... In a mass commercial production environment, this will be a severe problem.”
- Littlefish - Coordinating Action
- Closeout Video: Watch on YouTube
- Status: Marked as Complete.
- Verifiable Limitations: The closeout video has recorded approximately 87 views. The disclosed community size at the time was on the order of around 100 members, and subsequent public sources do not indicate significant transition into a widely adopted coordination platform.
- Cardano Smart (AI Documentation & Developer Assistant)
- Milestone Page: Catalyst Milestones
- Verifiable Limitations: Although successfully closed out with open-source deliverables, publicly visible GitHub activity remains quiet, with limited records of ongoing user traction or broad integration into mainstream developer workflows.
These projects were all officially marked as completed within the Catalyst system, demonstrating that milestone deliverables were fully satisfied. However, information in the public completion reports suggests that evidence of subsequent real-world adoption and sustained long-term usage remains relatively modest. This leads me to remain prudent regarding whether allocating over 4.2 million ADA toward another extensive research and framework initiative will seamlessly translate into real-world governance adoption and long-term, measurable value.
Perspective on Problem Diagnosis
The proposal highlights that “one Constitutional Committee consortium retired due to lack of compensation” and that “there is no systematic, data-driven approach to determine how to incentivize governance participants.”
I fully acknowledge that appropriate incentives play a crucial role in sustaining active participation. However, I am not entirely convinced that this necessitates an immediate “investment of ₳4.2M into a comprehensive research framework.” A more direct and pragmatic approach might involve substantive refinements to the Constitution or Guardrails, or the rollout of clear, actionable incentive mechanisms.
Preferred Direction for Governance Incentives
I strongly favor establishing an incentive mechanism for DReps, but I gently advocate that incentives should ideally stem from sustainable non-Treasury models. For instance, delegators could consider allocating a small, fixed, or dynamic percentage of their own staking rewards to compensate their chosen DReps.
This operates similarly to a "delegation service fee": delegators receiving rewards from the ecosystem reasonably support the operational costs of their elected representatives. Linking rewards to engagement, dialogue quality, and voting participation creates a healthy feedback loop—allowing dedicated DReps to receive fair compensation while allowing natural delegation choices to optimize resource allocation. This approach minimizes reliance on the Treasury while fostering an active and accountable governance culture.
Conclusion
Given the finite nature of Treasury resources, the modest long-term adoption observed in past similar projects, and the ability of existing tools to cover foundational needs, I believe allocating ₳4.2 million ADA to this research framework may not represent the highest priority at this time.
I look forward to seeing concrete proposals that directly address structural challenges (such as voting power concentration and silent non-voting dynamics) through sustainable incentive models that do not depend primarily on treasury funding.
Based on publicly verifiable records and the available information, I am unable to support this proposal at present. However, if the project team can provide additional context regarding the ongoing adoption of previous initiatives, or demonstrate why alternative lower-cost pathways are insufficient, I would be very open to re-evaluating my perspective.
- No436.1K ₳Rationale
This is just too little output for too much requested budget.
Plus: I'm not even sure if “incentives” are our problem, if we should create even more opportunities were people can (try to) grab some money for nothing at the expense of the wider community.
- Yes409.2K ₳No rationale
- No347.7K ₳No rationale
- Abstain282.6K ₳No rationale
- No272.2K ₳No rationale
- No246K ₳Rationale
This is duplicate work, there's already a working group funded by the treasury working on this.
- No233.1K ₳Rationale
Vote: NO
I am voting NO on the Governance Incentives Framework 2026 proposal in its current form.
I want to be clear that I am not opposed to the underlying objective of this proposal. Cardano governance needs sustainable participation, and the questions surrounding DRep engagement, voter participation, concentration of voting power, and the long-term sustainability of governance actors are important ones.
I also believe there is value in researching whether carefully designed incentives could improve governance participation without undermining decentralization.
My concern is with the level of specificity provided for the funding request itself.
The proposal requests more than ₳4.2 million from the Cardano Treasury to research, model, test, and pilot potential governance incentive mechanisms. I understand that the purpose of this work is to determine what an effective incentive framework might ultimately look like. I therefore do not expect the proposers to already know the final reward formula or permanent compensation model before the research is completed.
However, there is an important distinction between leaving the final research outcome open and leaving the structure of the funded experiment insufficiently defined.
Before authorizing a Treasury withdrawal of this size, I believe DReps and ADA holders should have greater clarity regarding how the funded pilot will operate, how Treasury funds will be controlled, and what safeguards will govern the experiment.
In particular, I would like to see clearer answers to several questions.
How will participants in the real-ADA incentive pilot be selected?
What eligibility requirements will apply?
How much of the overall Treasury request is specifically intended for incentive distribution, and how much is allocated to research, administration, development, community engagement, data collection, and other expenses?
How will ADA used in the pilot be distributed among participants?
What limits or caps will be placed on individual distributions?
Who will have authority over those distributions, and what oversight will exist over that process?
What safeguards will prevent conflicts of interest between the parties designing, administering, evaluating, and potentially benefiting from the incentive system?
What mechanisms will be used to prevent gaming, superficial participation, vote farming, or behavior designed primarily to maximize rewards rather than improve governance quality?
How will the pilot avoid reinforcing the very concentration of voting power that the proposal identifies as a concern?
What objective criteria will determine whether the pilot is successful, unsuccessful, or produces mixed results?
What conditions would cause the experiment to be modified, paused, or terminated?
What happens to ADA that is budgeted but ultimately not required?
How will expenditures and distributions be reported to the community throughout the project?
These questions matter because incentive systems can change behavior in ways that are difficult to reverse once financial expectations become established.
Cardano should be especially careful when introducing monetary incentives into governance. Poorly designed incentives could encourage participation in quantity while reducing participation in quality. They could reward activity rather than judgment, create new opportunities for gaming, advantage already dominant governance actors, or unintentionally encourage further concentration of delegated voting power.
The proposal itself recognizes many of these risks, which is one reason I believe the subject deserves serious research.
But recognizing those risks also strengthens the argument for clearly defining the boundaries and safeguards of the experiment before Treasury funds are approved.
A research proposal does not need to predetermine its conclusions. It should, however, clearly define the experiment being funded.
For a Treasury withdrawal exceeding four million ADA, I believe the community should be able to understand with reasonable precision what is being purchased, how funds will be deployed, what financial controls will apply, how success will be measured, and how the community will be protected if the experiment produces unintended consequences.
At this stage, I do not believe the proposal provides enough clarity in those areas for me to responsibly support the withdrawal.
This should not be interpreted as opposition to governance incentives themselves.
I am open to the possibility that governance incentives could eventually play a useful role in Cardano. Meaningful governance participation requires time, research, analysis, communication, and accountability, and there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether those contributions should be compensated.
But supporting the research question does not automatically mean supporting every funding structure proposed to investigate it.
Treasury governance requires us to evaluate not only whether an idea has merit, but whether the specific request before us is sufficiently defined, accountable, and proportionate.
My responsibility as a DRep is not simply to determine whether I like the intended outcome. It is also to determine whether I can reasonably explain to my delegators what their Treasury is funding and what protections exist around that expenditure.
In this case, I do not yet believe I can do that with sufficient confidence.
For those reasons, I am voting NO in its current form.
I would be willing to reconsider a revised proposal that provides greater detail regarding the pilot design, participant selection, distribution mechanics, spending controls, oversight, conflict-of-interest protections, anti-gaming safeguards, measurable success criteria, reporting requirements, and treatment of unused Treasury funds.
Governance experimentation can be valuable, and Cardano should continue exploring ways to improve participation and decentralization.
But experimentation funded by the Treasury should have clearly defined boundaries and accountability from the beginning.
Before committing more than ₳4.2 million, I believe we should understand not only why this research is worth pursuing, but also how the experiment will be conducted, how Treasury ADA will be controlled, who may receive it, under what conditions, and with what safeguards.
Until those questions are answered more clearly, I can't responsibly support this Treasury withdrawal.
- No189.6K ₳No rationale
- No184.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes166.5K ₳Rationale
I am voting Yes because I believe Cardano should investigate sustainable ways to compensate the people who put meaningful time and effort into decentralized governance. I am casting this vote with the assumption that, as a relatively small DRep, I may receive nothing from the proposed pilot under its current middle-out design. My support therefore isn't based on an expectation of personal compensation.
I do hope the pilot remains responsive to the data and community feedback it generates. A compensation model intended to support decentralized governance should ultimately provide a realistic path for active smaller DReps to participate as well, rather than concentrating rewards among a relatively narrow band of already-established representatives.
The purpose of a pilot is to test assumptions against actual behavior. If the evidence shows that the initial eligibility thresholds exclude too many active smaller DReps, I would hope those findings inform the final framework and whatever incentive mechanism is subsequently brought back to governance for approval.
For now, I support funding the research and controlled experiment because Cardano needs evidence about what works before committing the Treasury to a permanent DRep compensation system.
- No125.1K ₳No rationale
- No86.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes85.6K ₳Rationale
EN — iFly (SWADA) votes YES.
First, my interest: I'm an active DRep and I run a stake pool. If this work leads to DRep compensation, I could get paid by it. Saying so up front.
Why I want this research done: we are losing DRep decentralisation, fast. Active DReps fell in every 12-epoch period of the first year. Concentration went up, not down (Gini 0.92 to 0.94). Something like 11-16 DReps now control 51% of the voting power. A Constitutional Committee consortium quit because nobody was paying them. Governance power is now more concentrated than stake is — and stake concentration is the thing everyone watches. Meanwhile being a DRep costs you: a locked 500 ada deposit earning nothing, transaction fees, and far more importantly, hours of real work per proposal. Right now you pay to participate. That is exactly backwards, and it quietly selects for people who can afford it.
WHAT I WANT OUT OF THIS — and I'll be blunt about it:
The goal is MORE DReps. Not better-paid big DReps. If this research comes back recommending payment simply proportional to delegation, it will have made concentration worse and wasted 4.2 million ada. The measure of success is whether the number of independent, genuinely active DReps goes UP.
So find a way to pay small DReps proportionally more. Somebody with a few thousand ada delegated to them, who reads the proposals and writes real rationales, should not be out of pocket for it. That is the person this framework has to reach. Lowering that barrier is how you grow the number of representatives, and growing the number is how you fix the concentration.
Now the hard part, and please don't dodge it: paying small DReps more per ada invites gaming. A large holder can split their stake across many small DReps they control and farm the higher rate. That's a Sybil attack wearing a different hat. I know this makes the design harder. Do it anyway. Do NOT let 'we couldn't solve the Sybil problem' become the excuse for a safe proportional model that just pays the incumbents — that outcome is worse than doing nothing, because it spends treasury money entrenching the exact problem we're trying to fix.
Some directions I think are worth testing:
Anchor everything to delegated stake, because stake is scarce and can't be duplicated. A flat payment per DRep is an open invitation to spin up bots.
Use a floor and a ceiling. A minimum delegation to qualify makes bot DReps expensive, since each one has to attract real stake. Earnings that flatten out past a saturation point stop anyone chasing delegation purely for the money. This is the same shape as k and saturation for stake pools — a mechanism every operator already understands, and it works.
Don't treat 'published a rationale' as proof of work. Text is cheap to generate now. It only means something on top of a real stake floor.
And keep in mind some competition for delegation is healthy. A good representative should attract stake. What needs to go is chasing delegation purely as income, disconnected from whether you're doing the job well.
WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT THIS PROPOSAL: the money goes as one lump sum to an ordinary key-controlled wallet. No escrow, no milestone payments, no multisig. The refund promises are words, not mechanisms. The detailed budget is deliberately kept private, so we're voting on eleven summary numbers. Admin and conceptualisation are about 22% of the total before any research comes out, while the independent audit is 3% — and the auditor isn't named and gets paid out of the grant.
I'm voting YES anyway, because the problem is real and urgent and the design questions are genuinely hard enough to be worth researching properly. But I want escrowed, milestone-released funding, the full budget published, and a named auditor. If milestones aren't met, I'll back returning the money to the treasury.
SV — iFly (SWADA) röstar JA.
Först mitt intresse: jag är aktiv DRep och driver en stakepool. Om det här arbetet leder till ersättning för DReps kan jag komma att få betalt. Det säger jag rakt ut.
Varför jag vill att forskningen görs: vi håller på att tappa decentraliseringen bland DReps, snabbt. Antalet aktiva DReps sjönk under varje tolvepoksperiod under det första året. Koncentrationen ökade i stället för att minska (Gini 0,92 till 0,94). Ungefär 11-16 DReps kontrollerar nu 51 % av röststyrkan. Ett konsortium i konstitutionsutskottet hoppade av för att ingen betalade dem. Styrningsmakten är nu mer koncentrerad än vad staken är — och det är stake-koncentrationen alla håller ögonen på. Samtidigt kostar det att vara DRep: en låst deposition på 500 ada som inte ger något, transaktionsavgifter, och framför allt timmar av verkligt arbete per förslag. Just nu betalar man för att delta. Det är precis bakvänt, och det sållar tyst fram dem som har råd.
VAD JAG VILL FÅ UT AV DET HÄR — och jag säger det rakt:
Målet är FLER DReps. Inte bättre betalda stora DReps. Om forskningen kommer tillbaka och rekommenderar ersättning rakt proportionell mot delegering har den gjort koncentrationen värre och slösat bort 4,2 miljoner ada. Måttet på framgång är om antalet oberoende, verkligt aktiva DReps ÖKAR.
Så hitta ett sätt att betala små DReps proportionellt mer. Någon med några tusen ada delegerat till sig, som läser förslagen och skriver riktiga motiveringar, ska inte förlora på det. Det är den personen ramverket måste nå. Att sänka den tröskeln är hur man får fler representanter, och fler representanter är hur man löser koncentrationen.
Nu det svåra, och snälla, smit inte från det: att betala små DReps mer per ada inbjuder till utnyttjande. En stor innehavare kan dela upp sin stake på många små DReps under eget inflytande och håva in den högre ersättningen. Det är en Sybil-attack i annan skepnad. Jag vet att det gör designen svårare. Gör det ändå. Låt INTE 'vi kunde inte lösa Sybil-problemet' bli ursäkten för en trygg proportionell modell som bara betalar dem som redan sitter där — det utfallet är sämre än att inte göra något alls, för då används statskassans pengar till att cementera precis det problem vi försöker lösa.
Några riktningar jag tycker är värda att testa:
Förankra allt i delegerad stake, för stake är knappt och kan inte dupliceras. En fast ersättning per DRep är en öppen inbjudan att starta bottar.
Använd ett golv och ett tak. Ett krav på minsta delegering gör bot-DReps dyra, eftersom var och en måste attrahera verklig stake. En ersättning som planar ut efter en mättnadspunkt gör att ingen jagar delegering bara för pengarna. Det är samma form som k och mättnad för stakepooler — en mekanism varje operatör redan förstår, och den fungerar.
Betrakta inte 'publicerade en motivering' som bevis på arbete. Text är billig att generera nu. Det betyder något först ovanpå ett verkligt stake-golv.
Och kom ihåg att viss konkurrens om delegering är sund. En bra representant ska attrahera stake. Det som måste bort är att jaga delegering enbart som inkomst, frikopplat från om man gör jobbet bra.
VAD JAG INTE GILLAR MED FÖRSLAGET: pengarna går som en klumpsumma till en vanlig nyckelstyrd plånbok. Ingen spärr, inga delutbetalningar mot delmål, ingen multisig. Återbetalningslöftena är ord, inte mekanismer. Den detaljerade budgeten hålls medvetet privat, så vi röstar på elva sammanfattande siffror. Administration och konceptualisering är omkring 22 % av totalen innan något forskningsresultat kommit fram, medan den oberoende granskningen är 3 % — och granskaren är inte namngiven och betalas ur anslaget.
Jag röstar JA ändå, för problemet är verkligt och brådskande och designfrågorna är svåra nog att förtjäna ordentlig forskning. Men jag vill se spärrad finansiering som betalas ut mot delmål, hela budgeten publicerad och en namngiven granskare. Nås inte delmålen stödjer jag att pengarna går tillbaka till statskassan. - Abstain73.8K ₳No rationale
- No62.6K ₳Rationale
The topic matters and the methodology looks solid, but over 4 million ada for research whose main output is a framework document is hard to justify, particularly when the proposal itself notes overlap with Input Output Research's ongoing Cardano Vision 2026 work.
The core options for DRep compensation are also already well understood and openly debated in the community, see for example: https://dreptalk.com/t/options-for-drep-compensation-and-who-should-actually-pay-fo-in60zg/
I'd rather see that already-funded research conclude first.
- Abstain51.8K ₳Rationale
At its current state I will ABSTAIN from voting on this proposal. I do find value in an incentive program for Governance but feel this topic requires more discussion. 5M $ADA for research is not viable in my eyes at this time.
- Abstain45.3K ₳No rationale
- No14.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes6.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes2.7K ₳No rationale
- No2.5K ₳No rationale
- Abstain1.2K ₳No rationale
- Abstain292 ₳No rationale
- Yes167.7 ₳Rationale
Voting YES on Governance Incentives Framework 2026 (₳4.21M). As elected Cardano Civics Committee member, Unified Cardano Student Club President in Nigeria, and advocate for inclusive governance, I support rigorous research into sustainable incentives for DReps and other actors. Current participation costs time and money, which risks concentrating power and excluding voices from emerging markets and student communities like those I work with in Africa. A well-designed framework that increases the number of independent, active DReps (not just better-paying existing large ones) would strengthen decentralisation and long-term participation. I expect transparent methodology, clear success metrics focused on diversity of active participants, and full public reporting. This is an investment in healthier governance rather than a blank cheque.
- No10.8 ₳No rationale