Governance Incentives Framework 2026
Discussed in the Governance Review for epochs 650 to 652.
113 DReps voted · 53 with a rationale · 2 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
Changed votes: 2 to no, together voting with 460.9 ₳ of voting power.
Voting concentration
4 of 113 DReps cast half of the voted power.
Largest voter 15.6%, top 5 combined 56.5% of 2.9B ₳ voted.
The 36 largest voters together held as much voting power as the 67.0% threshold required in yes votes.
- No2.2M ₳No rationale
- No2.2M ₳Rationale
Get Real
- No2.1M ₳Rationale
I vote NO on the Governance Incentives Framework 2026.
I strongly support resolving the question of compensation for DReps and Constitutional Committee members. Sustainable participation in Cardano governance matters, and this issue needs a clear resolution.
My objection is therefore not to the objective, but to the proposed process and sequencing.
There is already a substantial body of work exploring governance incentives and multiple potential compensation models. I do not believe the primary bottleneck is now a lack of further research. It is coordination and ecosystem consensus over which model Cardano actually wants to adopt.
CIP-179 gives us an important new tool to address exactly this problem.
Rather than committing ₳4.2M to a twelve-month programme before that consensus exists, I believe the existing Governance Incentives Working Group should curate the strongest compensation models already proposed and put them directly to the ecosystem using CIP-179.
Different models can be ranked on-chain. The community can allocate points between competing approaches, express numerical preferences around compensation levels, and evaluate different eligibility and distribution mechanisms. DReps, CC members and other stakeholder groups can all provide structured input.
The aggregation methodology should be transparent and declared in advance. Once clear areas of consensus emerge, Cardano can then fund targeted modelling and controlled pilots of the leading options before bringing a final mechanism to governance.
That gives us a much more efficient path:
Coordination → Consensus → Validation → Implementation.
Not:
More research → More frameworks → More discussion → Then try to find consensus.
There are also separate concerns around the scale of this Treasury request and constitutional issues identified by current CC reviewers relating to the required administrator and custody arrangements.
Compensation for DReps and CC members is important and should be solved.
I simply do not believe this is the right mechanism to get us there.
Consensus first. Targeted spending second.
I therefore vote NO.
- No1.9M ₳No rationale
- No1.8M ₳No rationale
- No1.6M ₳No rationale
- No1.6M ₳Rationale
We’ve already spent too much on governance.
- No1.3M ₳No rationale
- No1.2M ₳Rationale
Translated:
I have thought about this for a long time.First, in Cardano’s current situation, research spending should face a very high bar. Treasury capital should primarily be allocated where we can expect direct and measurable benefits for adoption and the Cardano economy.
Second, my role as a DRep is a democratic one: to decide whether and how collective capital should be used in Cardano’s best interest. I do not believe Treasury funds should be used simply to financially incentivize more people to vote more often.
If money becomes the incentive for governance participation, the system will increasingly attract people for whom the payment itself is part of the motivation. In my view, monetizing democratic participation in this way does not strengthen democracy; it weakens it.
We can revisit DRep compensation in the future, when Cardano’s financial situation and the actual need for such a mechanism justify it more clearly.
Original:
Ich habe lange darüber nachgedacht. 1st haben Research-Ausgaben für mich in Cardanos aktueller Situation eine sehr hohe Hürde: Kapital sollte derzeit primär dort eingesetzt werden, wo ein direkter und messbarer Nutzen für Adoption und die Cardano zu erwarten ist. Zweitens ist meine Rolle als DRep eine demokratische: darüber zu entscheiden, ob und wie gemeinschaftliches Kapital im Interesse Cardanos eingesetzt wird. Ich halte es für falsch, Treasury-Geld dafür einzusetzen, mehr Menschen finanziell zum Abstimmen zu bewegen. Wenn Geld zum Incentive für Governance wird, zieht Governance Menschen an, für die das Geld selbst Teil der Motivation ist. Meiner Ansicht nach stärkt das Demokratie nicht, sondern schwächt sie. Über DRep Kompensation können wir zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt erneut entscheiden, wenn Cardanos finanzielle Situation und der tatsächliche Bedarf einen solchen Mechanismus klarer rechtfertigen. - No1.2M ₳Rationale
I vote NO on "Governance Incentives Framework 2026" because Cardano should address governance burnout and voting-power concentration, but this 4.2M ADA treasury withdrawal is too broad and under-specified while about 457.4M ADA of the 500M ADA NCL is already ratified. Only a small portion funds the pilot, while the detailed budget, named administrator, and independent controls are missing. I would support a revised, phased proposal with public operational costs, a defined anti-gaming pilot, named independent oversight, milestone-based or escrowed releases, clear success and stop criteria, and a separate DRep vote before expansion.
- No1.2M ₳Rationale
The proposal lacks mechanisms for building consensus and is likely to result in another research paper with no clear path to implementation.
- No1.2M ₳Rationale
We do not need to be paid because then people create politics and come here just for the money, with time as we grow. Just like the US and all centralized world governments have become corrupted by money. Our reward is shared, when Ada goes up in value. That is why we are all here. Not for profit. Decentralized for the future of the protocol.
- No1.1M ₳No 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.
- Abstain1M ₳Rationale
Cardano is deciding whether and how to pay governance participants. The case for research first is strong: badly designed rewards can buy shallow voting, concentrate payouts, increase gaming and create a permanent treasury obligation. This proposal would spend ₳4.21M over one year to map existing work, collect governance data, model competing reward mechanisms, run a controlled pilot, publish a dashboard and dataset, produce research, submit a CIP and return to governance for a later adoption decision.
The proposal is unusually thoughtful about the problem. It distinguishes activity from quality, tests anti-concentration and anti-gaming effects, recognises 49 existing initiatives, stages delivery through seven milestones, reserves 3% for audit/oversight and promises refunds of unused contingency, pilot and cancelled-work funds. Direct sources confirm that CPS-0020 defines the incentive problem, CIP-0149 offers an opt-in alternative, Cerkoryn has published a reproducible draft model, the State of Governance report identifies incentive and concentration concerns, and Cardano Vision 2030 explicitly calls for role-based incentives and turnout safeguards.
The objection is not that the work is unnecessary. It is that DReps are being asked to authorize the full withdrawal without a verified legal recipient/controller, public operational cost basis, named independent auditor, enforceable milestone contract or finalized pilot rules. The proposal also depends on coordination with an already funded ₳32.9M IOR programme that covers incentives and governance. CGOV’s epoch-649 NCL record reports ₳457.396M of current withdrawals against a ₳350M limit (130.7%); the tool’s aggregation semantics need official confirmation, but the snapshot makes a clear enactment check necessary.
The direction is worthwhile, but central treasury-control evidence is missing. The appropriate pre-vote position is ABSTAIN pending specific documents, not NO on the objective and not YES on promises that cannot yet be tied to an accountable recipient.
- No927.7K ₳No rationale
- No926K ₳No rationale
- No877.5K ₳Rationale
I am voting NO on execution, not on premise. DRep attrition and voting-power concentration are real problems, and studying incentive design before committing to a permanent scheme is the right sequence. But this proposal falls short on its own terms:
No reviewable budget. Only workstream-level allocations are published. 884,000 ADA for modeling could fund two people or six, and DReps have no way to tell.
Heavy overhead. Roughly 44% of the ask covers coordination, contingency, and oversight rather than research or engineering output.
The pilot mechanism is pre-selected. A proposal built on choosing mechanisms by evidence names the middle-out mechanism before any evidence work begins - and it originates with a paid consultant on the project. It will be the only candidate with live behavioural data.
Activity-based KPIs. The proposal argues turnout is a poor proxy for value, then scores itself on workshop counts, simulation counts, dashboard counts, and page load speed. All are achievable without producing a framework anyone adopts.
Unenforced coordination. Overlap with IOR's already-funded work is handled by a promise to return unused allocations, with no named arbiter and no MOU.
I would support a revised version that publishes an operational budget with headcount and rates, gates disbursement on milestone acceptance, selects the pilot mechanism through the project's own process, and replaces activity metrics with adoption metrics.
The counterargument is fair: a badly designed permanent scheme would cost far more than 4.2M ADA, and delay lets the problem compound. I vote NO because approving this amount without a reviewable budget sets a precedent that weakens scrutiny of the larger requests to come.
- No866.3K ₳No rationale
- Abstain829.9K ₳Rationale
Abstaining due to Constitutional Committee's voting
- No796.1K ₳No rationale
- No742.7K ₳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.
- Abstain622K ₳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.
- No604.7K ₳Rationale
Voted No. Research-first approach without actionable plan or honest accounting of prior work. Proposer should do the planning phase unpaid, include rational for rejection of prior work then return with compensation-in-motions. Compensation funding only.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
I'm voting No on this governance incentives research proposal, and here's why. What I appreciate is the proposer correctly identified governance participation incentives as a real problem. Cardano's DRep landscape is thin, and the people doing the work are largely uncompensated. That's a genuine structural weakness, and naming it matters. I also appreciate the proposer's engagement. They engaged thoughtfully and didn't dig into defensive positions when challenged.
But that's not enough to earn a Yes. The proposal asks the Treasury to fund discovery of something the proposer should already know, or should be willing to figure out before asking for money.
The core problem is disclosure. The proposal references Beyond MVG but doesn't honestly assess what it concluded, that governance incentives are a problem, yes, but that proposal did not focus on incentives. The proposer cites this as supporting evidence for why more research is needed, but doesn't tell us what Beyond MVG got wrong, what it missed, why its conclusions were insufficient, or why further research needs funding. Same for the IOR proposal, "we met with them and they're open to working together" is not a substitute for explaining how this proposal differs, overlaps, or builds on prior funded work.
I was clear about this standard in my public thread: moving forward, I expect proposals to reference existing work and show they have a grasp of the issue they're solving. Disclosure is mandatory. No siloed work.
The proposal is backwards. It asks for funding to figure out what the solution is. That's the wrong order. The right order: figure out the solution, then ask for funding to implement it. Or at minimum, do the planning and coordination unpaid, show conviction by putting in the work first and then come back with a concrete compensation-in-motions structure.
As I told the proposer directly: 90% of asked funding should go to compensation directly. No need to pay for planning at this point. Do that part for no fee, show conviction and belief in the necessity by putting others first.
My principle here is simple: The Treasury is not a research grant for discovering whether a problem exists. It's for implementing solutions to problems that have been adequately scoped. Governance incentives are a known problem. The question is what to do about it, and this proposal doesn't know yet.
- No591.1K ₳No rationale
- No579.1K ₳No rationale
- No568K ₳Rationale
No. This is not a priority.
- No379.5K ₳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.
- Yes379.3K ₳No rationale
- No356.1K ₳Rationale
This is duplicate work, there's already a working group funded by the treasury working on this.
- No342.8K ₳No rationale
- Abstain285.2K ₳No rationale
- No275.2K ₳Rationale
I agree that Cardano must eventually address the real workload, expertise requirements, and sustainability pressures faced by DReps and other governance contributors. However, it is not responsible to design or test a compensation framework before Cardano has the tools required to evaluate who is being compensated, what work they performed, whether that work was competent and independent, and whether material conflicts or sponsor relationships exist.
Before further discussion of DRep compensation can be seriously addressed, Cardano needs an accountable governance infrastructure: persistent identity or DID; a public reputation and historical-record layer; evidence-linked evaluation rubrics; a skills and competency inventory; conflict-of-interest and sponsorship disclosures; proposal, entity, and relationship mapping; independent review and appeal processes; transparent, reproducible payout logic; anti-concentration safeguards; and durable action logs for rationales, score changes, payments, challenges, corrections, and overrides.
A skills inventory is particularly necessary. Governance participation should remain open, but competence should be visible and evidence-based. Complex protocol, treasury, legal, security, economic, and constitutional actions should be routed toward contributors with relevant demonstrated knowledge, while all participants retain the ability to vote, abstain, seek specialist input, and be held accountable for their reasoning. Raw participation, vote count, delegated stake, popularity, or a self-declared credential are not measures of governance quality.
Cardano should also support open, transparent specialist circles rather than relying on opaque or gatekeeping working groups. These circles should publish their methodology, evidence, conflicts, majority and minority views, and identified uncertainties, while holding no privileged voting authority. This would make domain expertise easier to find and challenge without creating a closed class of unelected decision-makers.
The current proposal instead requests 4.21M ADA for broad research, dashboards, modeling, engagement, CIP development, and a live incentive pilot before these accountability foundations exist. A payment pilot cannot be safely governed when the system lacks an agreed identity layer, competence standard, quality rubric, relationship and conflict visibility, review process, and historical audit trail. The proposal’s plan to refine material pilot rules after funding is not an adequate substitute for establishing these conditions before money begins to influence governance behavior.
I would support work that first develops and validates these foundational accountability tools, including a transparent Skills Inventory and competency framework. Only after the ecosystem can evaluate evaluators, identify conflicts, assess domain-relevant competence, and audit meaningful contribution should a separately specified, independently overseen, fixed-rule, time-limited compensation pilot be considered. Until then, I vote No.
- No272.2K ₳No rationale
- Abstain260.8K ₳No rationale
- Abstain257K ₳No rationale
- No210.1K ₳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.
- No189.8K ₳No rationale
- No185K ₳No rationale
- No169.1K ₳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.
- No157.8K ₳No rationale
- No149.8K ₳Rationale
Core tech and governance process matter, but they are not Cardano’s primary growth bottleneck. The ecosystem stalls on adoption, liquidity, developer experience, and compelling use cases.
- 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.
- No142.9K ₳No rationale
- No124.6K ₳No rationale
- No95.8K ₳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. - Abstain74.5K ₳No rationale
- No63.1K ₳No rationale
- No62.7K ₳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.