IO: Consensus Initiative
248 DReps voted · 88 with a rationale · 2 changed their vote · 5 re-voted unchanged
Open a row to read the rationale.
Changed votes: 2 to yes, together voting with 72.2M ₳ of voting power.
- No501.3K ₳Rationale
- Yes488.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes481.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes479.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes466.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes438.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes435.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes393.6K ₳No rationale
- No379.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes379.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes371K ₳No rationale
- Yes366.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes356.1K ₳Rationale
Leios remains the most consequential long-term protocol initiative in the Cardano ecosystem. The 2030 target of 27 million monthly transactions is structurally unachievable without it. CIP-164 is merged, a public testnet is imminent, and the consortium model - explicitly including Tweag and TxPipe as delivery partners - is the right structural direction for Cardano core development. IO owns the Leios research and protocol specification, so there is no opportunity to wait for proposals from other teams here. The Leios testnet targeting June 2026 and mainnet by end-2026 are ambitious milestones that should be held to strict community accountability, however if achieved that means we can finally be done funding Leios' initial development.
- No342.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes338.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes330.6K ₳Rationale
I support all IO projects.
- Yes329.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes321.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes318.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain318.1K ₳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. - Yes314.4K ₳Rationale
I am voting YES on the IO Consensus Initiative. While the development budget lacks granular FTE details, delivering Ouroboros Leios is absolutely essential for Cardano's survival and 2030 scalability targets. I have full confidence in IO to execute this critical network upgrade.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
I am voting YES to fund the IO: Consensus Initiative. After careful consideration, I view Ouroboros Leios not merely as a highly desirable upgrade, but as an absolute necessity for Cardano's long-term survival and ecosystem growth.
To achieve our 2030 roadmap targets (specifically the ambitious goal of 27 million monthly transactions), this consensus upgrade is mathematically necessary. Without Leios, scaling to meet that level of global demand is simply impossible.
However, I do not take the requested treasury amount lightly. My primary reservation lies with the "Development" portion of the budget. Requesting ₳23.8M (86% of the total budget) without providing granular details, such as the number of full-time equivalents (FTEs), the split between senior and junior engineers, or estimated hourly rates, creates a financial "black box". As an advocate for responsible and justifiable treasury spending, I strongly urge IO and others to provide greater transparency in future proposals of this magnitude.
Despite this reservation, I am fully committed to funding this initiative. Even after intentionally playing devil's advocate, I simply could not find any convincing reasons where the costs outweigh the immense benefits. My confidence in IO's proven ability to deliver complex, high-assurance engineering ultimately outweighs my budgetary critiques. I look forward to seeing Leios implemented, ensuring our network is fully equipped for sustainable, long-term expansion.
- Yes313.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes308.2K ₳No rationale
- YesChanged301.3K ₳Rationale
I’m a big fan of IO and everything they’ve accomplished over these nearly 10 years regarding Cardano. I believe it’s a top-tier company in terms of research, implementation, and blockchain, and I don’t question their capabilities at all.
However, as an observer—since I’m not deeply involved, but would still like to share my perspective. I feel that IO owes the community a clear, solid, and concise explanation of what has been achieved in previous governance actions. From my point of view, it’s very confusing; it feels like there are overlaps between this year’s proposals and last year’s, and it’s not clear at all.
It creates a lot of confusion, raising questions like: “Didn’t we already pay for this last year?” or “Why are we paying again if this was supposed to have been implemented already?” This starts to generate distrust across the community.I would like to see clear, measurable frameworks and informative checkpoints for all these governance actions something like a “Messari-style” State of Cardano report. I understand that a report like that isn’t cheap, but considering that we are about to spend nearly $40 million, the minimum expectation would be a clear report outlining what is intended to be achieved and what was accomplished last year.
This is a humongous amount of money, and it’s unreasonable for there to be so much confusion especially knowing that IO does very good work, yet their efforts start to be questioned. I wouldn’t like to see that happen. If producing such a report costs $50,000 or $100,000, then include it in the budget it doesn’t matter. There needs to be clarity and a formal way to track the return on what is being done. It’s simply too much money for this to remain so informal.
This time, I will support the proposal. However, I want to express that if clarity fails again in future proposals if ambiguity and confusion persist regarding what was delivered versus what was supposed to be delivered—then unfortunately I won’t be able to support with my vote. Cardano is no longer what it was five years ago; now it’s up to us to ensure that what gets done is logical and properly scrutinized.
Earlier votes
Abstain4mo agoSuperseded
- Yes297K ₳Rationale
Voting YES on ALL IOG Withdrawals
May 20th 2026
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qqfu3vtv
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qz6es0cp
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qyxkn2yk
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qx4njfhm
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qghg4q43
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3q2yd5rxu
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qvczhx6t
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qwt8k9fx
gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qsuae57l
Summery
Nine treasury withdrawals from IOG totalling
162M ada ($40M USD)Important Citation
https://x.com/EdnStuff/status/2051321214728118360
EdnStuff said the following on May 4th 2026
I see the IO proposals as a package deal. But by all accounts I see most dreps only voting yes on a small selection of the 9. This is going to lead to some extremely lopsided, fragmented, and piecemeal results that will fall short of what we need on #Cardano $ADA.Charles quote tweeted saying
https://x.com/IOHK_Charles/status/2051376829949464792
Sadly, this is the end result of a piecemeal roadmap. It's an iPhone by committee, with people deciding whether they prefer the fingerprint sensor to wireless charging. You end up with a bizarre, useless product.Statement
There are a handful of people who, when they speak, I think it unwise not to listen to. Charles is one such person. His statement above makes this choice pretty easy.
While we need to foster a wide ecosystem of R&D firms, we cannot afford to jeopardize our relationship with our biggest contributor. It is obvious and undeniable that the long-term success of Cardano remains dependent on the continued efforts of IO.
I am voting for all of these IO proposals because Charles has made it clear that he does not believe Cardano can be successful without each of them, and it would be unwise to disregard his intuition.
Signed,
William DoyleYour friendly neighbourhood DRep!
$computerman
drep1yfpgzfymq...pzw3nt
https://x.com/william00000010 - No285.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes275.2K ₳Rationale
I am voting YES on “IO Consensus Initiative (Leios)” at 27,714,342 ADA, with explicit reservations about cost transparency and IO’s aggregate draw on the treasury.
Leios is a must‑have consensus upgrade if Cardano is serious about its own 2030 plan (27M monthly transactions, materially higher fee revenue, and credible performance versus rival L1s). The current cycle already funds an early public testnet and feature‑complete prototype; this proposal pays for the hard part: taking Leios from prototype (SRL 4) to a mainnet‑ready release candidate (SRL 5–8), validating it under load and adversarial conditions, and doing everything within IO’s control to enable a Dijkstra‑era hard fork. Without that base‑layer scaling, most other adoption and revenue targets become aspirational marketing rather than realistic outcomes.
From a governance and constitutional perspective, the proposal is well structured. Funds are denominated purely in ADA, sit within the 350M Net Change Limit window, and are administered through Intersect’s Treasury Reserve Smart Contract plus project‑specific contracts, using audited Sundae Labs infrastructure, auto‑abstain delegation, multi‑sig controls with an independent Oversight Committee, milestone‑based disbursement, and a commitment to return undisbursed funds at the end of the period. Scope is clear: Q4 2026 release candidate, Q1 2027 high‑confidence validation, and Q4 2026–Q1 2027 hard‑fork enabling activities, with explicit acknowledgement that mainnet activation depends on external governance and ecosystem readiness and therefore cannot be guaranteed in this governance action.
I share several of the concerns raised by other DReps. First, cost transparency is weaker than it should be at this scale: 27.7M ADA (~6.65M USD) is heavily weighted to development (86%), which is appropriate for consensus work, but the proposal does not provide FTE rates, team sizes, or per‑workstream allocation that would let DReps benchmark IO’s efficiency against industry norms or alternative implementations. This is part of a broader pattern of IO submitting large technical asks outside the main Intersect budget cycle, after already having been allocated ~130.7M ADA across prior treasury‑funded workstreams, with ~78.46M ADA withdrawn so far. Second, Leios introduces non‑trivial downstream obligations and risks for SPOs and alternative clients: higher operational complexity, traffic prioritization requirements, and the need for Amaru, Dingo, and others to implement and maintain compatibility. The proposal acknowledges parameter and integration risk and the possibility that smaller pools could be squeezed, but the trade‑offs on SPO economics are not quantified.
Despite these negatives, this proposal is far closer to core, non‑substitutable infrastructure than most other large asks in this cycle. As DReps like YUTA, CardanoYoda and Dr. Navjit have argued, Cardano can delay or down‑scale many marketing, L2, or ancillary initiatives, but it cannot credibly pursue its 2030 adoption and revenue targets without a base layer that can actually carry that load. The downside of not funding this stage of Leios—remaining a structurally low‑throughput L1 in a market that increasingly assumes “high TPS by default”—is, in my view, greater than the discomfort of funding a relatively expensive, high‑risk engineering program.
For these reasons, my position is:
Vote: YES, treating this as a one‑off, foundational consensus upgrade that should go ahead, even given IO’s imperfect cost transparency and treasury footprint.
Conditions going forward: I expect IO to (1) provide more granular, benchmarkable budgeting (FTE bands, team sizes, per‑workstream splits) in any future Leios‑related asks or follow‑ons, (2) articulate a clear plan for how Leios costs and responsibilities are shared with alternative clients over time, and (3) keep DReps informed on parameter choices and SPO impact, so the ecosystem can make informed decisions when the actual hard‑fork governance action arrives.
If those expectations are not met, my tolerance for additional large, out‑of‑cycle IO treasury withdrawals will be significantly lower, even for technically important work.
- Yes272.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes268.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes254.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes236.8K ₳No rationale
- YesRevoted233.3K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes4mo agoSuperseded
- Yes222.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes216.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes202.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes189.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes185K ₳No rationale
- Yes183.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes182.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes178.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes161.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes157.8K ₳No rationale
- No157.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes155.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes149.8K ₳Rationale
I'm increasingly concerned about Cardano's overall treasury spend rate, especially following the recent approval of the Draper/Dragon Orion Fund. To provide a necessary counter-balance, I am defaulting to NO on most treasury withdrawals at this time.
This proposal (₳27.7M) is a clear exception. It directly funds production hardening of Leios and shared L2 infrastructure which is exactly the type of high-priority critical scaling work I support.
I will continue voting YES only on the highest-priority items that directly strengthen essential infrastructure like IO Hydra L2, Leios, or deliverables required to advance key partnerships such as Midnight. - Yes142.9K ₳Rationale
If Cardano wants to fulfill its 2030 narrative, Leios is not optional
- Abstain138.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes128.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes127K ₳No rationale
- Yes126.4K ₳No rationale