IO: Hydra
196 DReps voted · 58 with a rationale · 4 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Abstain584.2M ₳Rationale
Yoroi DRep votes ABSTAIN on IO: Hydra. Yoroi recognises the importance of responsible governance during periods of ecosystem uncertainty.
- Ecosystem Situation:
The trust our delegators place in Yoroi requires that we act only when we can do so with full confidence. In light of the current situation, Yoroi is choosing to withhold its vote on this proposal and will reassess our position once conditions allow for a considered decision.
- Ecosystem Situation:
- Yes435.8M ₳Rationale
IO: Hydra - YES. Historically, Hydra's development hasn't seemed to go smoothly, but the current team appears to be improving. Whether it can still drive Tx depends on the application, but from what I've heard from several developers, it seems to have a positive effect on driving development.
IO: Hydra - YES。歴史的にHydraの開発は順調ではなかったように見えますが、現在のチームは改善されてるようです。依然としてTxを牽引できるかはアプリケーション次第ですが、いくつかの開発者と話した結果、開発者を牽引する効果はあるようです。
- Abstain332.2M ₳No rationale
- Abstain293M ₳Rationale
EMURGO as a DRep votes ABSTAIN on IO: Hydra, with rationale outlined below.
Given the ongoing situation in the ecosystem, responsible governance requires us to act with full clarity and confidence. Until the current situation reaches resolution, EMURGO prefers to withhold judgment rather than vote without the certainty our mandate demands. We will revisit this proposal once the situation is resolved.
- Yes254.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes222.9M ₳Rationale
Good progress recently. More use cases to come.
- No174.6M ₳Rationale
See previous rationale on L2 proposal
- Yes165.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes120.2M ₳Rationale
The Cardano Foundation votes YES. The revised proposal has been unbundled from Midgard, resolving one major concern of the previous proposal. While there are remaining questions on details and execution of this proposal, we believe Hydra’s potential and value to enterprise scaling justifies a YES.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
The Cardano Foundation abstained from the previous version of the governance action due to bundling of two distinct Layer 2 solutions, contested IP risks, and insufficient budget granularity. We commend the proposers for submitting a revised proposal that extracts Midgard, effectively halving the requested budget to focus on a single, coherent Hydra workstream.
Our decision to support this governance action is driven by the following factors:
- Constructive Rescoping: The removal of Midgard addresses our primary concerns regarding structural bundling and contested IP. The proposal now presents a focused 5,100,781 ADA workstream dedicated to maturing Hydra.
- Enterprise Utility and Developer Experience: Layer 2 scaling solutions are valuable for expanding Cardano's enterprise adoption and high-volume use cases. We value the team's stated commitment to addressing technical debt, improving tooling, and delivering features requested by production users and pipeline integrators.
- Administrative Safeguards: The deployment of funds is based on milestone-gated disbursements, an independent third-party assurer, Intersect oversight, and a proportional refund mechanism for undisbursed funds. This helps mitigate execution risks and improves transparency of delivery.
There are elements of the revised proposal which warrant further clarity, and which we expect clear reporting on:
- Financial Granularity and Proposal Overlap: The proposal lacks granularity on milestone delivery and associated cost. . Clarity on the work already funded and delivered and the new work to be performed under this proposal could be improved.
- Roadmap Clarity: The development roadmap, including precise deliverables and their associated timelines, remains opaque and requires further definition to ensure effective milestone assessment.
The Cardano Foundation votes YES. Although we have residual concerns on this proposal, we acknowledge Hydra as a significant component of Cardano's scaling infrastructure with high potential.
NOTE on 'Internal Voting':
The fields constitutional and unconstitutional below reflect the CF governance teams' individual opinions whether they are for or against the proposal. Reason for this inconsistency is, that CIP-136 is at the moment only applicable to CC rationales, but we want to record the internal opinions of our DRep assessment transparently as well. - Yes92.2M ₳No rationale
- Yes91.5M ₳Rationale
As a DRep, I decided to vote YES on the proposal: IO: Hydra
My rationale:
Hydra is one of Cardano’s most important scaling technologies and one of the few L2 solutions already connected to real production use cases. This proposal focuses on hardening Hydra v2, improving performance, strengthening operations, supporting the ecosystem, and improving the developer experience.
This can help make Cardano viable for high-performance use cases such as institutional DeFi, agent payments, micropayments, gaming, voting infrastructure, and point-of-sale systems.
I would like to see multiple types of L2 solutions on Cardano, including alternatives to channel-based infrastructure. Technical diversity is healthy because different L2 designs serve different use cases.
However, Treasury funding must be disciplined. Several L2 or scaling-related initiatives have already received funding or support in the past. Before asking for additional funding, these projects should demonstrate delivery, adoption, and a credible path to real usage.
In my view, the Treasury should not try to fully fund every possible L2 direction at the same time. Given the Net Change Limit and current market sentiment, we need to focus on quality, not quantity. Only a small number of L2 solutions should receive major Treasury support, and continued funding should depend on evidence of production use, ecosystem demand, and measurable impact.
Hydra currently has the strongest case because it is the most mature Cardano L2, is ready for adoption, and already has real users. I therefore see this proposal as a strategic investment in adoption, while still expecting other funded L2 initiatives to deliver results before requesting further Treasury resources.
At the same time, it is important to recognize the broader context. In the Ethereum ecosystem, there is an ongoing debate about how much user activity and liquidity should remain on L2s versus returning to L1.
Cardano should have a clear L2 strategy before making repeated long-term investments into multiple scaling solutions.
The ask of ₳5.1M is significant, but reasonable for core infrastructure work.
However, IO should also work on commercializing Hydra and at least partially covering the costs of future development. I understand that this is difficult for an L2 designed to offer near-zero fees. Still, there are realistic options. IO could offer Hydra-as-a-service for teams that do not want to run infrastructure themselves. Another option could be enterprise support, integration services, or managed operational tooling.
My main concern is that detailed milestones, acceptance criteria, payment amounts, and delivery dates will be finalized later in the legal contract. Ideally, DReps should be able to review this level of detail before approving a treasury withdrawal. Even better, DReps should have representatives involved in milestone approval or oversight. Future proposals should improve this.
Despite a few concerns, I believe Hydra is strategically important for Cardano, has real users, and can support adoption that would otherwise move to competing ecosystems. Therefore, I support the proposal.
If you'd like to support my work, consider delegating to the MANDA pool and backing me as a DRep. Your support is the only way I can get time for governance.
MANDA Pool ID:
pool1c3fjkls7d2aujud8y5xy5e0azu0ueatwn34u7jy3ql85ze3xya8My DRep ID:
drep1y2m0g4r66pyaw3p7u454wc0p4f0ygm8ueaev0mgd3tvwm7sskqwqp - Yes86M ₳Rationale
SIPO DRep votes YES, with expectations, on IO: Hydra.
Governance Action ID: gov_action1fah9m7dxu99af8jqdc4mkrgs3va790nyh9tfhycq2wsvrm47p4rsqtcm6ry
Legacy Governance Action ID (CIP-105): 4f6e5df9a6e14bd49e406e2bbb0d108b3be2be64b9569b930053a0c1eebe0d47#0
DRep: drep1yffld2866p00cyg3ejjdewtvazgah7jjgk0s9m7m5ytmmdq33v3zh
Date: 2026-06-20IO: Hydra requests ₳5,100,781 to harden and optimise Hydra v2 across four workstreams — performance optimisation, operational excellence, ecosystem support, and maintenance and developer experience — so that Cardano's only production-grade Layer 2 becomes a feature-complete, competitive scaling solution for the builders already on it and the next wave it aims to attract. The action is submitted by Input Output, administered by Intersect on behalf of the Cardano Development Holdings, milestone-gated, and subject to independent third-party assurance. Hydra is a state channel that gives Cardano sub-second finality and near-zero fees while keeping L1 as the security and settlement backstop, and it already runs live workloads for Delta DeFi, Masumi, Hydra Doom, Glacier Drop, Intersect's voting infrastructure, VTech Labs, and Blockfrost.
SIPO's support follows directly from its record and doctrine. SIPO has consistently backed Cardano's scaling path: in May it voted Yes on the IO & Midgard Labs L2 Scalability Initiative, on the Leios consensus initiative, and on the Cardano Vision 2026 research programme whose remit includes L2 and zero-knowledge work. Hydra is the production Layer 2 that those research and rollup efforts complement rather than duplicate — the proposal itself draws the line clearly, with rollups serving permissionless shared-liquidity AMMs and Hydra serving the bounded-operator segment of perpetual DEXes, institutional OTC settlement, and high-frequency venues. To support the L2 research and decline the only production L2 already carrying real users would be inconsistent. Two further doctrines apply. First, Hydra is not a promise but a working deployment: Delta DeFi has staked its entire perpetual-DEX product on it, Masumi runs live agent-to-agent commerce, and Glacier Drop routed more than thirty million users across eight chains through it. Second, the agent-economy thesis SIPO tracks closely is served directly here — Masumi's model, where buyer and seller agents each run a hydra-node and co-sign every snapshot, is exactly the agent-to-agent commerce and micropayment layer that a high-finality, zero-fee L2 makes possible, and it runs on the same EUTXO model and Plutus as L1.
On treasury protection, the proposal meets the standard SIPO has endorsed throughout this cycle. The withdrawal recipient is a script credential — Intersect's 2025 Treasury Reserve Smart Contract, the SundaeLabs framework audited by TxPipe and MLabs, and the same escrow through which the Cardano Vision 2026 and Critical Integrations V2 programmes SIPO supported are administered. Drawdowns flow only into the TRSC and onward to project-specific contracts under multi-signature control, with an Oversight Committee of five independent entities — Sundae Labs, the Cardano Foundation, DQuadrant, Xerberus, and NMKR — providing checks on administrative actions. A written legal contract between Input Output and the Cardano Development Holdings defines the milestones, with acceptance signed off by a third-party assurer at each milestone, and all funds not disbursed by the end of the delivery period — including amounts tied to cancelled or reduced deliverables — return proportionally to the Cardano Treasury. The request does not breach the 350 million Net Change Limit for Epochs 613 to 713. At roughly ₳5.1 million it is a small ask by the standards of this cycle, so the scale-and-fiscal-footprint concern that has shaped SIPO's more cautious votes does not arise here.
SIPO is equally clear about the concerns it carries into this Yes. First, granularity: development accounts for eighty-six percent of the budget in a single line, with personnel and contractor allocation not itemised. Second, sustainability: the proposal is framed as a finite hardening effort, but it is not stated whether it is a one-time push or the first instalment of an ongoing maintenance baseline. Third, portfolio coordination: SIPO has now backed Hydra, the Midgard rollup, and the Leios and Peras L1 upgrades, and the boundaries between these scaling tracks must stay explicit to avoid future double-funding. Fourth, KPI measurability: the treasury-revenue case rests on head fees that 'can be designed' to route to L1 — a conditional, not a guarantee. SIPO therefore votes Yes with the following expectations: (1) itemise personnel, contractor, audit, and infrastructure spending in milestone reporting to the fullest extent commercial confidentiality allows; (2) state, before any follow-on request, whether this funding establishes an ongoing Hydra maintenance baseline and present the long-term funding model, including paths toward usage-based or ecosystem cost-sharing; (3) maintain an explicit, ecosystem-level articulation of how Hydra, Midgard, and the Leios and Peras L1 upgrades divide the scaling problem without overlap, and report it so that L2 funding is coordinated rather than duplicated; and (4) report the public benchmarking-suite results that substantiate the two-to-ten-times performance claims, and the actual measured L1 fee accrual from head lifecycle and routed fees, rather than the modelled potential. This vote is SIPO DRep's recorded position.
SIPO DRep として、本提案「IO: Hydra」に期待事項付きで賛成（YES）を投じます。
Governance Action ID: gov_action1fah9m7dxu99af8jqdc4mkrgs3va790nyh9tfhycq2wsvrm47p4rsqtcm6ry
Legacy Governance Action ID (CIP-105): 4f6e5df9a6e14bd49e406e2bbb0d108b3be2be64b9569b930053a0c1eebe0d47#0
DRep: drep1yffld2866p00cyg3ejjdewtvazgah7jjgk0s9m7m5ytmmdq33v3zh
Date: 2026-06-20IO: Hydra は、Hydra v2 を 4 つのワークストリーム — 性能最適化・運用品質・エコシステム支援・保守と開発者体験 — で本番強化・最適化し、Cardano 唯一の production-grade Layer 2 を、すでに載っているビルダーと次に呼び込む層の双方にとって feature-complete で競争力ある scaling solution に仕上げるために、₳5,100,781 を求めるものです。本アクションは Input Output が提出し、Cardano Development Holdings に代わって Intersect が管理、milestone 連動で独立第三者検収を伴います。Hydra は、L1 を security と settlement の backstop として保ちつつ Cardano に sub-second finality と near-zero fee をもたらす state channel であり、すでに Delta DeFi・Masumi・Hydra Doom・Glacier Drop・Intersect の投票基盤・VTech Labs・Blockfrost の live workload を稼働させています。
SIPO の支持は、自らの投票記録とドクトリンから直接導かれます。SIPO は Cardano の scaling の道筋を一貫して支持してきました — 5 月に IO & Midgard Labs の L2 Scalability Initiative、Leios consensus initiative、そして L2・ゼロ知識を射程に含む Cardano Vision 2026 研究プログラムにいずれも賛成しています。Hydra は、それら研究・rollup の取り組みが重複ではなく補完する production Layer 2 です — 提案自身が境界を明確に引いており、permissionless な shared-liquidity AMM は rollup が、perpetual DEX・機関 OTC 決済・高頻度取引といった bounded-operator セグメントは Hydra が担います。L2 研究に賛成しながら、すでに実ユーザーを抱える唯一の production L2 に背を向けるのは非整合です。さらに 2 つのドクトリンが適合します。第一に、Hydra は約束ではなく稼働中の deployment です — Delta DeFi は perpetual DEX 製品の全体を Hydra に賭け、Masumi は live の agent-to-agent commerce を運用し、Glacier Drop は 8 チェーン・3,000 万超のユーザーを Hydra 経由で処理しました。第二に、SIPO が注視するエージェント経済のテーゼがここで直接果たされます — 買い手・売り手のエージェントが各自 hydra-node を運用し全 snapshot に共署名する Masumi のモデルは、高 finality・ゼロ fee の L2 が可能にする agent-to-agent commerce と micropayment の層そのものであり、L1 と同じ EUTXO モデル・Plutus 上で動きます。
トレジャリー保護の点で、本提案は SIPO が今期一貫して支持してきた基準を満たします。引き出し先は script credential — Intersect の 2025 Treasury Reserve Smart Contract（TxPipe と MLabs が監査した SundaeLabs フレームワーク）であり、SIPO が支持した Cardano Vision 2026 や Critical Integrations V2 と同じ escrow です。drawdown は TRSC、さらに multi-sig 管理下の project-specific contract へとのみ流れ、Sundae Labs・Cardano Foundation・DQuadrant・Xerberus・NMKR の 5 独立エンティティから成る Oversight Committee が管理アクションをチェックします。Input Output と Cardano Development Holdings の間の書面契約が milestone を定義し、各 milestone で第三者 assurer が検収にサインオフ、納品期間終了までに支出されなかった資金は、中止・縮小された成果物に紐づく分も含めて比例的に Cardano Treasury へ返還されます。要求額は Epoch 613–713 の 3.5 億 NCL を侵さず、約 ₳510 万は今期の基準では小型であるため、SIPO のより慎重な投票を形作ってきた規模・財政フットプリントの懸念は本件では生じません。
同時に SIPO は、この賛成に伴う懸念も明確に記します。第一に、粒度です。開発が予算の 86% を単一行で占め、人員・contractor の配分は明細化されていません。第二に、持続性です。本提案は finite な hardening として枠組みされていますが、一回限りの push か、継続的な保守 baseline の初回分かは明示されていません。第三に、ポートフォリオ整合です。SIPO は Hydra・Midgard rollup・Leios/Peras の L1 アップグレードをいずれも支持してきており、これら scaling トラックの境界は将来の二重資金化を避けるため明示され続けねばなりません。第四に、KPI 実測です。トレジャリー収益の論拠は L1 に route 「できる（can be designed）」head fee に依拠しており、保証ではなく条件付きです。したがって SIPO は、以下の期待事項とともに賛成します：(1) 商業守秘の許す最大限の範囲で、人員・contractor・監査・インフラの支出を milestone 報告で明細化すること、(2) 後続要求に先立ち、本資金が継続的な Hydra 保守 baseline を設けるものか否かを明示し、利用ベース/エコシステム費用分担への道筋を含む長期の資金モデルを提示すること、(3) Hydra・Midgard・Leios/Peras の L1 アップグレードが scaling 問題を重複なくどう分担するかをエコシステムレベルで明示的に articulate し、L2 資金が二重でなく協調されるよう報告すること、(4) 2〜10 倍の性能主張を裏づける public benchmarking suite の結果と、head lifecycle および routed fee から実測された L1 fee accrual を、モデル上の潜在値ではなく実数で報告すること。本投票は SIPO DRep の記録上の立場表明です。
- Yes84.3M ₳Rationale
I have explained my support for Hydra ad nauseam over the years in videos. Forward to progress!
- Yes76.8M ₳No rationale
- Yes75.2M ₳No rationale
- Yes74.5M ₳Rationale
I support this proposal.
Hydra is one of the most mature Layer 2 solutions in the Cardano ecosystem and is already being used by real applications and services today. I view this proposal as a production-focused effort to improve adoption, performance, and operational readiness rather than a purely research-driven initiative.
While Cardano excels in security and decentralization, high-performance applications often require faster finality, lower fees, and greater scalability. Hydra helps address these challenges and provides important infrastructure for use cases such as DeFi, AI agents, gaming, and payments.
I also appreciate that this proposal focuses on practical improvements based on feedback from existing users, including performance optimization, operational excellence, ecosystem support, and developer experience enhancements.
I believe this is a meaningful investment in Cardano’s infrastructure and long-term competitiveness, and therefore I vote Yes.
本提案を支持します。
Hydraは現在のCardanoにおいて最も成熟したLayer2ソリューションの一つであり、既に実際のプロダクトやサービスで利用されています。研究段階ではなく、実運用の中で得られた課題を解決し、更なる採用拡大を目指す提案である点を評価しています。
Cardanoは高い安全性と分散性を持つ一方で、ファイナリティや手数料の面では高性能なアプリケーションが求める水準とのギャップがあります。Hydraはその課題を補完し、DeFi、AIエージェント、ゲーム、決済など新たなユースケースをCardano上で実現するための重要な基盤になると考えています。
また、本提案は単なる研究開発ではなく、既存利用者からのフィードバックを反映した性能改善、運用性向上、開発者体験の改善を中心としており、エコシステム全体への波及効果も期待できます。
Cardanoの利用拡大と競争力向上に貢献する重要なインフラ投資であると判断し、Yesとします。
- Yes73.1M ₳Rationale
I am formally registering a YES vote on the Hydra v2 treasury withdrawal request on behalf of my delegates.
Having been in contact with the Hydra team for a while, especially when I first started playing with the protocol, I experienced many of its early limitations firsthand. Since then, I have seen the team actively improve these pain points. They have been exceptionally great at responding to feedback and questions, and I fully support this continued investment.
I am seeing more live adoption using Hydra and believe this will only continue to grow. There is a wide array of untapped use-cases that Hydra solves which we have not even utilized yet. It holds undeniable value in Cardano's broader scaling roadmap, perfectly complemented by in progress innovation like Leios, Peras, and Midgard which I am focused on heavily.
My one strong recommendation for the team moving forward is to practice regular, hands-on demos and showcase them to the community across social channels to better highlight this ongoing progress, using metrics like TPS & Latency.
- Yes69.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes66M ₳No rationale
- Yes62.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes53.8M ₳Rationale
I'm voting Yes on the IO: Hydra proposal.
I've consistently emphasized how important L2 infrastructure is for Cardano's scalability, and I see scaling solutions like Hydra as a differentiated value of Cardano — one that taps into the structural strengths only the eUTXO model can offer.
Honestly, a lot of the project leads I've talked to care less about the value of "decentralization" and more about whether a blockchain can actually deliver the best possible UX to their users. At a moment like this, where adoption by institutions and enterprises is what really matters, delivering an optimized UX to users through a scaling solution is decisive. And that's exactly where Hydra can play the most critical role.
There's going to come a point where we don't even realize that the services we use are running on a blockchain network underneath. When that day comes, Hydra is what can serve as that foundation within the Cardano ecosystem.
- Yes50.5M ₳Rationale
I am voting YES because Hydra is critical infrastructure for Cardano scaling, and this proposal helps harden it for real production use while improving performance, reliability, and developer experience.
- No50.4M ₳Rationale
I am voting No on this proposal. This year's Net Change Limit (NCL) has been set well above the level I consider sustainable. Under my published voting framework, an appropriate NCL is roughly 15% of the previous year's staking rewards (on the order of ₳82M), whereas the NCL currently in force is several times that amount. Because the treasury is already authorized to disburse far beyond my personal NCL threshold, I am voting No on all treasury withdrawal proposals until aggregate withdrawals are brought back within a sustainable limit — regardless of the individual merits of any single proposal. This vote reflects a position on total treasury spend, not a judgment on the value of your specific project. Reference: https://coffeepool.jp/notes/drep-voting-framework-for-sustainable-ecosystem/ [Japanese version follows] 本提案に反対票を投じます。今年のNet Change Limit（NCL）は、私が持続可能と考える水準を大幅に上回って設定されています。公開済みの投票フレームワークでは、適正なNCLは前年のステーキング報酬の約15%（₳82M程度）ですが、現行のNCLはその数倍に達しています。トレジャリーは既に私のpersonal NCL（個人として許容する上限）を大きく超える出金が認められている状態にあるため、出金総額が持続可能な範囲に戻るまで、個別提案の良し悪しに関わらず、すべてのトレジャリー出金提案に反対票を投じます。本投票はトレジャリー支出全体に対する立場の表明であり、貴提案の価値そのものを否定するものではありません。参照: https://coffeepool.jp/notes/drep-voting-framework-for-sustainable-ecosystem-jp/
- Yes50M ₳Rationale
Hydra v2 brings a very important upgrade, and I would like to see it on mainnet.
- Yes49.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes40.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes37.8M ₳No rationale
- Yes36.9M ₳No rationale
- Yes34.6M ₳Rationale
あらかじめ設定された開発目標（マイルストーン）を達成するごとに、独立した第三者機関（3rd Party Assurer）による監査・承認を経て、段階的に分割して支払われます。もし開発が途中で縮小・中止された場合、未払いの資金はカルダノのトレジャリー（国庫）へ返還されると言うので、着実に開発が出来そう。
- Yes34.3M ₳Rationale
Socious votes Yes. This action requests 5,100,781 ADA (about $816,000 at the proposal's $0.16/ADA reference rate) to fund production hardening and performance work on Hydra v2, Cardano's Layer-2 state-channel protocol, across four workstreams: performance optimization (IO targets 2–10x faster snapshot signing and lower on-chain settlement costs), operational excellence (operator runbooks, simpler configuration, observability and logging), ecosystem support (features requested by live integrators, the Hydra Working Group, developer relations), and maintenance and developer experience. About 86% funds development and personnel; the remainder covers infrastructure, security and audits, legal, ecosystem engagement, operations, and governance. The withdrawal is milestone-gated and administered by Intersect under the Treasury Reserve Smart Contract Framework, with independent third-party assurance signing off each milestone and a five-entity Oversight Committee (Sundae Labs, Cardano Foundation, DQuadrant, Xerberus, NMKR).
This is the most defensible kind of scaling spend: hardening infrastructure that teams already run in production, not funding a protocol still looking for users. By IO's account — verifiable on-chain in several cases — Hydra already carries live workloads: Delta DeFi's perpetual DEX, Masumi's agent-to-agent commerce, Intersect's own governance voting infrastructure, and Blockfrost's zero-fee SPO payments, with VTech Labs, Midgard, and others building on it. The strategic gap it addresses is real: Cardano L1's multi-minute finality and roughly $0.17 fees lead high-performance builders — DeFi, AI-agent micropayments, gaming, consumer payments — to exclude Cardano at the selection stage, before they ever weigh its security and eUTXO strengths. L1 upgrades like Leios and Peras will widen the base layer but, by the scaling trilemma, cannot reach the sub-second, near-zero-fee envelope an L2 provides. For an impact lens, those same properties — near-zero fees and instant settlement — are what make micropayments, point-of-sale, and machine-to-machine commerce viable, the real-economy long-tail uses that L1 economics price out today.
We weigh the trade-offs honestly. The ask is large and lands on top of substantial prior treasury support: the proposal discloses 130,708,860 ADA allocated to IO and affiliated entities, of which 84,909,073 ADA has been withdrawn — a fair DRep can ask whether core L2 development should still draw on the treasury rather than IO's own balance sheet. Roughly 86% sits in a single development bucket, and the headline economics (Hydra "grows the pie" and routes a share of L2 fees back to L1) are directionally sound but second-order and unproven at the scale claimed; some cited deployments (Hydra Doom, the Vending Machine) are demonstrations rather than sustained production. Set against that, the accountability here is materially stronger than a self-administered withdrawal — milestone-gated drawdowns, independent assurance per milestone, the Intersect and Oversight-Committee multi-sig, funds held auto-abstain and unstaked, and unused balances returned to the treasury — and the action is compliant with the 350M Net Change Limit at submission. On balance the case holds: Hydra is Cardano's most mature L2, real teams depend on the hardening this funds, and the oversight is adequate. Socious votes Yes, and will judge any follow-on by the independent milestone sign-offs and whether the promised performance gains (the 2–10x signing throughput and reduced L1 settlement cost) and unused-fund returns actually materialize.
ソーシャスは本提案に賛成します。本アクションは5,100,781 ADA（提案の参照レート$0.16換算で約81.6万ドル）を求めるもので、Cardanoのレイヤー2ステートチャネルであるHydraについて、v2の本番環境向けの堅牢化と性能改善を四つのワークストリームで進めます。すなわち、性能最適化（IOはスナップショット署名の2〜10倍の高速化とオンチェーン決済コストの低減を目標としています）、運用面の成熟（オペレーター向け手順書、設定の簡素化、可観測性とログ）、エコシステム支援（稼働中の統合事業者からの要望対応、Hydraワーキンググループ、デベロッパーリレーション）、そして保守と開発者体験の改善です。約86％が開発と人件費に充てられ、残りはインフラ、セキュリティと監査、法務、エコシステム関与、運営、ガバナンスに配分されます。引き出しはマイルストーン連動で、IntersectがTreasury Reserve Smart Contract Frameworkのもとで管理し、各マイルストーンは独立した第三者の検証を経て、5者からなる監督委員会（Sundae Labs、Cardano Foundation、DQuadrant、Xerberus、NMKR）が監督します。
これは、スケーリングへの支出として最も筋の通る類型です。利用者を探している段階のプロトコルに資金を投じるのではなく、既に本番で稼働しているインフラを堅牢化するものだからです。IOの説明によれば、その多くはオンチェーンで確認でき、Hydraは既に実運用の負荷を担っています。Delta DeFiの無期限DEX、Masumiのエージェント間コマース、Intersect自身のガバナンス投票基盤、BlockfrostのゼロフィーなSPO決済などであり、VTech LabsやMidgardなども開発を進めています。Hydraが埋めようとする戦略的な空白は現実のものです。CardanoのL1は確定に数分を要し、手数料も約0.17ドルかかるため、高い性能を求めるビルダー、すなわちDeFi、AIエージェントのマイクロペイメント、ゲーム、消費者向け決済などは、Cardanoの安全性やeUTXOの強みを検討する前の選定段階で除外してしまいます。LeiosやPerasといったL1のアップグレードは基盤層を広げますが、スケーリングのトリレンマゆえに、L2が提供するサブ秒・ほぼゼロ手数料の領域には到達できません。インパクトの観点でも、このほぼゼロ手数料と即時決済という同じ性質こそが、マイクロペイメント、店頭決済、機械間取引といった、L1の経済性では今日成り立たない実体経済のロングテール用途を可能にします。
トレードオフも率直に記します。要求額は大きく、しかも相当規模の過去のトレジャリー支援の上に重なります。提案は、IOおよび関連事業体への配分が130,708,860 ADA、うち84,909,073 ADAが引き出し済みであることを開示しており、中核的なL2開発を依然としてトレジャリーに依存させるべきか、IO自身の財務で賄うべきかを問うDRepがいても当然です。約86％が単一の開発カテゴリに集中しており、また「パイを大きくする」「L2の手数料の一部をL1へ還流させる」という中心的な経済的論拠は、方向性としては妥当でも二次的であり、主張される規模での実証はこれからです。引用された一部の事例（Hydra Doomや自動販売機）は、継続的な本番運用というより実証デモの段階にあります。それでも、ここでの説明責任は自己管理型の引き出しより明確に強固です。マイルストーン連動の引き出し、マイルストーンごとの独立検証、Intersectと監督委員会によるマルチシグ、auto-abstainで委任されSPOには委任されない形で保有される資金、未使用残高のトレジャリーへの返還があり、提出時点で350M Net Change Limitにも準拠しています。総合すると、HydraはCardanoで最も成熟したL2であり、本資金が支える堅牢化に実際のチームが依存しており、監督体制も妥当です。ソーシャスは賛成します。今後の判断は、独立したマイルストーン検証の結果、そして約束された性能改善（署名スループットの2〜10倍化とL1決済コストの低減）および未使用資金の返還が実際に実現するかどうかに基づいて行います。
- Yes33.5M ₳Rationale
Yes. 5,100,781 ADA to harden Hydra v2, Cardano's only production-grade Layer 2 (sub-second finality, near-zero fees), already running live workloads for Delta DeFi, Masumi, Intersect, and others. Milestone-gated via Intersect's TRSC with independent assurance, now unbundled and judged on its own.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
Vote: Yes
5,100,781 ADA to harden Hydra v2 into a feature-complete, production-grade Layer 2: sub-second finality, near-zero fees, and high throughput, with Cardano L1 as the settlement backstop. This action has been separated out from the broader bundled IO ask, which is the right call and part of why it earns a clean Yes: Hydra can now be judged on its own merits rather than carried or dragged by unrelated workstreams. The Cardano First framework reads strongly, led by Scalability.
Hydra is important and needed. It is the only production-grade L2 Cardano has, and it is already running real workloads rather than asking the treasury to fund a hypothesis.
Pillar Analysis
Scalability (lead pillar)
This is as direct a Scalability case as the framework gets. Cardano L1 finalises in minutes to hours at roughly $0.17 per transaction and 7-10 TPS, and high-performance verticals (DeFi, agent micropayments, gaming, consumer payments) exclude Cardano at the selection stage because of it. Leios and Peras will expand the base layer, but by the constraints of the scaling trilemma the L1 cannot reach the zero-fee, sub-second envelope that these applications require. Hydra closes that gap today as an L2 that extends L1 rather than competing with it, anchoring activity back to L1 through head opening and settlement. Funding v2 hardening is funding the one scaling lever that is already live in production.
Adoption
The adoption evidence is concrete and on-chain, not projected. Delta DeFi runs its entire perpetual-DEX product on Hydra, Masumi runs live agent-to-agent commerce with co-signed snapshots, Glacier Drop routed more than 30 million users through it, and Intersect's own voting infrastructure runs on it, with Blockfrost, VTech Labs, and Midgard building on top. A hardened v2 lowers the integration barrier for the provisional users under evaluation (Bodega, Atlas DeFi, Wingriders, and others). This is infrastructure with a real and growing user base.
Governance Transparency
The disbursement structure is the standard milestone-gated Intersect TRSC pattern with independent third-party assurance, and the unbundling itself is a transparency win: DReps vote on Hydra as a discrete, accountable line item with its own milestones and KPIs rather than as one strand of a multi-workstream bundle. The KPI alignment (TVL, transactions, active users, throughput, reliability, protocol revenue) gives the community measurable acceptance criteria.
Economic Sustainability (contested)
At 5,100,781 ADA this is a grant, not a loan, so it carries the usual mark against the pillar: no contractual principal return. Two things make it acceptable. The amount is modest relative to the infrastructure it hardens, and the design explicitly supports routing a portion of in-head fees to the L1 treasury on settlement, so Hydra activity can reinforce rather than only consume the base-layer economy. The milestone gating and Intersect administration bound the downside in the standard way.
Risks I'm Accepting With This Yes
IOG-led core infrastructure
The proposer is Input Output, so this deepens reliance on the largest incumbent for a critical piece of the scaling stack. I am accepting this because Hydra is open-source core infrastructure with an external user base already depending on it, the work is administered by Intersect rather than self-administered, and the alternative (leaving the only production L2 under-resourced) is worse for the ecosystem than the concentration cost.
Grant with no repayment
Recovery depends on milestone non-delivery sweeping funds back, not on revenue or repayment. I am accepting this because production scaling infrastructure is a public good in the same category as the core tooling withdrawals HOSKY has already supported, and the optional L1 fee-routing mechanic gives it a sustainability story that pure grants lack.
L2 settlement and security assumptions
Hydra's guarantees rest on participants co-signing snapshots and on correct L1 settlement; a feature-complete v2 is still maturing security-critical paths. I am accepting this because the funding is specifically for hardening and operational excellence, with independent assurance gating the milestones.
Bottom Line
The only production-grade L2 on Cardano, already carrying real workloads, now unbundled so it stands on its own, funded at a modest milestone-gated ask to harden v2. Scalability and adoption are unambiguous, the grant economics are the cost. Yes.
- Yes31.4M ₳Rationale
I vote YES.
Hydra is the only production-grade Layer 2 currently operating on Cardano, supporting live workloads such as Delta DeFi, Masumi, Intersect voting, and Blockfrost micropayments. This proposal strengthens Hydra through performance optimization, operational hardening, ecosystem support, and developer experience improvements, enabling a feature-complete Hydra v2 that directly contributes to Cardano’s adoption, TVL, transaction volume, and user growth.The funding is milestone‑based, independently assured, and administered through Intersect’s treasury governance framework, ensuring transparency and accountability. Given Hydra’s strategic importance as core scaling infrastructure and its direct impact on Cardano’s competitiveness and long‑term sustainability, I support this proposal with a YES vote.
- Yes31.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes30.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes27.9M ₳Rationale
I previously abstained on the IO & Midgard Labs L2 proposal because I liked both Hydra and Midgard, but felt the scope was too broad and that the proposal did not clearly show enough near-term demand to justify the treasury spend. This revised proposal addresses enough of those concerns for me. The ask is lower, the scope is focused directly on Hydra, and the proposal does a better job explaining specific use cases and existing builders that are already using or evaluating Hydra.
I would still like to see clearer coordination with related Hydra ecosystem work such as Gummiworm and Hydrozoa, but I do not think that should prevent support for this narrower proposal. Hydra is one of Cardano’s most unique scaling technologies. For these reasons, I am voting YES.
- Yes27.5M ₳No rationale
- No26.1M ₳Rationale
There is a clear path for Hydra to succeed and it is a tech that has the potential to clearly separate Cardano from other chains, the issue is:
- how much does 5 million ada get us in the next year
- if its just to keep the lights on (im sure it isnt as most large companies like IO understand Non Cyclical Treasury Management) then we have larger problems
- there are other solutions like Sundaes gummiworm and also Delta defis advances with the Hydra dex
so for me as a drep I don't see the outlay of ada from community treasury as a immediate need, maybe the IO team can give more detail as to why this is a poor assumption on my part
- Yes25.3M ₳Rationale
I am voting YES on the IO Hydra proposal. I appreciate IO resubmitting this proposal as a standalone, and beleive Hydra to be an important component in addressing the pieces required for adoption-driven products
- Yes23.5M ₳Rationale
Hail Hydra!
- Yes21.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes21.5M ₳Rationale
I vote YES on the treasury withdrawal “IO: Hydra” (4f6e5df9a6e14bd49e406e2bbb0d108b3be2be64b9569b930053a0c1eebe0d47#0).
This appears to have much broader community support having been unbundled from the Midgard proposal and resubmitted following feedback. I have noted builder DReps who have worked hands on with Hydra already are also in support which demonstrates that the value perceived is real and not just suggested in the proposal text itself. With my limited exposure to Hydra being that of the Hydra Doom demo, Hydra events at the Cardano Summit 2025 and most recently the Hydra Voting platform, I look forward to seeing the Mainnet use cases expand.
- Yes21.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes20.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes20.3M ₳No rationale
- Yes19.9M ₳Rationale
Hydra is our premier L2 scaling solution. Other projects like Gummiworm depend on this. The isomorphic channels of Hydra not only benefit our DApps under major load but also allows offloading costly computations off-chain and only storing the result on the L1.
- Yes17.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes17.3M ₳Rationale
IO: Hydra
- Abstain16.7M ₳Rationale
We are in the YES camp on Hydra. We consider Hydra strategically important, and we believe this is among the proposals that Cardano should seriously support and ultimately pass. We are not abstaining because we question the value of Hydra or the need to continue developing Layer 2 infrastructure.
The only reason we are not voting YES is the continued black-box level of transparency repeatedly presented by Input Output when requesting public treasury funds.
For a multi-million ADA withdrawal, the proposal should provide a much clearer breakdown of personnel, contractors, infrastructure, audits, testing, DevRel, project management, and contingency. Strategic importance should not lower the standard of public-fund accountability. If anything, major ecosystem actors should be held to a higher transparency standard.
We are also missing a clearer long-term funding picture. It is not fully clear whether this is a one-time production-hardening effort or the beginning of recurring treasury-funded Hydra maintenance. If Hydra is critical infrastructure, Cardano needs to understand the expected annual maintenance cost and what should be funded as a public good.
Future reporting should also focus on measurable production outcomes: public benchmarks, active integrations, volume processed through Hydra, operational reliability, developer usage, and measurable impact on L1 activity or fees.
For these reasons, we abstain. Hydra should move forward, but repeated black-box budget transparency from IO should not become the normal standard for Cardano Treasury funding.
- Yes16.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes14.3M ₳No rationale