Pebble + Gerolamo - HLabs 2026 Budget
199 DReps voted · 87 with a rationale · 21 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes298.9K ₳Rationale
Voting YES on Pebble + Gerolamo - HLabs 2026 Budget
April 22nd 2026
Summary
Harmonic Laboratories is seeking ₳8,035,714 in funding for the next year of operations. Included in that is a 25% contingency buffer they hope to return to the treasury.
Thoughts
As a developer, the value proposition here is very clear. Gerolamo has the potential to allow developers to remove a key point of centralization from their stack while also improving ease of development and reducing maintenance costs. I've been working on a couple of projects that would benefit from access to blockchain data without a centralized provider.
Research and development shops like Harmonic Laboratories are vital to the continued existence and long-term success of Cardano. Times like these* are incredibly difficult for companies building in the crypto space.
*₳ is currently priced at ~$0.25 USD.
This 25% buffer is smart and reasonable.
Conclusion
Harmonic Laboratories does great work. I want them to continue doing great work. It makes sense to fund them so they can continue developing through this horrible crypto winter. This is the exact situation in which the treasury is most powerful. I am voting in favor of this treasury withdrawal.
Signed,
William DoyleYour friendly neighbourhood DRep!
$computerman
drep1yfpgzfymq6tt9c684e7vzata8r5pl4w84fmrjqeztdqw0sgpzw3nt
https://x.com/william00000010 - Yes294.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes271.8K ₳No rationale
- No261K ₳Rationale
EN
At this stage, the ecosystem still lacks a sufficiently clear view of the full demand for treasury funding within the current NCL window. Intersect’s budget process is still in its proposal intake and refinement phase, meaning that the broader set of funding requests will only become clearer around mid-May.
This matters because direct Treasury Withdrawal submissions currently create a structural imbalance. In practice, this path favors teams with strong technical capacity, governance familiarity, and enough ADA to provide the required on-chain deposit. Meanwhile, proposers who rely on the more coordinated budget process are forced to wait longer before their proposals can be evaluated and consolidated.
I continue to support the right of proposers to submit Treasury Withdrawals independently. That option should remain available. However, approving individual withdrawals too early risks giving priority to better-capitalized or more technically prepared actors before the ecosystem has visibility over the broader funding pipeline.
This creates an unfair sequencing problem: proposals should not gain an advantage simply because their teams are more able to navigate the direct on-chain submission process or provide the required deposit upfront.
For that reason, I believe it is more prudent to delay approvals until the ecosystem has a clearer view of total funding demand, trade-offs, and priorities within the current NCL window.
PT
Neste momento, o ecossistema ainda não possui uma visão suficientemente clara da demanda total por financiamento do tesouro dentro da janela atual de NCL. O processo orçamentário da Intersect ainda está na fase de admissão e refinamento de propostas, o que significa que o conjunto mais amplo de solicitações de financiamento só ficará mais claro por volta de meados de maio.
Isso é importante porque as submissões diretas de Treasury Withdrawals atualmente criam uma assimetria estrutural. Na prática, esse caminho favorece times com maior capacidade técnica, familiaridade com governança e ADA suficiente para realizar o depósito on-chain exigido. Enquanto isso, proponentes que dependem do processo orçamentário mais coordenado precisam esperar mais tempo até que suas propostas possam ser avaliadas e consolidadas.
Eu continuo defendendo o direito de proponentes submeterem Treasury Withdrawals de forma independente. Essa opção deve permanecer disponível. No entanto, aprovar retiradas individuais cedo demais corre o risco de dar prioridade a atores mais capitalizados ou tecnicamente mais preparados antes que o ecossistema tenha visibilidade sobre o pipeline mais amplo de financiamento.
Isso cria um problema injusto de sequenciamento: propostas não deveriam ganhar vantagem simplesmente porque seus times conseguem navegar melhor o processo direto de submissão on-chain ou fornecer antecipadamente o depósito exigido.
Por esse motivo, acredito que é mais prudente adiar aprovações até que o ecossistema tenha uma visão mais clara da demanda total por financiamento, dos trade-offs e das prioridades dentro da janela atual de NCL.
- Yes245.5K ₳Rationale
Three new nodes on the treasury payroll at once may seem like too many, however a browser-capable node is incredibly valuable. So for that alone, this has my support.
- No238.8K ₳Rationale
First and foremost, I want to make it absolutely clear that this vote is not a reflection on the Harmonic Laboratories (HLabs) team or their capabilities. I respect their significant contributions to the Cardano ecosystem, particularly the TypeScript tooling that many developers rely on daily, and their ongoing work toward greater decentralization in application development.
The technical value of a production-ready TypeScript light node (Gerolamo) and a new imperative smart contract language (Pebble), along with hard-fork maintenance, is clear in principle and could support long-term client diversity and developer accessibility.
However, at this moment in Cardano’s lifecycle, I believe we are effectively in survival mode. The network continues to face pressing challenges around adoption, treasury sustainability, fierce competition from better-funded chains, real-world utility scaling, and risks to decentralization and growth. In my view, treasury funds should be reserved almost exclusively for proposals that directly address life-or-death priorities for Cardano. These include critical security fixes, consensus upgrades for scalability and security, immediate adoption drivers, DeFi liquidity incentives that strengthen on-chain activity, regulatory and compliance tooling, or defenses against centralization threats.
While Gerolamo and Pebble represent valuable R&D for node and language diversity, I do not see funding 12 months of this work (at over ₳8 million) as a current survival priority. We already have multiple node efforts underway, and with the treasury trending toward depletion, we must be extremely disciplined in how we allocate scarce resources.
- No235.2K ₳Rationale
I appreciate the effort guys but... Aiken already closes the gap, since quite a while. I'm not against the idea o having alternate clients, but we already have a few in advanced stages... in abear market we don't have the loxury to spend on further efforts to spawn yet another one.
- NoRevoted234.2K ₳Rationale
FTE does NOT cost >$200k a year. Industry reasonable cost for FTE is ~$100k.
Earlier votes
No3mo agoSuperseded
FTE does cost >$200k a year. Industry reasonable cost for FTE is ~$100k.
- Yes233.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes223.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain215.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes196.1K ₳Rationale
Decentralised infra .. crucial.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
Decentralised infra .. crucial.
- Yes191.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes187.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes182.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes178.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes174.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes159.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes142.5K ₳Rationale
I vote in favor of this proposal.
TypeScript is one of the most widely used programming languages worldwide, and lowering the barrier to entry for this developer base constitutes an important lever for ecosystem growth. In particular, Pebble builds a bridge for Web2 and EVM developers, while Gerolamo expands infrastructure accessibility through lightweight node implementations, including browser-based use cases.
Taken as a whole, this proposal strengthens the infrastructure, the developer experience, and the accessibility of the ecosystem in a coherent and well-aligned way.
- Abstain138.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes137.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes134.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes131.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes128K ₳No rationale
- Yes115.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes110.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes108.3K ₳Rationale
I am voting in favor of this proposal. The proposal directly supports the Cardano 2030: Vision, Mission, Strategy Framework by investing in the critical infrastructure and developer resources required for long-term ecosystem health.
It also aims to provide both innovation and essential upkeep of existing infrastructure. Funding the maintenance of tooling and libraries is vital for ecosystem continuity, reducing the operational burden on developers and ensuring the stability of the applications built upon them. Supporting alternative node implementations and new programming environments broadens the ecosystem’s reach, making Cardano more accessible to a wider range of developers while enhancing the security and decentralization of the network. This is really all essential work.
The budget and administration plans presented are reasonable, transparent, and well-structured. The costs reflect a realistic understanding of the resources needed to sustain development and technical support over the coming year. This is also a well known team that has executed in the past and there are no concerns from me regarding the ability to undertake the work responsibly. - Yes64.4K ₳No rationale
- No55.9K ₳Rationale
very cool. but no - respectively no, not at this point.
i hope this does not defer the motivation of the proposers too much, as their work is fantastic, but the current landscape of contract languages and nodes is large enough. This may and will hopefully change in the future. - No50.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes49.7K ₳Rationale
I voted Yes because this proposal funds ecosystem infrastructure that can strengthen Cardano’s long-term resilience, developer accessibility, and sustainability. The combination of TypeScript tooling maintenance, Gerolamo as a light-node and relay path, and Pebble as a more accessible language for JavaScript and TypeScript developers represents a meaningful investment in builder enablement and network diversity. I recognize that this is an ambitious ask, but I also believe that Cardano has long needed greater diversity, flexibility, and more universally accessible technology pathways for both new and existing developers. That consideration weighs heavily for me. If we believe in the system we are building, then we should also support the infrastructure that helps broaden participation, reduce barriers to entry, and strengthen the ecosystem over time.
Although the proposal carries execution risk, I believe its milestone structure, escrow design, and oversight framework provide sufficient accountability to justify support. On balance, I find that the proposal’s long-term ecosystem value outweighs the associated risks.
At the time of my vote, this action had not yet demonstrated broad governance support, with Dreps Yes votes still below the ratification threshold and most Constitutional Committee members not yet voting. I therefore placed greater weight on the proposal’s intrinsic merits, execution risk, constitutional fit, and treasury discipline than on momentum alone.
- Yes48.6K ₳Rationale
cool
- No45.2K ₳No rationale
- No37.9K ₳Rationale
I don't think we should be locked into typscript.
- Yes28.2K ₳Rationale
I vote YES to this proposal because it delivers critical infrastructure improvements to the Cardano ecosystem, particularly through client diversity, developer onboarding, and trustless dApp architecture via Gerolamo and Pebble.
While the budget is significant and the scope ambitious, the strong accountability mechanisms (milestone-based funding, independent oversight, and escrow contracts) provide sufficient safeguards.
This proposal directly contributes to long-term decentralization and aligns with Cardano’s strategic priorities. However, I encourage rigorous execution and continuous transparency throughout delivery.
- Yes25.7K ₳No rationale
- No15.3K ₳No rationale
- YesRevoted15.2K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes2mo agoSuperseded
Yes2mo agoSuperseded
- Abstain8.1K ₳No rationale
- No6.7K ₳No rationale
- NoChanged4.7K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes3mo agoSuperseded
- Yes1.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.2K ₳Rationale
I'm voting yes in the hopes that this team delivers all that is promised for our ecosystem, Abstract Harmonic Laboratories is an R&D firm born and focused solely on the Cardano ecosystem. This proposal delivers critical infrastructure: Gerolamo enables browser-based light nodes for trustless dApps, Pebble lowers the barrier for TypeScript developers to build smart contracts, and ongoing tooling maintenance ensures ecosystem stability across hard forks. With strong governance through audited escrow and independent oversight, ₳8M for 10 FTEs over 12 months is a reasonable investment in Cardano's long-term decentralization and developer adoption.
Pebble = TypeScript devs (17M+) can build Cardano smart contracts without learning functional programming Gerolamo = dApps run their own nodes instead of trusting centralized servers Tooling maintenance = devs don't get screwed by protocol upgrades Lower barriers = more devs = more dApps = better ecosystem. Simple math.
- Yes682 ₳No rationale
- Yes618.5 ₳No rationale
- Abstain153.7 ₳No rationale
- YesChanged0 ₳History
Earlier votes
No3mo agoSuperseded
- Yes0 ₳No rationale
- Abstain0 ₳No rationale