Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime
7 of 7 committee members voted
- 68bb0b42…874668bb0b42…8746YesActive · term ends epoch 653No rationale
- Ace Alliance71aa5b3a…8f04YesActive · term ends epoch 726Rationale
Ace Alliance finds the proposed "Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime" Treasury Withdrawals Governance Action constitutional. Rationales are archived at https://github.com/ace-alliance/ace-voting/
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
"Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime" (gov_action1xg6...qa63yc) is a Treasury Withdrawals Governance Action and is therefore governed by both the general proposal standards in Article II, Section 6 and the additional Treasury Withdrawal standards in Article II, Section 7 of the Cardano Constitution. The Action seeks to withdraw 2,464,844 ada from the Cardano Treasury, budgeted at a conservative 0.16 USD per ada planning rate with no contingency, to fund nine months of Scalus maintenance, Dijkstra hard fork readiness, and interoperability work across the JVM and JavaScript and TypeScript toolchains. The vendor is Lantr Engineering, the sole delivery party, which has built Scalus for three years. This is a reduced resubmission: the prior Scalus Treasury Withdrawal expired without ratification, and this version cuts the ask from 4,500,000 ada over twelve months to 2,464,844 ada over nine, removing the L1 node scope and third-party dependencies.
Article II.6 (Governance Action Standards). The procedural standards are satisfied. The action anchors to an IPFS-hosted document with the on-chain blake2b-256 hash e6b117c2522a69b1b693dd863181aa42b86d71fc928b5b5d40cc906d43515500, a content-addressed form that is immutable once posted, and the metadata supplies the title, abstract, motivation, rationale, itemized budget, quarterly milestone plan, and supporting references that Article II.6.2 requires.
Article II.7.1 (Terms of the Withdrawal). The terms-of-withdrawal requirement is met, and the refund prong is enforced at the contract level rather than promised in prose. The proposal specifies the purpose (the maintenance, Dijkstra readiness, and interoperability scope enumerated above), a nine-month delivery period on quarterly milestones, itemized costs, and the circumstances of refund: the escrow's Sweep action returns unused funds early with the signature of the vendor and any one oversight board member, and funds remaining in the contract after expiration sweep back to the Cardano Treasury automatically, enforced at the contract level and incapable of being overridden.
Article II.7.2 (Prior Treasury Funding Disclosure). The disclosure requirement is satisfied. The proposal discloses, in tabular form with identifiers, Lantr Engineering's 657,692 ada 2025 Treasury Budget receipt for the Scalus DApps Development Platform and three prior Project Catalyst awards for Scalus across Funds 11 and 13.
Article II.7.3 (Net Change Limit). A Net Change Limit of 500,000,000 ada is in force for the period spanning epochs 613 through 713, agreed by the DReps through the Net Change Limit Info Action (gov_action15at...hakceq) at the greater-than-50-percent active voting stake threshold TREASURY-01a requires, superseding the prior 350,000,000 ada limit for the same period. The 2,464,844 ada requested here is well within it, on its own and in aggregate with the other withdrawals pending at the time of this review, satisfying guardrail TREASURY-02a; the withdrawal is denominated in ada, satisfying TREASURY-03a.
Article II.7.4 (Audit and Oversight Allocation). The proposal allocates ada for audit and oversight as part of the funding request, and does so explicitly. No.Witness Labs, which holds no stake in Lantr Engineering, performs periodic third-party audits with quarterly technical reviews published to the community and is remunerated with funds explicitly allocated in the proposal for that purpose; an external financial auditor will scrutinize the project's finances with a report targeted for Q2 2027, likewise remunerated from an explicit allocation; and oversight metrics run through the milestone schedule and public reporting commitments.
Article II.7.5 (Designated Administrator). The proposal designates an administration structure distinct from the recipient. Funds are held and released through the SundaeSwap treasury-contracts framework, whose treasury and vendor validators have been independently audited by TxPipe and MLabs and are in production use on mainnet, and a three-member independent oversight board (Chris Gianelloni of Blink Labs, Matthias Benkort of the Cardano Foundation, and Riley Kilgore of IOG), whose members hold no stake in Lantr Engineering, co-signs disbursements, reviews milestones, and can pause or halt funding under a published permission scheme that requires board majority for disbursement. This is the same escrow architecture this Committee has previously found constitutional.
Article II.7.6 (Custody and Delegation of Held Funds). The on-chain withdrawal destination is stake17xzhu4tdpl4gdsupfmn3yjlngt2f3mjes3v6wwg9yd767ps8k5qvl, a script-locked stake address (CIP-19 mainnet header byte 0xf1) that we verified on-chain at the time of this review as not delegated to any stake pool and delegated to the predefined always-abstain DRep. The treasury contract itself enforces auto-abstain DRep delegation and no SPO delegation for all funds in escrow, so the Article's holding requirements are satisfied by contract logic for the life of the deployment.
Appendix I (Guardrails). Only the Treasury Withdrawal guardrails in Appendix I.3 are engaged, and each is met as set out under Article II.7.3 above. The parameter, hard-fork, no-confidence, constitution, and committee guardrail groups are not engaged by a Treasury Withdrawals action.
Ace Alliance finds the proposed "Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime" Treasury Withdrawals Governance Action constitutional.
- Cardano Curia84feba94…6bd5YesActive · term ends epoch 653Rationale
Cardano Curia finds the “Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime” Treasury Withdrawal governance action constitutional by a unanimous internal vote of five to zero.
What is being proposed
This Treasury Withdrawal requests 2,464,844 ADA for a nine-month Scalus work programme running from July 2026 through March 2027. The proposal funds maintenance and Dijkstra hard-fork readiness, JVM and JavaScript/TypeScript interoperability, and a scoped first application-runtime release. Lantr Engineering is the delivery vendor.
Constitutional determination
Cardano Curia finds the action constitutional.
The proposal is submitted in a legible and sufficiently detailed form. It states the purpose of the withdrawal, the delivery period, the costs, the milestone structure, the acceptance evidence, the reporting duties, and the circumstances in which unused funds are returned. Its scope is bounded across three quarterly milestones, and the proposal expressly excludes the larger standalone L1-node, full L2-integration, and broad formal-verification work contained in an earlier version.
The costs are tied to identified engineering, product, documentation, developer-enablement, audit, and assurance activities. The proposal discloses Lantr Engineering’s prior Cardano Treasury withdrawal and provides references to the earlier funding and delivery record.
Periodic independent technical assurance is assigned to No.Witness Labs, with funds expressly allocated for that work. The proposal also provides for an external financial audit of treasury management and fund use, quarterly technical and delivery reporting, and a public transaction journal linking disbursements and other escrow actions to on-chain evidence.
Treasury administration is performed through audited SundaeSwap escrow contracts with an independent oversight board. Milestone disbursement requires vendor and board approval; board members can pause milestones; unused funds can be swept early; and funds remaining after expiration return automatically to the Cardano Treasury. The escrow enforces auto-abstain DRep delegation and prohibits SPO delegation while funds remain under administration.
The majority therefore finds that the proposal meets the applicable governance-action and Treasury Withdrawal standards concerning purpose, delivery period, costs, prior-funding disclosure, independent assurance, administration, auditability, oversight, delegation controls, and refund mechanisms. Its open-source developer-infrastructure purpose is also consistent with the constitutional tenets supporting application development, safe preservation of ecosystem infrastructure, and proportionate use of Cardano resources.
Cardano Curia finds the Scalus 2026 Treasury Withdrawal governance action constitutional. The decision is based on its defined nine-month scope, detailed costs and milestones, prior-funding disclosure, independent technical and financial assurance, public reporting, audited escrow, oversight-board controls, required delegation policy, and enforceable return of unused funds.
- Cardano Japan Council725d4d44…7b31YesActive · term ends epoch 653Rationale
We consider this governance action to be constitutional.
This proposal is a Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action to withdraw ₳2,464,844 from the Cardano Treasury in connection with "Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime" by Lantr Engineering. This proposal references the proposal document on IPFS and presents the proposal's title, summary, rationale, and justification. These elements meet the requirements of Article 2, Section 6, Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Cardano Constitution. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 1, this proposal aims to ensure the ongoing maintenance of Scalus, support for Dijkstra, improved interoperability, and the development of an application runtime, with an implementation period of 9 months. It also presents the budget breakdown, milestones, success metrics, deliverables, and implementation plan for each work area. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 2, this proposal discloses the allocation amounts, amounts received, and corresponding Project Catalyst projects or Governance Actions related to past funding received by Lantr Engineering and Scalus from Project Catalyst and the Cardano Treasury. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 3, this proposal confirms that the requested amount of ₳2,464,844 falls within the applicable Net Change Limit. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 4, this proposal outlines a supervision framework involving an independent Oversight Board, an independent technical assurance provider, and an independent financial auditor, as well as milestone-based reviews and approvals, public reporting, and milestone-based payment management. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 5, this proposal establishes fund administration through the SundaeSwap treasury-contracts framework, with milestone-based fund management governed by an independent Oversight Board. It also provides for independent technical assurance and independent financial audits. Regarding Article 2, Section 7, Paragraph 6, this proposal outlines fund management through the SundaeSwap treasury-contracts framework, a public transaction journal, and on-chain verifiability. It also states that any remaining funds will automatically be returned to the Cardano Treasury after expiration. Furthermore, under this framework, funds are not staked with an SPO, and DRep is delegated to a predefined abstention voting option. Therefore, as no clear conflict with the Cardano Constitution has been identified, this proposal is deemed constitutional.
For the reasons stated above, we determine that it is constitutional.
- Eastern Cardano Council2ea7a78e…10ecYesActive · term ends epoch 726Rationale
We have determined that this treasury withdrawal governance action is constitutional.
The governance action with ID "gov_action1xg6...qa63yc" and title "Scalus 2026: Maintenance, Dijkstra Readiness, Interoperability & Application Runtime" is a Treasury Withdrawal, and is therefore subject to the following sections and guardrails in the Cardano Constitution.
ARTICLE II, Section 6 of the Cardano Constitution states that governance actions must follow a standardized and legible format, including a URL hosting an immutable document and a corresponding hash, and must provide sufficient rationale including a title, abstract, justification, and supporting materials.
This governance action includes a valid URL and hash, which matches the hash of the off-chain documentation referenced. The rationale also meets the minimum content specified in this section.
ARTICLE II, Section 7 specifies that Treasury Withdrawal governance actions must include the following:
1. Purpose, Delivery Period, Costs, and Refund Conditions
This governance action specifies:
- The purpose of the withdrawal as "Scalus is an established, open-source Cardano development platform, built by Lantr Engineering over three years of continuous delivery... This proposal funds a focused, 9-month continuation across three lines of work".
- The period for delivery of proposed activities as "9 months".
- The relevant costs and expenses in the "Budget" section.
- The circumstances under which funds may be refunded to the Cardano Treasury as "Funds remaining in the contract after expiration sweep back to the Cardano Treasury automatically. Enforced at the contract level; cannot be overridden."
These elements fulfil the requirements of Article II, Section 7(1).
2. Prior Treasury Funding Disclosure
ARTICLE II, Section 7(2) requires disclosure of whether the prospective recipient has received ada from the Cardano Treasury within the last 24 months.
This governance action states that "In accordance with Article II — Section 7.2 of the Constitution, Lantr Engineering discloses prior Treasury withdrawals. We also disclose earlier Project Catalyst support for Scalus to provide a complete picture of prior Cardano community funding.". This fulfils the requirement of ARTICLE II, Section 7(2).
3. Net Change Limit (NCL)
ARTICLE II, Section 7(3) requires that Treasury Withdrawals must not exceed the Net Change Limit.
The Net Change Limit in effect at the time of submission of this vote on-chain is the governance action with ID "gov_action1m3x...4jsr7q".
- A. Current NCL Amount: 350000000 ada
- B. Current NCL Time Period: Epoch 613 to Epoch 713 (Inclusive)
- C. Total of Treasury Withdrawals within the Current NCL Time Period: 335610296 ada
- D. Amount of this Treasury Withdrawal: 2464844 ada
- E. "C" plus "D" = 338075140 ada
- F. "A" minus "E" = 11924860 ada
As the value of "F" is greater than or equal to zero, this governance action fulfils the NCL requirement.
4. Audit Allocation and Oversight Metrics
ARTICLE II, Section 7(4) states "Treasury Withdrawals actions shall require an allocation of ada as a part of such funding request to cover the cost of periodic independent audits and the implementation of oversight metrics as to the use of such ada."
This governance action states that "An external financial auditor will scrutinize Scalus's finances and treasury management, with the goal to publish a resulting report in Q2 2027. It will be remunerated with funds explicitly allocated in this proposal for that purpose." It also allocates ₳93,750 for a "Audits & Assurance". These fulfil the requirements of ARTICLE II, Section 7(4).
5. Designated Administrators
ARTICLE II, Section 7(5) requires that one or more administrators are designated to monitor fund usage and ensure deliverables are achieved.
This governance action states that "An independent, multi-party board provides third-party governance. Board members have no stake in Lantr Engineering. They co-sign disbursements, review milestones, and can halt funding if delivery falters.", which fulfils this requirement.
6. Fund Management Requirements
ARTICLE II, Section 7(6) states "Any ada received from a Cardano Blockchain treasury withdrawal, so long as such ada is being held by an administrator prior to further disbursement to the Treasury Withdrawal Recipient, must be kept in one or more separate accounts that can be audited by the Cardano Community, and such accounts shall not be delegated to an SPO but must be delegated to the predefined abstain voting option."
This governance action specifies the following withdrawal address, which at the time of assessment is not delegated to an SPO and is delegated to the auto abstain voting option:
- stake17xzhu4tdpl4gdsupfmn3yjlngt2f3mjes3v6wwg9yd767ps8k5qvl
Finally, the guardrails that require consideration for this governance action are TREASURY-01a, TREASURY-02a, and TREASURY-03a. These are addressed as follows:
- TREASURY-01a - The net change limit with governance action ID "gov_action1m3x...4jsr7q" is currently in effect, after being "agreed by the DReps via an on-chain governance action with a threshold of greater than 50% of the active voting stake".
- TREASURY-02a - As per the above assessment, this treasury withdrawal does not exceed the current Net Change Limit.
- TREASURY-03a - This treasury withdrawal is denominated in ada.
We therefore find this governance action Constitutional.
This governance action sufficiently fulfils the criteria specified for treasury withdrawals in the Cardano Constitution, so is deemed constitutional.
- Tingvard646d1b3a…be43YesActive · term ends epoch 726Rationale
Tingvard judges the “Scalus: Cardano’s Application Platform” Treasury Withdrawal governance action constitutional.
This governance action requests 2,464,844 ADA from the Cardano Treasury to fund a focused 9-month continuation of Scalus, delivered by Lantr Engineering. The proposal covers maintenance, Dijkstra hard fork readiness, interoperability across JVM and JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems, and a scoped application runtime.
The proposal identifies the purpose of the withdrawal, the amount requested, the 9-month delivery period, and the intended scope of work. It explains that this is a reduced resubmission of the previous Scalus proposal, with the request reduced from 8,503,000 ADA over 12 months to 2,464,844 ADA over 9 months, with the standalone L1 node, full L2 integration, and broad formal verification removed from scope.
The proposal includes three quarterly milestones covering continuity and Dijkstra preview, interoperability and Dijkstra conformance, and Dijkstra readiness with runtime consolidation. Each milestone includes objectives, deliverables, and builder-facing outcomes.
The proposal provides a cost breakdown. It identifies a total request of 2,464,844 ADA, with allocations for development and engineering, product management and delivery, documentation and developer enablement, and audits and assurance.
The proposal includes administration and oversight arrangements. Funds will be held and released through the SundaeSwap treasury-contracts framework, using independently audited smart contracts. Lantr Engineering is identified as the sole vendor, and an independent oversight board will co-sign disbursements, review milestones, and halt funding if delivery falters.
The proposal includes audit and assurance provisions. Periodic third-party audits will be performed by No.Witness Labs, quarterly technical reviews will be published to the Cardano community, and an external financial auditor will scrutinize Scalus’s finances and treasury management. The proposal states that both are remunerated with funds explicitly allocated for that purpose.
The proposal addresses custody and delegation. It states that the treasury contract enforces auto-abstain DRep delegation and no SPO delegation for all funds in escrow. It also includes a failsafe sweep, where funds remaining in the contract after expiration sweep back to the Cardano Treasury automatically.
The proposal discloses prior treasury and ecosystem funding, including Catalyst funding and the 2025 Treasury Budget allocation for Lantr: Scalus DApps Development Platform. It states that all completed milestones were delivered and publicly reported.
The proposal states that it follows the applicable 350M Net Change Limit and that, at the moment of submission, it is within the boundary.
Tingvard therefore finds that the proposal satisfies the relevant constitutional requirements for a Treasury Withdrawal governance action.
Tingvard finds the “Scalus: Cardano’s Application Platform” Treasury Withdrawal governance action constitutional.
The proposal identifies the purpose, amount, delivery period, costs, refund circumstances, administrator and vendor structure, custody and delegation arrangements, audit and oversight provisions, prior funding disclosure, and NCL position.
Tingvard therefore judges this governance action constitutional.
- KtorZ64f97568…3a49AbstainActive · term ends epoch 653Rationale
Conflict of interest
I have gladly accepted to support the project as an overseeing board member, which therefore disqualifies me to review this in all fairness.