Withdraw ₳1,300,000 for Blockfrost Platform community budget proposal
200 DReps voted · 62 with a rationale · 4 changed their vote · 8 re-voted unchanged
Open a row to read the rationale.
Changed votes: 2 to yes, 2 to no, together voting with 35.5M ₳ of voting power.
- Yes9.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes7.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes7.6M ₳Rationale
I will keep the rationale brief for expediency - as 38 proposals were submitted concurrently by Intersect today. I voted YES for this proposal in the previous Ekklesia temp check and will vote YES now again.
To be frank, I am not an SPO (if we do not count my hobby - failed attempt to set up a Jörmungandr node to play around with it during the ITN stage.
But, tbh I was a bit wary of voting for another IOG proposal apart from the ones that I already supported. I have to admit, that IOG fest was not one of my approaches to this budget process. Trying to stay as objective as I can.
So, I delegated a lot of my thinking on this proposal to my SPO. My SPO is TECH pool run by Bjarne (he is a fab SPO). The feedback I received was that Blockfrost has shown to deliver in the past and they are always available for support in their discord server. Plus the added value is that they willing to decentralize their apis and source code, showing their care for "the core cardano ethos, decentralization 😎" Thanks Bjarne - enjoy your nice holiday. Ooops, was I supposed to share that?
- Yes7.3M ₳No rationale
- Yes6.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes6.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes5.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes5.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes5.5M ₳Rationale
Blockfrost delivers a secure and reliable API infrastructure and deserves support.
- Yes5.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes5.3M ₳Rationale
Blockfrost is a proven infrastructure provider that has meaningfully contributed to developer adoption on Cardano. This proposal aligns strongly with STORM Partners’ objectives by enhancing ecosystem efficiency and decentralizing access to critical APIs. The move to open-source and integrate SPOs through the Icebreaker program directly supports decentralization and reduces single-point-of-failure risks. We support this continuation of core infrastructure decentralization efforts.
- Yes5.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes5.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.9M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.8M ₳Rationale
API based developer backend service do accelerate dev ex. Supporting this.
API based developer backend service do accelerate dev ex. Supporting this.
- Abstain4.6M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.6M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes4.2M ₳No rationale
- YesRevoted4M ₳Rationale
Voting Rationale for 2025-08 Treasury Withdrawals
The following outlines the general lenses and beliefs that guided my voting decisions on the 39 withdrawal proposals submitted under Cardano’s Voltaire governance. I am reusing this rationale for proposals that aligned with these principles and did not require additional explanation due to unique mitigating concerns.
⸻
Cardano: State of Play
The vision of the Cardano ecosystem—to create a fairer financial system, less subject to the whims of individuals, elites, nations, or cultures—remains worthy of support. In general, we are progressing toward that goal.
The bedrock tenet of any blockchain is trustworthiness. While Cardano’s base layer and transaction integrity are mature, the ecosystem has not yet reached the scale needed to fulfill its mission. Infrastructure that supports scaling—especially when open-sourced—should be prioritized for funding.
Because the ecosystem currently allows for anonymity and lacks effective mechanisms to penalize bad actors, it is vulnerable to abuse. Public funding is at risk from fraud, budget inflation, frivolous proposals, and well-intentioned but economically unviable ideas. Given that grift is currently viable, all funding requests must be critically reviewed—with a strong default bias toward skepticism.
However, in any new system, failure and error are expected. The many problems we’ve seen in this first funding cycle are normal and should be treated as feedback to help us improve, not as reasons to disengage.
⸻
Fiscal Philosophy
I view the Cardano treasury as a sovereign wealth fund—a public resource meant to grow over the long term. Spending should be closely aligned with income.
Most projects should ultimately sustain themselves by generating revenue commensurate with their value. But Cardano is still an immature economic system, and many valuable contributions will require public funding at this stage—analogous to early government support for foundational infrastructure.
⸻
Approach to the Budget Process
This first Voltaire budget cycle has experienced serious growing pains. I do not believe that builders should be asked to shoulder the full financial risk of an immature, unclear, and delayed funding process.
Many proposers have worked through most of 2025 without knowing whether their funding would come through. This has impaired their ability to allocate resources intelligently.
I believe the greater ecosystem risk lies in failing to fund projects that were already approved by the community—under the reasonable assumption that funding would follow—than in inadvertently funding a few proposals that should have been rejected. Accordingly, I adopted a bias toward optimism and benefit of the doubt.
However, in cases where proposals appeared excessively extractive, failed to demonstrate economic value in line with their requests, or raised too many concern flags, I voted “no” despite that bias.
⸻
Bias Toward Core Infrastructure and Open-Source
Cardano is first and foremost an infrastructure system. Public funding is best directed toward foundational layers and tooling, rather than toward products that should be able to find product-market fit and attract users or investors.
Public money should come with public return—either in the form of open-sourced outputs or equity-like participation in future value creation.
⸻
Additional Beliefs and Disclosures
I believe in the wisdom of crowds. My votes are based on independent reading of the proposals, personal communications with teams, and my own biases and interpretations. I assume some of my conclusions are incorrect—but trust that the collective judgment of voters will yield a generally sound outcome despite individual errors.
I voted in good faith and without compensation. I have no proposals of my own and no financial interest in any proposal beyond that of any other ADA holder.
Earlier votes
Yes1y agoSuperseded
Voting Rationale for 2025-08 Treasury Withdrawals
The following outlines the general lenses and beliefs that guided my voting decisions on the 39 withdrawal proposals submitted under Cardano’s Voltaire governance. I am reusing this rationale for proposals that aligned with these principles and did not require additional explanation due to unique mitigating concerns.
⸻
Cardano: State of Play
The vision of the Cardano ecosystem—to create a fairer financial system, less subject to the whims of individuals, elites, nations, or cultures—remains worthy of support. In general, we are progressing toward that goal.
The bedrock tenet of any blockchain is trustworthiness. While Cardano’s base layer and transaction integrity are mature, the ecosystem has not yet reached the scale needed to fulfill its mission. Infrastructure that supports scaling—especially when open-sourced—should be prioritized for funding.
Because the ecosystem currently allows for anonymity and lacks effective mechanisms to penalize bad actors, it is vulnerable to abuse. Public funding is at risk from fraud, budget inflation, frivolous proposals, and well-intentioned but economically unviable ideas. Given that grift is currently viable, all funding requests must be critically reviewed—with a strong default bias toward skepticism.
However, in any new system, failure and error are expected. The many problems we’ve seen in this first funding cycle are normal and should be treated as feedback to help us improve, not as reasons to disengage.
⸻
Fiscal Philosophy
I view the Cardano treasury as a sovereign wealth fund—a public resource meant to grow over the long term. Spending should be closely aligned with income.
Most projects should ultimately sustain themselves by generating revenue commensurate with their value. But Cardano is still an immature economic system, and many valuable contributions will require public funding at this stage—analogous to early government support for foundational infrastructure.
⸻
Approach to the Budget Process
This first Voltaire budget cycle has experienced serious growing pains. I do not believe that builders should be asked to shoulder the full financial risk of an immature, unclear, and delayed funding process.
Many proposers have worked through most of 2025 without knowing whether their funding would come through. This has impaired their ability to allocate resources intelligently.
I believe the greater ecosystem risk lies in failing to fund projects that were already approved by the community—under the reasonable assumption that funding would follow—than in inadvertently funding a few proposals that should have been rejected. Accordingly, I adopted a bias toward optimism and benefit of the doubt.
However, in cases where proposals appeared excessively extractive, failed to demonstrate economic value in line with their requests, or raised too many concern flags, I voted “no” despite that bias.
⸻
Bias Toward Core Infrastructure and Open-Source
Cardano is first and foremost an infrastructure system. Public funding is best directed toward foundational layers and tooling, rather than toward products that should be able to find product-market fit and attract users or investors.
Public money should come with public return—either in the form of open-sourced outputs or equity-like participation in future value creation.
⸻
Additional Beliefs and Disclosures
I believe in the wisdom of crowds. My votes are based on independent reading of the proposals, personal communications with teams, and my own biases and interpretations. I assume some of my conclusions are incorrect—but trust that the collective judgment of voters will yield a generally sound outcome despite individual errors.
I voted in good faith and without compensation. I have no proposals of my own and no financial interest in any proposal beyond that of any other ADA holder.
- Yes4M ₳No rationale
- Yes3.9M ₳Rationale
I'm voting yes, as per list described in my tweet:
https://x.com/OracleAltcoin/status/1917257059071934483Core engineering first, decentralization of influence and conservative with the treasury.
Strength and honor. - Yes3.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes3.6M ₳No rationale
- Yes3.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes3.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes3M ₳Rationale
I am following through with my YES vote from the Cardano Budget 2025 Ekklesia process. This proposal falls within my personal NCL of 250,000,000 ADA.
- Yes2.8M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.8M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.7M ₳No rationale
- Abstain2.7M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.7M ₳Rationale
Blockfrostは開発者にとって欠かせないAPI基盤であり、本提案はその集中化を是正する「Icebreakers」による分散ノードネットワーク拡張を支援するものです。既存ユーザー基盤・技術力・透明性への配慮が整っており、低コストで高インパクトな提案として賛成します。
Blockfrost is a widely adopted API layer for Cardano, and this proposal aims to decentralize its infrastructure via the Icebreakers network. With its clear value to developers, demonstrated usage, and plans to mitigate vendor lock-in, I vote in favor given the reasonable cost and high ecosystem impact.
- Abstain2.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.5M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.5M ₳Rationale
Blockfrost is one of the few APIs we have in the ecosystem and it is still lacking in a few areas. We need more data accessible. I often run into issues where certain epochs do not return data. The support process has been clunky and appears to be more of a blackhole. Please use these funds to step it up.
- Yes2.2M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.2M ₳No rationale
- Yes2.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.9M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.8M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.7M ₳No rationale
- Abstain1.6M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.6M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.6M ₳Rationale
I support this treasury withdrawal, as it simplifies access for developers, supports SPOs, and promotes decentralisation. The Blockfrost team has a proven history of successful delivery.
- Yes1.6M ₳Rationale
I decided to vote ✅ YES on 37 treasury withdrawals, ➖ ABSTAIN on none, and ❌ NO on 2 treasury withdrawals from the Intersect 2025 budget.
It’s obvious I consider all proposals I approved in the budget vote on Ekklesia beneficial for Cardano, so those all receive a ✅ YES vote.
I also vote ✅ YES for most proposals I initially abstained from or voted against in the Ekklesia vote. There are a few reasons for this:
- Some proposals gained strong community support after all, so I don’t want to be the one standing in the way, especially when the requested amount is negligible in the bigger picture.
- Some proposals I actually liked, but I found them more suitable for Catalyst. However, with all the delays, it now makes more sense to fund them as soon as possible.
- Some didn’t get my initial support because I thought the requested amount was too high. But I now believe it’s better for the ecosystem to fund them, despite the larger budget, than not fund them at all.
- I needed to vote for budget proposals with my own NCL in mind. Not all those I approved made it, however, so that leaves some room for other ones.
I won’t approve the treasury withdrawal for two proposals:
❌ Withdraw ₳3,000,000 for High-yield RWA Asset for Cardano: Tokenized Real Estate
This proposal won’t bring much value to our ecosystem, imho.❌ Withdraw ₳1,500,000 for Complement Catalyst: Extended Quadratic Funding---Zero Operational Costs
While the proposal includes some interesting ideas for a fairer voting mechanism, I now support Catalyst and don’t see the need for an additional funding system at this moment, especially considering total spending. The requested amount also seems too small to meaningfully fund multiple projects. While the model relies on donations, it’s unclear what the donor incentive is. Since voting power is tied to donation size, why wouldn’t donors just support specific fundraisers run directly by the projects they care about? That way, they can ensure their contribution goes straight to their preferred initiative without needing it to win a vote first.
I do appreciate the idea of a hybrid funding model where the treasury covers part of a project, but ideally, the remaining portion should come from investors rather than donations, imho.
Lastly, I don’t appreciate that the proposal’s title refers to Catalyst, even though it has no relationship to it. This seems intended to mislead people into thinking Catalyst would benefit from this proposal, which it doesn’t...I acknowledge there’s a metadata issue in the proposal “Withdraw ₳45,217 for MLabs Core Tool Maintenance & Enhancement: Cardano.nix”, but I approved it nonetheless, as the problem is minor and not worth obstructing the process.
- Yes1.5M ₳Rationale
It's a good step in the good direction in order to decentralize API access via Icebreakers, boosting SPO revenue and developer usability
- Yes1.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.4M ₳No rationale
- Yes1.3M ₳No rationale