Withdraw ₳1,500,000 for Complement Catalyst: Extended Quadratic Funding---Zer...
207 DReps voted · 75 with a rationale · 5 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes313.4K ₳Rationale
I’m voting YES on this proposal as it reflects my commitment to sustainable innovation, improved funding mechanisms, and long-term value creation within the Cardano ecosystem.
Introducing an extended quadratic funding model alongside Catalyst creates opportunities for more inclusive, community-driven funding while encouraging co-funding and better impact measurement. It addresses known challenges in treasury allocation and supports more scalable, transparent approaches to resource distribution.
With experienced delivery partners and oversight through Intersect, this proposal presents a well-structured experiment in funding evolution which I believe aligns with Cardano’s governance principles and is worth supporting at this stage.
- Yes298.9K ₳Rationale
Considered voting NO because I don't like the idea of quadratic voting OR catalyst (I think catalyst proposals should instead be submitted to the dreps). But the team seems cracked and I'd like to give them a shot. They've already had their budget approved. Innovation in the governance space should be encouraged. I am voting YES.
- No271.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes270.1K ₳Rationale
This proposal is an important evolutionary complement to Project Catalyst, introducing a forward-thinking funding mechanism centered on extended quadratic funding, reputation-weighted voting, and transparent milestone accountability. It not only addresses existing Catalyst challenges such as concentrated voting power, protracted or uncertain milestone execution, and lack of visibility into project impact, but also pioneers new methods for community-driven, scalable innovation funding.
Crucially, the proposal recognizes that responsible ecosystem growth depends on robust research and iterative prototyping. Only by actively exploring alternative models and questioning established assumptions can Cardano continue to refine its governance and funding processes. This initiative supports exactly that by creating space to evaluate new options, better understand the types of problems we face, and uncover which questions we ought to be asking as the treasury evolves.
The team behind this proposal brings extensive experience from leading innovation platforms and blockchain development, reinforcing confidence in successful delivery. Financial oversight is strengthened through audited Sundae Labs smart contracts and multi-party governance, ensuring treasury security and accountability. All allocated funds flow directly to projects, maximizing real-world impact and eliminating operational overhead.
Mandatory standardized impact reporting sets a clear benchmark for transparency, enabling systematic learning from outcomes and making it possible to continuously fine-tune funding mechanisms based on real data.
Most importantly, the proposal encourages broader participation—from individual donors to major stakeholders—and invites the ecosystem to take shared ownership of its own evolution. By prototyping new models and gathering actionable insights, it ensures Cardano’s innovation funding toolkit can adapt and improve over time.
For these reasons, I recommend supporting this proposal as a critical step toward a more flexible, research-led, and collaborative approach to decentralized treasury management on Cardano—one that remains accountable, transparent, and open to continuous improvement.
- No262.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes252.9K ₳No rationale
- No245.5K ₳No rationale
- No238.8K ₳Rationale
While the Extended Quadratic Funding proposal aims to address challenges in Cardano’s Project Catalyst, I’m inclined to vote Nay because the identified problems lack clarity and urgency. The five challenges—concentrated voter power, treasury limitations, impact reporting, uncertain ROI, and milestone management—are broadly stated but not convincingly demonstrated as pressing issues requiring immediate action. For instance, Project Catalyst has already funded over 2,100 projects, suggesting the current system is functional, and there’s insufficient evidence that these issues are significantly hindering progress today. The proposed solution, while innovative, introduces complex mechanisms like quadratic voting and reputation scores that may overcomplicate the funding process without clear demand from the community. Additionally, the reliance on external donations and speculative 5% ROI projections feels optimistic and unproven, raising concerns about feasibility. Given the Cardano treasury’s finite resources, I believe funding should prioritize more immediate, well-defined needs over this experimental model, which lacks a compelling case for urgent implementation. I have nothing against the development team as they seem to be smart competent team but can't get behind this proposal. Maybe I'll support a different proposal in the future.
- No238.6K ₳No rationale
- No208.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes200.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes196.1K ₳No rationale
- No191.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes185.6K ₳Rationale
I am voting yes on all 39 Intersect Governance actions. The community has thoroughly reviewed the many proposals presented in the Intersect Budget Process for the 2025 budget. I was deeply involved in the entire process as an SME for the Budget Committee, and then as the Secretary for the Budget Committee.
The proposals presented represent an incredible amount of development for our ecosystem for the next year. The teams all received at least 50% on Ekklesia polling. The teams will face milestones in order to continue to receive funding. If a team fails to deliver, the process will stop them from enriching themselves without returning value.
If anything, we are spending too little on our community. We need to spend more to further develop our governance and our organized events. This is a liquid democracy. If you believe that all of these proposals deserve a chance to deliver, you can shift your delegation to my DRep ID.
- No178.9K ₳No rationale
- No166.4K ₳Rationale
We like the idea of a more robust version of Catalyst that attempts to solve the whale problem, but 1.5million seems like a lot when the system for returning value to the treasury is entirely voluntary. A smaller scale pilot of the same design could still test this new system with less risk to treasury funds.
✅ Pros
More Democratic Funding Mechanism: 🗳️ The proposal's core is a Quadratic Funding (QF) model. This system prioritizes the number of unique contributors over the amount of capital contributed, directly addressing the "whale problem" where wealthy voters can dominate outcomes. By combining this with a reputation score, it aims to create a more meritocratic and community-driven allocation of funds.Efficient Use of Treasury Funds with Zero Overhead: 💸 A major selling point is the claim of zero operational costs. The entire ₳1.5 million requested from the treasury is designated as a matching fund for projects. The vendor, Socious, is not taking a fee or salary from this amount. This structure amplifies the treasury's impact by incentivizing direct community donations to unlock the matching funds.
Enhanced Accountability and Potential for ROI: 📈 The proposal introduces two key features lacking in the current Catalyst system. First, it requires standardized impact reporting from all funded projects, creating a valuable dataset on project performance. Second, it establishes a voluntary value-capture system where successful projects are encouraged to share equity, tokens, or revenue back to the ecosystem, creating a path toward a self-sustaining treasury.
Proposed by an Experienced and Well-Resourced Team: 🧑💻 The vendor, Socious, is an established impact startup backed by prominent entities like 500 Global, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. They have a large team with direct experience in Hyperledger Identus (a key technology for this proposal) and have established legal and accounting partnerships, which significantly reduces execution risk.
Built-in Sybil Resistance: 🛡️ A critical vulnerability in any QF system is a "Sybil attack," where one user creates multiple fake accounts to game the system. This proposal directly confronts this by planning to implement Hyperledger Identus, a decentralized identity solution that uses zero-knowledge proofs for KYC, ensuring "one-human-one-account" without compromising user privacy.
❌ Cons
High Complexity and Experimental Risk: 🧪 This is not a simple system. It combines Quadratic Funding, a novel reputation score, ZK-KYC, anti-collusion measures, and a new dispute-resolution process. While theoretically powerful, the practical implementation of such a complex model is highly challenging and experimental. Unforeseen issues or vulnerabilities could arise.Reliance on Unproven and Voluntary Mechanisms: 🤔 The model's success hinges on two new and untested concepts. The "Impact Score" that influences voting power could become a new form of centralization if not designed and governed perfectly. More importantly, the system for returning value to the treasury is entirely voluntary. There's no guarantee that successful projects will choose to contribute back, making the projected ROI speculative.
Large Initial Funding Request for an Untested Model: 💰 At ₳1,500,000, this is a very significant treasury withdrawal to fund a completely new and unproven system. A more cautious approach might involve a smaller-scale pilot program to validate the complex mechanics and prove the concept before committing such a large amount of capital.
Potential for Centralization via Platform Administration: 👨⚖️ Although designed to decentralize funding decisions, the system itself centralizes significant administrative power with the vendor, Socious. They will build the platform, manage the dispute resolution process, and oversee the "designated impact accountants." The community must place a high degree of trust in Socious to operate these critical functions transparently and without bias.
- No147.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes138.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes137.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes133.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes131.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes110.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes108.3K ₳Rationale
I am voting in favor of approving the treasury withdrawal for all 39 withdrawal actions that are part of the approved ecosystem budget administered by Intersect. I am voting this way for several reasons, as I will outline here. This rationale will be included in all 39 withdrawal votes.
First and foremost, I believe that we would be making a mistake in underfunding our community with our available treasury funds. The budget system as it currently stands has some flaws, as should be expected from a first version of any system. Of the current proposals, I voted to include several in the budget when it was being formed; however, I also did not vote in favor of several others. This is, of course, the case for most DReps. If I were to vote only for the proposals I initially favoured, and all other DReps did the same, we would likely approve only 2 or 3 proposals out of 39 due to the vote split. In my view, this is not an acceptable outcome for the community, and this is why I was also opposed to the idea of having 39 separate treasury withdrawal actions. I have reviewed all 39 requests, and they all have merit. Are they exactly in line with the priorities I wanted as part of the initial budget? No. Is that reason enough to vote no on several of these and end up approving only 2 or 3 proposals in the end? I certainly don't believe so.
In addition to this, the total amount of the intersect budget is roughly 10% higher than what I voted for, and I find that to be within an acceptable margin to approve all the withdrawals.
The individual proposals also all received at least 50% community approval to be included and will be subject to reviews and milestones to receive funds.
For these reasons, I am casting my vote to approve and am wishing the best of luck to all the teams waiting for funding through this process. - Yes105.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes103.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes92.6K ₳No rationale
- No89.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes89.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes68.8K ₳Rationale
- No65.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes65.7K ₳No rationale
- No58.6K ₳No rationale
- No55.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes52.4K ₳Rationale
I believe Catalyst is and has been a critical funding vehicle for early stage projects and companies building on and for Cardano. This proposal extends and iterates on Catalyst in a manner that I believe is beneficial and supports the growth of Cardano as an ecosystem.
- No50.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes49.7K ₳Rationale
This proposal complements Project Catalyst by piloting an extended quadratic funding model that directly addresses persistent funding challenges—concentrated voter power, inefficient milestone management, and weak impact reporting. By combining quadratic funding with a reputation-based system and donor matching, it democratizes funding decisions, extends treasury impact, and creates standardized impact metrics for ecosystem growth.
The vendor (Socious, supported by Intersect administration and oversight) has proven experience with identity systems, impact measurement, and decentralized governance. The zero operational cost structure ensures funds go directly to projects, with accountability built in via legal contracts, milestone assurance, and third-party oversight.
At ₳1.5M, the budget is proportionally reasonable compared to the scope of innovation impact and the broader ₳275M budget envelope. This proposal strengthens Cardano’s experimentation with pluralistic funding models while remaining constitutionally compliant under Article IV (funding innovation) and Article III (ecosystem growth).
- Yes48.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes46.5K ₳Rationale
We explored SOCIOUS fund and see it super beneficial for the under-developed and underserved community
- No45.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes36.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes36.3K ₳Rationale
✅ Vote: YES — Complement Catalyst: Extended Quadratic Funding
I’m voting YES to fund a powerful innovation layer on top of Catalyst, designed to fix concentrated voting power, improve ROI tracking, and supercharge Cardano’s innovation pipeline — with zero operational costs.
🚀 Why this matters:
• Democratized funding: Combines quadratic funding + reputation-based scoring for more equitable community participation
• Sybil-resistant: Uses zk-KYC to ensure one-human-one-account without compromising privacy
• Multiplied impact: Treasury funds are matched with outside donations, amplifying ecosystem reach
• Real ROI tracking: Projects report standardized metrics like on-chain usage, user growth, and more
• Sustainable returns: Funded projects can opt-in to equity, token, or revenue-sharing models
• Faster milestones: Streamlined review and dispute resolution supports lean, agile teams🛠️ Built by Socious — backed by 500Global, Microsoft, Amazon, and active contributors in Catalyst, Gitcoin, and Hyperledger. The team includes verified Cardano community leaders and developers.
🔒 Fund distribution via smart contracts audited by TxPipe and MLabs, with oversight from Cardano Foundation, Sundae Labs, Xerberus, NMKR, and DQuadrant.
🔗 Proposal on Ekklesia
🔗 GovTool Action
🔗 Documentation + VideosThis is what next-gen decentralized funding looks like — lean, scalable, transparent.
#Cardano #OpenGov #Catalyst #QuadraticFunding #Governance #VoteYES #ImpactFunding #ComplementCatalyst
- No26.7K ₳Rationale
I do not like Catalyst and I do not want to see it funeded. I want an alternative to Catalyst. I do not want something complimentary to the existing system.
- Yes15.2K ₳No rationale
- No14.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes8.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes6.7K ₳No rationale
- YesRevoted5.5K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes11mo agoSuperseded
- Yes4.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.2K ₳Rationale
I would vote YES on this proposal because it introduces an Extended Quadratic Funding model that complements Catalyst by addressing voter concentration, weak impact reporting, and inefficient milestone management while operating with zero overhead, ensuring 100% of funds go directly to Cardano projects. The design leverages quadratic voting with reputation scores, encourages external donations to amplify treasury impact, and implements strong accountability measures through standardized impact reporting, legal contracts, audits, and third-party assurance. Given the modest ₳1.5M request within the broader approved budget, the potential benefits in fairness, transparency, and long-term sustainability outweigh the risks, making this a valuable experiment to strengthen Cardano’s innovation ecosystem.
- Yes682 ₳No rationale