Withdraw ₳130,903 for Lucid Evolution Maintenance administered by Intersect
174 DReps voted · 48 with a rationale
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes 1.1M ₳ No rationale
- Yes 1.1M ₳ No rationale
- No 1M ₳ Rationale
At first glance, funding Lucid Evolution’s maintenance and development seems aligned with a core need: supporting a widely used off-chain library critical for developer productivity.
Lucid Evolution is described as “one of the most used offchain libraries,” yet the ecosystem already hosts multiple competing libraries and tools for off-chain interactions (e.g., Blockfrost SDK, Mesh SDK, and others). The proposal does not convincingly demonstrate why Lucid Evolution is uniquely indispensable or how it outperforms alternatives.
While open source is commendable, the proposal centers on funding a single vendor, Anastasia Labs, to maintain and evolve the library. This creates a potential single point of failure and vendor lock-in. How can we ensure continuity if this vendor disengages?
- Yes 1M ₳ No rationale
- Yes 955.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 947.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 922.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 860.4K ₳ No rationale
- No 819K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 810K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 804.1K ₳ Rationale
Lucid is a critical library for Cardano dApp development. Ongoing maintenance. Especially under Intersect’s administration it ensures long-term reliability, security, and support for ecosystem builders. We like many other builders rely on Lucid.
- Yes 793K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 785.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 733.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 717.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 716.6K ₳ Rationale
We, The Dutch Drep, vote Yes on this withdrawal governance action for Midgard - Optimistic Rollups, administered by Intersect. Our affirmative vote is based on the long term technological implications of integrating optimistic rollups for scaling and layer 2 ecosystems. Given the need for changes to the Cardano ledger for Optimistic Rollups to succeed, we expect detailed account by the project team on what ledger changes are required and the broader implication of such ledger changes. We expect with Intersect's administration such reseach will be part of the delivery milestones. These were major factors in our decision to support this proposal.
- Yes 654.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 624.8K ₳ Rationale
I have voted in favor of this action to demonstrates my intention to execute without delays and move the treasury expenditure process forward. I also want to note that I will not seriously consider individual requests from the treasury for less that 1,500,000 ADA moving forward. I reserve the right this round because I feel the process was not properly explained to proposers and DRep and it would be unfair to implement this personal guardrail at this time. Requests below that threshold are better suited for Catalyst funding or bundled together in MBO, DAO, or conglomerate entities. TWA (Treasury Withdrawal Actions) need be comprehensive and not ad hoc as that makes oversight more costly and inefficient.
A budget and all included line items has already been approved, and now is the time to disperse funding and enable further development of the Cardano network. The proposal was selected through a well-defined process, and I will fully support it out of respect for the will of the broader Cardano community and a belief in respecting the consensus we achieved together under the Intersect-administered budget process. The process reflects a coordinated, strategic approach to funding Cardano’s ecosystem-critical infrastructure. The community has thoroughly reviewed the proposal. I was actively involved in the entire process and the proposal presented represents development that provides a tangible benefit to our ecosystem. It would be a mistake to underfund our ecosystem’s development when we can sustainably provide the required funding with our available treasury reserves.
Furthermore there are exceptional oversight mechanisms in place to ensure a minimum amount of wast, fraud, and abuse of treasury expenditures, such as Intersect’s smart contract framework (audited by TxPipe and MLabs), Multi-party oversight (including Cardano Foundation, Sundae Labs, NMKR, etc.), A clear milestone-driven disbursement model, and full transparency via TRSC/PSSC dashboards.
These governance and assurance systems meet the constitutional standards for accountability and risk management and provide confidence in efficiency and execution. - Yes 589.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 587.1K ₳ Rationale
Lucid Evolution is a vital open-source library that simplifies off-chain smart contract interactions on Cardano. As dApp development continues to grow, maintaining and updating such foundational tools is critical to ensure developers can build efficiently and securely. Continuous improvements and compatibility updates directly enhance developer productivity and the robustness of applications running on Cardano.
Anastasia Labs’ extensive track record and deep involvement in the Cardano ecosystem give me confidence that this project will be maintained with high quality and transparency. Supporting this proposal means investing in a core building block that strengthens Cardano’s developer ecosystem and accelerates adoption. Therefore, I vote YES to sustain the evolution and long-term support of Lucid.
- Yes 473.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 466.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 445.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 443.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 385.6K ₳ Rationale
DRep Krypto Labs support funding the Lucid Evolution Maintenance proposal (₳130,903) to sustain a vital Cardano developer tool.
Originating as Lucid by Spacebudz in 2021, this TypeScript library simplified off chain transactions for dApps.
By 2023, it was unmaintained, risking ecosystem stagnation. Anastasia Labs forked it, creating Lucid Evolution via Catalyst Fund 11 (₳200,000).
The rewrite introduced modern architecture, type safety, Conway-era governance and integrations with 1,050+ commits and robust documentation.
Ecosystem Dependency: Lucid Evolution is critical, ranking high in 2024 developer surveys. It powers DeFi, wallets, infrastructure, and tools. Without it, developers risk disruptions, slowing Cardano’s growth.
Milestone based contracts and Intersect auditing ensure accountability. This aligns with Cardano’s open source ethos, supporting a community revived public good.
Voting yes secures developer efficiency and ecosystem resilience. - Yes 382.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 377.3K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 328.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 321.1K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 314.4K ₳ Rationale
In alignment with my voting on the 2025 Cardano Budget Reconciliation process through Ekklesia platform, I support this withdrawal and therefore vote YES.
In alignment with my voting on the 2025 Cardano Budget Reconciliation process through Ekklesia platform, I support this withdrawal and therefore vote YES.
- Yes 298.6K ₳ Rationale
Lucid Evolution is critical infrastructure and this is a reasonable price. Having used Lucid Evolution I can attest to it being a great tool which could absolutely benefit from some investment.
- Yes 271.5K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 262.3K ₳ No rationale
- No 258.6K ₳ Rationale
🧾 Governance Action Review
Proposal: Withdraw ₳130,903 for Lucid Evolution Maintenance
Vendor: Anastasia Labs (Administered by Intersect)
Governance Action ID: gov_action13tfag48nf94rtjcdq7c06vhkslmxxw9h6c88sl7q5g5nnewcsvlqvckzwqt
Submitted: 18 July 2025
Expires: 17 August 2025
Type: Treasury Withdrawal
Budget Requested: ₳130,903📋 Evaluation Checklist
1️⃣ Ecosystem Essentiality → ✅ Yes
Does the proposal address a critical function or unique capability within Cardano?“Lucid Evolution is an open-source library designed to simplify and enhance the development of off-chain smart contract interactions on Cardano.”
“One of the most used offchain library called Lucid Evolution needs constant maintenance and upgrades.”
📌 Analysis:
Lucid is widely adopted by developers building Cardano DApps. Maintaining compatibility with network changes (e.g., hard forks) is essential. The proposal also cites multiple community endorsements and GitHub activity.2️⃣ Budget Transparency & Cost Breakdown → ❌ No
Rationale:
The proposal requests ₳130,903 (equivalent to $100,000 USD) to support 3 full-time developers for one year, resulting in an estimated hourly rate of ~$16 per FTE — a figure notably below market standards for blockchain development.However, this seemingly low budget is undermined by multiple gaps:
- No hourly rates or cost breakdown are explicitly provided;
- The identities and roles of the three contributors are not disclosed;
- There is no mention of whether this effort overlaps with other ongoing or funded Lucid-related initiatives;
- The proposal does not indicate whether the reduced cost is intentional or subsidized.
Given the significant overlap with other Catalyst-funded work and lack of transparency around personnel and costing structure, the budget cannot be considered well-justified, even if the absolute amount appears modest.
###3️⃣ KPIs or Impact Identifiers → ❌ No
Rationale:
The proposal lacks any quantifiable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or structured success metrics.While it lists general deliverables such as “maintain Lucid,” “improve documentation,” and “implement requested features,” none of these are framed with measurable goals or deadlines. There is also no clarity on how progress will be tracked, how success will be defined, or when the community can expect results.
The absence of milestones, adoption targets, usage benchmarks, or delivery timelines makes it impossible to evaluate accountability or follow-up on the proposed work.
This severely limits transparency and undermines the proposal’s ability to demonstrate cost-effectiveness or ecosystem impact.
4️⃣ Milestones and Deliverables → 🟡 Partial
Rationale:
The proposal lists several clear deliverables, including:- Ensuring Lucid compatibility with all Cardano hard forks
- Enhancing developer documentation and tooling
- Implementing requested features and performance optimizations
- Supporting community adoption and maintaining Lucid as a public good
These outputs are relevant and appropriate for a lightweight maintenance-focused proposal. However, the absence of a structured timeline weakens the planning clarity.
- There is no defined roadmap or phased breakdown across the 12-month period
- No intermediate milestones, review points, or delivery sequencing are provided
- Success criteria for each output remain unspecified
Given that Anastasia Labs is already engaged in three concurrent Catalyst-funded Lucid projects (₳600,000 total) — with some deliverables behind schedule — the lack of a concrete timeline in this Governance Action makes it difficult to assess how this new scope will be balanced and executed over time.
5️⃣ Internal Consistency → ✅ Yes
Are the metadata fields, budget amounts, and SAC description aligned?ADA Amount: ₳130,903
USD equivalent: $100,000 at 1.31 ADA/USD
Receiving address matches metadata
Governance Action references correct bundle ID (gov_action1u9x73...)6️⃣ Team Visibility & Track Record → ❌ No
Rationale:
Anastasia Labs is a technically capable and well-established team within the Cardano ecosystem. Their stewardship of the Lucid Evolution library and related tooling is widely recognized and demonstrably impactful. Contributions to SDKs, off-chain infrastructure, and developer experience are visible across multiple projects and repositories.However, some concerns merit attention regarding transparency, delivery load, and coordination across funding streams.
📌 Concurrent Catalyst Proposals
Anastasia Labs is currently executing three active Catalyst-funded proposals focused on Lucid Evolution 2.0, each approved for ₳200,000, totaling ₳600,000 in allocated funding. These include:
- Blueprint & Enhanced Plutus Schema
- Private Testnet SDK & L2 Integration
- Maintenance & Development Strategy
A fourth proposal — Lucid Evolution: Redefining Off-Chain Transactions — was completed in 2024 with full disbursement of ₳200,000, also focused on upgrades, maintenance, and documentation.
The current Governance Action describes deliverables that substantially overlap with the Catalyst-funded work:
- Ongoing library maintenance
- Compatibility with protocol upgrades (e.g. Chang HF)
- Developer documentation and onboarding
- Community engagement and support
- Feature implementation and performance improvements
Despite this, the proposal does not reference the existing Catalyst funding nor clarify how the requested ₳130,903 complements or extends the prior work.
📌 Delivery Load and Timeline Slippage
All three active proposals remain open, with several milestones initially scheduled for March and April 2025 still pending as of August. This raises questions about the team’s current delivery bandwidth and capacity to absorb an additional project without compromising existing commitments.
While milestone-based disbursement helps mitigate risk, the presence of simultaneous and delayed deliverables suggests that tighter coordination and pacing may be needed.
📌 Broader Pattern
Similar gaps in funding disclosure and scope integration have been observed in other proposals by the team. In the Midgard zk-rollup, for instance, a Governance Action was submitted without mention of an active ₳500,000 Catalyst grant covering overlapping components such as validator logic and fraud-proof infrastructure.
✅ Overall Assessment
While Anastasia Labs’ technical contributions are clear and significant, the absence of context around ongoing funding, combined with delayed deliverables and a growing workload, limits the evaluability of this proposal.
This criterion is rated NO, based on the need for greater clarity around cumulative funding, active workload, and how this new initiative would integrate with work already underway. A public clarification would go a long way toward reinforcing accountability and trust.
7️⃣ Conflict of Interest → ✅ No Conflict
📌 Analysis:
There is no direct involvement of the reviewer with Anastasia Labs, Intersect, or the associated contracts.🧠 Critical Summary
The proposal to withdraw ₳130,903 for Lucid Evolution maintenance acknowledges the crucial role this open-source library plays in simplifying and sustaining off-chain smart contract interactions within the Cardano ecosystem. Lucid is widely adopted, and its continued upkeep is unquestionably important.
However, despite the modest budget request, several issues limit evaluability:
- No detailed cost breakdown: The proposal lacks transparency regarding hourly rates, contributor roles, or rationale for the stated budget.
- No quantifiable KPIs: Deliverables are presented only in broad terms, with no metrics, adoption targets, or timelines to track success.
- No roadmap or sequencing: The proposal does not include a timeline, milestone schedule, or phased execution plan.
- Significant scope overlap: Three ongoing Catalyst-funded Lucid proposals by the same team (₳600,000 total) cover nearly identical deliverables. Some of those projects are behind schedule as of August 2025.
- No integration context: It is unclear how this new request complements or extends the existing funded work.
The technical strength of Anastasia Labs is not in question. However, the absence of planning and coordination clarity — especially with concurrent grants already underway — reduces confidence in execution and accountability.
🗳 Voting Decision: NO
I believe in the strategic importance of Lucid and fully recognize its value to the Cardano developer ecosystem. I want to vote YES — and would gladly do so with the following clarifications:
- A clearer explanation of how this funding complements rather than duplicates existing Catalyst-funded Lucid work
- Quantifiable and measurable KPIs
- A slightly more detailed budget breakdown
- A clearer timeline or delivery roadmap over the proposed 12-month period
Without these elements, the proposal lacks the transparency and accountability expected for a Treasury Withdrawal. I encourage the proposer to revise and resubmit with these clarifications.
- Yes 257K ₳ Rationale
I voted YES on the Treasury Withdrawal titled Lucid Evolution Maintenance (₳130,903) based on its vital role supporting frontend developers across the Cardano dApp ecosystem.
Lucid is the most widely adopted JavaScript/TypeScript SDK for building with Cardano smart contracts — providing capabilities like transaction assembly, metadata serialization, script formatting, and wallet communication.
Continued evolution of Lucid ensures smooth dApp operations and adoption of new features like Plutus V3 and Babel fees. This keeps developer experience competitive with other chains.
Anastasia Labs, the vendor, has a strong delivery track record, deep ecosystem contributions, and an open governance stance. They maintain the Lucid repo and over 50 other Cardano infrastructure packages.
Funds are disbursed constitutionally: held in smart contract escrow, guarded by an oversight committee (Sundae Labs, CF, NMKR, etc.), validated via milestones, and publicly transparent via IPFS metadata and on-chain multisig workflows.
Given Lucid’s prominence and the modest budget request, this proposal is a high-leverage investment in the tooling required to expand Cardano’s user and developer base.
- Yes 252.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 245K ₳ No rationale
- No 238.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 238.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 208.6K ₳ Rationale
I support the Lucid Evolution Maintenance proposal mainly for the following reasons:
- Alignment with Ecosystem Goals: The proposal directly supports Cardano’s developer ecosystem by maintaining Lucid Evolution, a critical open-source library for off-chain smart contract interactions.
- Essential for Network Stability: Lucid Evolution’s maintenance ensures compatibility with network upgrades, such as the Chang hard fork, preventing disruptions to major protocols like Mynth, Pondora, and Genius Yield. This strengthens Cardano’s DeFi and dApp ecosystem, a priority for our community.
- Community Approval via Governance: The proposal’s inclusion in the approved 275,269,340 ADA treasury withdrawal, validated through Cardano’s on-chain governance, reflects community consensus on its importance. The rigorous process involving DReps, SPOs, and the Oversight Committee underscores its legitimacy.
- Proven Vendor Credibility: Anastasia Labs, with over two years of contributions to Cardano’s core dApps and 50+ open-source libraries, has a strong track record. Their commitment to resolving GitHub issues, enhancing features, and improving documentation ensures reliable delivery.
- Yes 206.4K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 190.2K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 184.4K ₳ 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.
- Yes 180.9K ₳ No rationale
- No 177.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 143.9K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 137.3K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 131.6K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 111.7K ₳ No rationale
- Yes 103K ₳ No rationale