Withdraw ₳15,750,000 for a MBO for the Cardano ecosystem: Intersect
175 DReps voted · 53 with a rationale · 7 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes971.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes949.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes931.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes825.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes820.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes798.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes794.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes763.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes717.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes707.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes705.1K ₳No rationale
- No655.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes625.9K ₳Rationale
This proposal represents essential infrastructure investment for maintaining Cardano's operational continuity and governance effectiveness during the critical transition period from founding organization control to fully decentralized community governance. Intersect serves as the neutral coordination layer that bridges on-chain voting mechanisms with practical ecosystem management, ensuring that constitutional frameworks translate into functional network operations.
Intersect's stewardship of core Haskell codebases powering Cardano nodes requires sustained technical expertise and institutional continuity that cannot be effectively replaced through ad-hoc arrangements. Their coordination of ecosystem-wide upgrades, including the successful Chang and Plomin hard forks, demonstrates proven capability in managing complex technical deployments that require alignment across infrastructure providers, stake pool operators, decentralized applications, and exchanges globally.
The Administrator role defined in the Constitution requires a reliable institutional counterparty capable of managing treasury-funded initiatives, providing contract oversight, ensuring compliance monitoring, and facilitating transparent delivery assurance. Intersect's established framework for proposal vetting, operational execution, and smart contract development provides essential infrastructure for responsible treasury fund management while supporting increased decentralization over time.
The facilitation of over thirty working groups and eight elected committees creates practical pathways for community participation in governance beyond simple voting mechanisms. These structures enable specialized expertise development, collaborative problem-solving, and informed recommendation generation that enhances the quality of on-chain decision-making while building governance capacity across the ecosystem.
Budget and roadmap coordination functions ensure strategic alignment between technical development priorities and community needs through transparent processes that enable informed treasury allocation decisions. The Product Committee's facilitation of long-term ecosystem vision development and the structured approach to future budget preparation provide essential planning infrastructure for sustainable growth.
The support for Constitutional Committee elections, DRep onboarding, and stakeholder coordination ensures that governance mechanisms function effectively while building institutional knowledge and operational capacity necessary for continued decentralization. Intersect's role in expanding ecosystem capacity through supporting new member-based organizations creates pathways for governance pluralization and reduced dependency on single institutions.
The interim leadership transition under Jack Briggs demonstrates commitment to lean, accountable operations focused on community service rather than institutional expansion. This approach aligns with Cardano's decentralization principles while maintaining operational effectiveness necessary for network stability and governance continuity.
Supporting this proposal ensures sustained coordination infrastructure essential for Cardano's governance maturation, technical development continuity, and community participation facilitation during the foundational period of decentralized network management. - Yes605.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes589.7K ₳No rationale
- No587.6K ₳Rationale
As the only Iranian DRep, I cannot consider Intersect a true Member-Based Organization (MBO) because I am excluded from membership and voting rights due to U.S. sanctions against Iran. This exclusion means Intersect does not represent the entire Cardano community, undermining its claim to be a neutral and inclusive governance facilitator.
Since I, as an Iranian representative, am denied participation and voting power within Intersect’s committees, I am forced to vote NO on all proposals administered by Intersect. The governance structure must be truly representative and inclusive to serve the global Cardano community fairly and transparently. Until these barriers are resolved, I cannot support Intersect’s funding requests from the treasury.
- Yes501K ₳Rationale
They're doing the unglamorous work of actually coordinating this distributed mess we call an ecosystem, and honestly? Someone has to be the adult in the room. The constitutional administrator role alone justifies this. Democracy is messy and expensive.
- YesRevoted479.9K ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes1y agoSuperseded
Yes1y agoSuperseded
- Yes466.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes442.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes385.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes383K ₳No rationale
- No381.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes370.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes328.9K ₳No rationale
- No323.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes320.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes314.4K ₳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.
- Yes313.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes298.9K ₳Rationale
We still need Intersect
- Yes279.3K ₳No rationale
- YesChanged271.8K ₳History
Earlier votes
No11mo agoSuperseded
- No270.1K ₳Rationale
I am voting NO on this proposal. The decision is based on budget scale, detail, operational transparency, and the type of oversight presented in the proposal and relevant supporting links.
- Size of Funding Request and Budget Specificity
The proposal requests ₳15,750,000 for a 12-month period to fund Intersect’s role as an Administrator and ecosystem MBO.
The written proposal refers readers to external supporting CSV and PDF files for operational budget detail, rather than providing this information in the main governance action text.
According to information in those supporting files, major expenses are attributed to personnel (approx. 45 roles at an average of $100,000 each), with some line items for board compensation and “Board Services,” but job roles, responsibility mapping, and cost justifications are not detailed in the proposal itself.
- Transparency and Oversight
The proposal describes oversight via an off-chain legal contract, the Cardano Development Holdings entity, and milestone tracking with third-party assurer review.
It is not clear from the proposal documentation how compensation, operational decisions, or board activities are communicated to or approved by the broader Cardano community, or how board members are selected, compensated, or held accountable.
- Scope of Organizational Role and Treasury Funding
Intersect’s remit as described includes core node repo stewardship, upgrade coordination, committee facilitation, and Administrator role execution.
The budget requested is significantly larger than for most other Cardano proposals reviewed, including those funding technical or development initiatives.
The proposal does not specify contingency plans if Intersect is not funded.
Conclusion:
Based on the information provided, I do not find the current proposal demonstrates the necessary transparency or detailed justification for a ₳15,750,000 treasury withdrawal. The operational scope, budget, and oversight mechanisms as documented do not provide sufficient clarity for this scale of community funding. Additional clarity on organizational structure, budgeting process, and community accountability is needed before considering future support.
- Size of Funding Request and Budget Specificity
- Yes262.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain261K ₳Rationale
This vote was submitted based on a completed checklist. A detailed rationale is available at:
👉 https://github.com/Agora-Cardano - Yes252.9K ₳No rationale
- No245.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes238.8K ₳Rationale
I vote in favor of Intersect’s 15 million ADA proposal, though my support is on the margins due to valid community concerns about its high cost and potential overlap with efforts by IOG, Emurgo, and the Cardano Foundation. Intersect’s proven role in coordinating the Chang and Plomin hard forks and facilitating over 30 working groups demonstrates its value in enabling Cardano’s Voltaire-era decentralized governance. The transparent treasury management and third-party oversight further justify funding. However, the lack of a detailed budget breakdown and clarity on differentiation from existing entities raises questions. My support hinges on Intersect addressing these concerns through clearer communication and streamlined operations to ensure efficient use of funds for ecosystem stability and growth.
- Yes208.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes191.1K ₳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.
- Yes178.9K ₳No rationale
- No147.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes138.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes137.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes133.7K ₳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. - Yes103.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes94.9K ₳No rationale