Withdraw 25,400,000 ada for Intersect: Governance coordination and technical ...
170 DReps voted · 54 with a rationale · 9 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- Yes1.1M ₳No rationale
- No1.1M ₳No rationale
- Yes1M ₳No rationale
- Abstain988.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes971.5K ₳Rationale
We vote YES on this proposal because Cardano currently needs a reliable operational and technical coordination layer to keep the ecosystem functioning as governance, infrastructure and protocol development become more decentralized. Intersect plays an important role in supporting governance coordination, committee work, release coordination, incident response, repository stewardship, technical processes and the administration of community-approved initiatives. These are not always highly visible functions, but they are important for Cardano’s stability, continuity and ability to execute decisions responsibly.
We recognize that the requested amount is significant and that Intersect has already received treasury funding in the past. For that reason, transparency, external assurance, milestone-based reporting and clear accountability are essential. However, the proposal is more focused than last year’s budget and prioritizes functions that are critical for Cardano’s operational resilience. In our view, this is not simply administrative overhead. It funds core coordination capacity that helps Cardano remain secure, reliable and governable during an important phase of ecosystem maturity. For these reasons, we support the proposal.
- Yes964.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes931.8K ₳No rationale
- No923.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes881.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes861.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes825.2K ₳Rationale
We support Interesct as a pivotal organization for Cardano's ecosystem
- Abstain798.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes794.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes705.1K ₳No rationale
- Abstain625.9K ₳Rationale
Abstaining. Intersect performs functions Cardano genuinely needs governance coordination, incident response, technical stewardship. But ₳25.4M with minimal detail, self-funding structure, no published milestones is too large to approve on faith. Not rejection but a request for better information.
A PDF version of this rationale is also made available.
Intersect provides a function that Cardano genuinely needs: governance coordination, technical stewardship, incident response, and the operational backbone that translates community decisions into action. The November 2025 chain partition response demonstrated this value. A world without Intersect (or an equivalent) is a world where governance decisions sit unimplemented, security incidents go uncoordinated, and core repositories lack stewardship.
However, this proposal asks for ₳25.4 million with minimal budget detail, represents self-funding by the entity administering the funds, and would bring Intersect's total Treasury receipts to nearly ₳48 million in under two years. For an amount this large, I expect proportionate transparency. I do not find it here.
I cannot vote Yes in good conscience. But I also cannot vote No without first understanding whether the governance function would collapse without this funding. Abstain is not support. It is an acknowledgment that the question is too important to answer with the information available.
A No vote would reject the funding entirely. I am not prepared to do that because:- The function is genuinely important. Governance coordination does not happen spontaneously. Someone must do it.
- I do not have a better alternative ready. If Intersect were defunded tomorrow, I cannot point to an entity ready to assume these responsibilities.
- The operational track record exists. Intersect has delivered network upgrades, incident response, and committee coordination. This is not vaporware.
But a Yes vote would endorse a ₳25.4M self-funded request with minimal detail, setting a precedent that I cannot support.
Abstain is the honest position: I cannot judge this proposal reliably with the information provided. It is not support. It is not rejection. It is a demand for better information before I commit either way.
Intersect performs a function that Cardano needs. The governance coordination, technical stewardship, and incident response capabilities are real and have been demonstrated. I do not dismiss the value of this work.
But value does not justify any price, and self-funding does not justify opacity. For ₳25.4 million and nearly ₳48 million cumulative, I expect:
- A detailed budget, especially for the ₳18.8M "technical stewardship" line item
- An arms-length review before the ask reaches the chain
- A plan to reduce long-term dependency on a single entity
- An ADA volatility policy
- Published milestones with verification criteria
None of these are present. I cannot vote Yes on faith any longer. And I will not vote No on a function the ecosystem genuinely needs without a clear alternative.
Abstain is my vote. If Intersect resubmits with the transparency and structural improvements outlined above, I will evaluate it with fresh eyes and a genuinely open mind.
- Yes619.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes605.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes589.7K ₳Rationale
Supporting Withdrawal for this project to commence.
- No587.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes533.9K ₳Rationale
Intersect is worthy of moving forward and continue to improve. A lot of positive will come from this.
- Abstain501K ₳Rationale
I think intersect needs a lot of recalibration and restructuring before asking for treasury funds. A lot of details can be provided on this but in a nutshell I don’t think in its current form the ecosystem benefits something worth up to 20million Ada.
- Yes479.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes448.2K ₳Rationale
BKIND votes Yes on the treasury withdrawal that funds Intersect's governance coordination and technical stewardship for June 2026 to June 2027. Most of the ask, 18.8 million of the 25.4 million ada, funds the technical stewardship, incident response and release coordination that keep Cardano secure, the function that houses Intersect's Security Council and the Intersect Bug Bounty Program. As an independent Cardano auditor I judge that this security capability must continue, and that it should be strengthened to reach the third-party code now built across the ecosystem.
Action: treasury withdrawal b3d452bff7769d7f557ec6b8974760ee6c5e496c276652b654032966621e0ccf#4, withdraw 25,400,000 ada to fund Intersect's governance coordination and technical stewardship for the Cardano ecosystem from June 2026 to June 2027.
I vote Yes. I judge this action as an independent Cardano auditor who reconstructs and checks chain state with my own software rather than taking it on authority, weighing both what the withdrawal funds and what this ecosystem needs.
Most of the ask, 18.8 million of the 25.4 million ada, is allocated to technical stewardship, incident response and release coordination, the work package that also carries the core Cardano repositories. That is the ecosystem's security and incident-response function. It houses Intersect's Security Council, the group facilitated by Intersect under its Technical Steering Committee that validates, triages and remediates vulnerabilities, and it operates the Intersect Bug Bounty Program that opened in November 2025. Funding this action keeps that capability standing. Of everything in this budget, the security function is the part I would least want left unfunded.
The reason is not abstract. In my own work as an auditor the security surface of this ecosystem is widening, not narrowing, as more value and more third-party code build on Cardano, and attackers grow more capable. The November 2025 chain partition made it concrete. A single malformed delegation transaction woke a deserialization bug that had lain dormant in the code since 2022 and briefly split the network into two chains. No user funds were lost and the network stayed online, but it was resolved in roughly fourteen and a half hours only because a coordinated incident response, spanning Input Output Global, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Intersect, exchanges and hundreds of stake pool operators, shipped patched node versions and let Ouroboros settle the canonical chain. That coordination layer is exactly what this action funds. Without it, the next incident response has to be assembled only after the incident has already begun.
I vote Yes to keep this function, and I would go further: it should be strengthened. Early detection and safe, coordinated remediation of vulnerabilities should reach beyond the core node to the third-party code being built across the ecosystem, where a growing share of user value now sits. The Intersect Bug Bounty Program today scopes to the Cardano Core Node and Intersect-maintained repositories, with third-party contracts out of scope. Extending that reach, so that a flaw in a third-party contract is found early and closed safely rather than discovered by an attacker, invests in the resilience of the whole ecosystem and not only its core. Strengthening the security function is in that sense a decentralisation measure: it protects the many builders and users who now depend on this chain.
The ask is also proportionate. This 25.4 million ada withdrawal corresponds to a reduced annual budget, cut year over year from 7.875 million to 6.35 million dollars while preserving the critical functions, and it cleared Intersect's 2026 community budget process before it reached the chain. Funding a leaner request that protects the ecosystem's security is an easy Yes.
Operators and developers who want to compare notes on ecosystem security are welcome to email developmentbkind@gmail.com.
I vote Yes on the treasury withdrawal funding Intersect's governance coordination and technical stewardship (govActionId b3d452bff7769d7f557ec6b8974760ee6c5e496c276652b654032966621e0ccf#4). The ecosystem's security and incident-response function must continue, and it should be strengthened to reach the third-party code built across Cardano.
- Yes442.9K ₳No rationale
- Yes431.7K ₳No rationale
- No414.2K ₳No rationale
- No381.1K ₳Rationale
Intersect should be abolished, not funded!
- No365.7K ₳No rationale
- No360.3K ₳No rationale
- No341.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes320.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes313.4K ₳Rationale
As an employee of Intersect, I recognise that some people may expect me to abstain from voting on this proposal due to a perceived conflict of interest.
After careful consideration, I have chosen not to abstain and I am voting Yes.
Three main reasons for that are
First, my professional experience gives me a unique view of the work Intersect undertakes on behalf of the Cardano ecosystem every day. Much of it is operational, technical, and largely invisible to the wider community, yet underpins many of the governance and ecosystem processes people rely upon. Having seen the work first-hand, I believe the organisation has demonstrated its value and has presented a more focused, streamlined and community-aligned plan for the coming year.
Second, I don't believe abstaining simply because I work for Intersect would accurately reflect my genuine assessment of the proposal. Transparency matters, which is why I am declaring my position openly. I also believe DReps should vote according to their judgement, and this is mine.
Finally, I am also voting on behalf of delegated voting power entrusted to me by others. My delegates have expressed support for this proposal, and the proposal itself received support during the Hydra voting phase. I believe it would be wrong to abstain where doing so would not reflect the wishes of those who have trusted me with that responsibility.
My vote is therefore based on both my own assessment of Intersect's contribution to Cardano and my responsibility to represent my delegates faithfully.
Why I believe Intersect remains essential
As mentioned, much of Intersect's work is only seen when something goes wrong, or when nobody else is there to do it. Some of the criticism aimed at Intersect is, imho, unjustified through lack of understanding and awareness. Is often a mis-representation of the facts, or begins with a negative bias that does not allow anything other than negativity to be remarked upon, often for engagement, often wrong, and often causing unjustified reputational damage where incorrect.
The organisation coordinates functions that are open for anyone to perform, but which often have no obvious owner. In a decentralised ecosystem, permissionless does not automatically mean someone steps forward.
Intersect has now coordinated three major hard fork programmes and soon comes Dijkstra/Leios, one of the biggest architectural changes to Cardano since Shelley, and will be the first of this kind in the governance era.. Delivering that upgrade will require coordination across SPOs, exchanges, wallets, infrastructure providers, developers, governance bodies and the wider community on a scale we have not seen before.
Across the last three hard forks, Intersect has built the relationships, processes, communication channels and operational experience needed to coordinate this work effectively. Losing that capability now would mean losing years of experience immediately before the ecosystem enters perhaps its most ambitious upgrade yet.
Governance operations
When the Constitutional Committee risked falling below committeeMinSize, Cardano faced a genuine governance risk. Had that threshold not been restored in time, governance actions could have stalled.
What many people never saw were the countless hours of work that happened behind the scenes which included mobilising stakeholders during Cardano Summit 2025, standing up a dedicated voting platform, ensuring election legitimacy, hosting candidate Spaces, running a snap election, commissioning independent audits, drafting governance metadata, submitting governance actions on-chain and communicating throughout the entire process.
None of this was guaranteed to happen. Anyone could theoretically have taken it on, but there was no certainty that someone would, or that multiple competing efforts wouldn't have delayed a resolution at a critical point for governance. But Intersect did do it, and things were restored.
Technical stewardship
Another area is stewardship of Cardano's core technical infrastructure.
As Input Output continues decentralising responsibility for core repositories, more of that stewardship is moving into the wider ecosystem.
This includes repositories such as Cardano Node, interim stewardship of critical infrastructure like Ogmios and Kupo, as well as governance artefacts including the Constitution and governance action infrastructure.
These projects are open source, yes, again, anyone is free to contribute but that doesn't guarantee sustainable ownership.Somebody still needs to coordinate releases, maintain repositories, respond to incidents, oversee security processes and provide continuity. Right now, Intersect is carrying a significant part of that responsibility.
The same applies to ecosystem resilience.
Intersect coordinates incident response, works alongside the Security Council, supports disaster recovery exercises, helps prepare the ecosystem for upgrades and communicates during critical events. These are the kinds of activities that rarely attract attention when everything is running smoothly, but they become incredibly important when problems arise.
Some people argue that none of these functions belong exclusively to Intersect.
And I do agree, but the question has never been whether somebody else could do them but whether somebody will do them consistently, transparently, neutraly and with enough coordination to keep the ecosystem moving forward.
Cardano is still evolving. Until these responsibilities are naturally distributed across the ecosystem, I believe Intersect is a critical role in providing that coordination.
For those reasons, I believe this proposal is an investment in the governance, technical stewardship and operational coordination that keeps Cardano moving forward & I am voting Yes. - Yes298.9K ₳Rationale
What should we do? Not have intersect? No, for now at least, we need Intersect.
- No294.4K ₳No rationale
- No270.1K ₳Rationale
I am voting NO on “Intersect Governance coordination and technical stewardship for the Cardano ecosystem.” Intersect does perform governance coordination, incident response, and core‑repo stewardship that Cardano needs, and the technical work in WP2 is important. However, this proposal bundles 25.4M ADA of operations, technical stewardship, and a vague critical‑process reserve into a single all‑or‑nothing request, with security and resilience lines insufficiently itemised and no way to selectively fund the technical work without also approving broader operations and reserve funding.
In my view, recurring Treasury funding for administrator‑centric structures should be narrowly scoped, clearly separated from overlapping mandates, supported by detailed budgets and verifiable KPIs, and accompanied by a credible multi‑year plan to reduce reliance on Treasury capital. This proposal does not meet that standard, and together with separate Intersect‑related committee budgets, it represents an Intersect funding footprint that is too large, too bundled, and too weakly constrained for me to support under a disciplined treasury‑prudence framework.
- No261K ₳Rationale
Governance Action Review [EN] - Intersect: Governance Coordination and Technical Stewardship for the Cardano Ecosystem
1. Introduction
This Treasury Withdrawal requests 25,400,000 ADA, valued at USD 6,350,000 using an ADA/USD conversion rate of USD 0.25, to fund Intersect’s operating model from June 2026 to June 2027.
The proposal is divided into three work packages. WP1 allocates 6,000,000 ADA to Intersect operations and ecosystem coordination, including the operation of the Member-Based Organization, Cardano Development Holdings, eight elected committees, working groups, elections, membership systems, legal and financial administration, and governance support. WP2 allocates 18,800,000 ADA to technical stewardship, incident response, security coordination, repository management, release coordination, technical communications, and infrastructure supporting more than 130 repositories and more than 160 users. WP3 reserves 600,000 ADA to coordinate critical and time-sensitive processes that emerge without a predefined owner or budget.
Intersect would administer its own allocation through Treasury Reserve and Project-Specific Smart Contracts. Administrative actions require combinations of Intersect administrators, Intersect leadership, and members of an external Oversight Committee composed of Sundae Labs, Cardano Foundation, Dquadrant, NMKR, Sundial, and Eternl. Appold would provide independent audit and assurance.
The proposal includes quarterly milestone-based drawdowns, public updates, on-chain fund tracking, and the possible return of funds that are no longer required, cannot be responsibly deployed, or remain unspent. Intersect states that the requested amount was reduced from USD 7.875 million in the previous cycle to USD 6.35 million, while also clarifying that part of the reduction results from changes in scope and the separation of administration activities.
2. Governance Action Analysis
Positive aspects
Strategic importance to Cardano’s operational continuity
There are legitimate and strategically relevant reasons to continue funding Intersect. The organization performs functions that have become important to Cardano’s operation, particularly the stewardship of core repositories, coordination of releases and upgrades, incident response, support for governance structures, and administration of Treasury-funded initiatives.
The main reason to consider a favorable vote does not come from a demonstrated record of institutional efficiency, but from the strategic position Intersect has come to occupy within the ecosystem.
Intersect operates as a coordination layer among participants, organizations, committees, developers, infrastructure operators, and governance actors. Some essential Cardano activities have no single owner and must be organized among independent actors. An entity responsible for facilitating coordination, communication, incident response, and operational continuity therefore has real value.
Cardano is becoming a more distributed technical environment, with multiple organizations, new clients, different development teams, decentralized governance, and a growing number of participants responsible for interdependent components. This evolution increases the need for technical coordination. Decentralization does not eliminate coordination; it makes coordination more complex.
Stewardship of core Cardano repositories
Intersect performs a relevant technical function through the stewardship of important Cardano repositories, including infrastructure associated with the Haskell client and other core components.
The stewardship of more than one hundred repositories, access management, contributor coordination, release organization, and maintenance of development lifecycle processes are not trivial activities. Their continuity is important to the stability, security, and predictability of the network’s infrastructure.
No specific critical problems were identified in relation to repository stewardship. No substantial criticism of the Technical Steering Committee was identified either.
It would not be accurate to state that Intersect fails in all its functions or produces no technical value. Certain technical responsibilities may be performed adequately while serious deficiencies remain in other areas.
Agora do not have enough technical and operational knowledge to conduct a deep evaluation of the internal efficiency of these activities. The appropriate conclusion is not that excellent technical performance has been demonstrated, but that no critical problems were identified and the function itself is relevant.
Coordination of upgrades, releases, and incident response
The coordination of upgrades and releases in a decentralized blockchain has systemic relevance. Failures in this function can result in disorganization among operators, delays, incompatibilities, operational incidents, and loss of confidence.
The proposal also includes incident response, security coordination, bug bounties, red-team exercises, monitoring, and communication during critical events. The general necessity of these functions is difficult to dispute.
The absence of organized incident-response capacity could increase the time required to understand and respond to failures, especially when multiple independent actors need to collaborate. The November 2025 chain partition demonstrates that the network can face situations requiring rapid communication, clear responsibilities, and coordination among teams.
This is a relevant argument in favor of funding. Recognition of the need for the function, however, does not automatically justify the proposed budget or establish that Intersect is the only possible structure capable of performing it.
Preservation of institutional knowledge
Intersect has accumulated knowledge of technical, administrative, and governance processes over recent years. Its activities have included upgrade coordination, administration of Treasury initiatives, electoral processes, support for committees and working groups, development of the budget framework, governance processes, repository management, incident response, and coordination among different stakeholders.
An abrupt interruption of these functions could produce loss of continuity and dispersion of institutional knowledge. Even when an institutional structure has problems, replacement requires transition, documentation, redistribution of responsibilities, and clear designation of new responsible actors.
A negative vote should not be interpreted as support for a disorderly interruption of Intersect’s critical functions. It reflects the inadequacy of the submitted request and the insufficiency of the safeguards provided, not a denial of the need for technical coordination or operational continuity.
Open institutional structure and community participation
Intersect maintains a structure of members, committees, and working groups that offers an institutional participation channel for different ecosystem groups.
In principle, this structure can preserve knowledge, facilitate participation by specialists, support the formation of working groups, develop recommendations, connect technical and governance actors, organize elections and participatory processes, and create formal pathways for contribution.
A Member-Based Organization can provide a stable structure for activities that have no single owner.
The abstract validity of this model is not the problem. The problem is the difference between its institutional potential and the quality of the observed results. Organizational structure, nominal participation, and membership figures are not equivalent to effective coordination or results proportional to the resources used.
Nominal reduction from the previous funding cycle
The requested amount was reduced from USD 7.875 million to USD 6.35 million.
This reduction is positive in nominal terms. There is also information that Intersect is implementing cuts, reorganizations, or spending reductions during the current period.
The willingness to reduce costs and seek greater efficiency should be recognized. The proposal also refers to contractor-to-direct-hire conversions, artificial-intelligence tools, more disciplined procurement, membership revenue, and other funding sources.
However, the reduction is partially compositional because some activities were separated from the main request. The lower amount therefore does not necessarily demonstrate an equivalent reduction in operating costs or a proportional efficiency gain.
Without a sufficiently detailed comparison between the previous and current structures, it is not possible to determine which functions were eliminated, which functions were transferred, which positions were reduced, what savings were achieved, which costs remain, which responsibilities were added, how much of the reduction results from actual efficiency, and how much results only from reclassification or separation of scope.
The nominal reduction is positive, but insufficient to demonstrate efficiency.
Audit and formal control mechanisms
The appointment of Appold to provide independent audit and assurance is positive.
Milestone-based drawdowns, fund-management smart contracts, the Oversight Committee, multi-signature requirements, the possible return of unused resources, quarterly reporting, on-chain transaction records, a public dashboard, and controls over transfers and reorganization of resources are also relevant.
These mechanisms reduce certain risks of unilateral use, administrative error, and improper movement of funds.
They do not resolve the principal accountability problem. An audit can evaluate compliance, financial controls, and adherence to the approved mandate. It does not necessarily determine whether the budget was efficient, personnel costs were proportional, reviewers acted independently, or institutional results justified the resources used.
The smart-contract mechanisms mainly control how funds are moved. They do not replace budget granularity, efficiency criteria, staffing transparency, or substantive milestone-review quality.
Negative aspects
Insufficient performance as a Member-Based Organization responsible for coordination
Intersect occupies a central coordination position within the Cardano ecosystem. Its request links funding to the organization of stakeholders, committees, working groups, governance processes, budget processes, and technical activities.
This function must be evaluated through concrete coordination results, not only through the formal existence of structures.
Intersect has not demonstrated sufficient capacity to perform this coordination at a level compatible with its institutional position, budget, and claimed responsibilities.
Committees, groups, meetings, and processes exist, but their existence does not demonstrate that the ecosystem is being coordinated effectively. Relevant measures include the ability to produce clearer decisions, more coherent processes, strategic planning, accountability, improved proposal quality, and greater alignment among stakeholders.
Results in several of these dimensions are unsatisfactory.
Failures in coordination of the budget process
The most strongly grounded criticism concerns the Budget Committee and the budget framework.
My participation in the Budget Committee provided direct observation of limitations that were already visible externally. Intersect should be one of the main structures responsible for organizing strategic resource allocation, coordinating priorities, establishing a credible framework, and improving the quality of ecosystem budget decisions.
Nevertheless, several Treasury Withdrawal Governance Actions continue to be submitted outside the budget framework.
This demonstrates that the process has not consolidated itself as the central coordination mechanism. A framework intended to organize priorities and reduce fragmentation continues to coexist with several parallel funding routes.
Independent submissions are not exclusively Intersect’s responsibility because the protocol permits them. However, a framework with sufficient legitimacy, quality, predictability, and strategic value should reasonably become the predominant and preferred route for budget decisions.
That has not occurred.
The fragmentation affects strategic prioritization, comparison among proposals, management of the Net Change Limit, consolidated visibility over Treasury commitments, identification of duplication, coordination among initiatives, evaluation of aggregate impacts, and medium- and long-term planning.
Intersect requests funding to continue performing this role, but recent experience does not demonstrate that the current model is sufficiently effective.
Insufficiency of the 2026 budget framework
Changes were made between the 2025 and 2026 cycles and should be recognized. The process nevertheless remains far below the standard required for adequate allocation of public Treasury resources.
Sixty-nine proposals were submitted in the 2026 cycle and only eleven advanced. This quantitative filtering may appear rigorous, but the proportion of rejected proposals is not evidence of deliberative quality.
A process can reject many proposals while remaining superficial, inconsistent, or insufficiently transparent.
Public and substantive rationales were not mandatory for every vote. Some participants voluntarily provided explanations, but the system did not ensure that each decision was accompanied by a verifiable justification.
This limits the ability to determine why a proposal was approved or rejected, which criteria were applied, whether those criteria were applied consistently, which problems could be corrected, whether budget, risk, conflicts of interest, and execution capacity were examined, and whether participants performed due diligence.
A process of major financial relevance that permits votes without substantive justification encourages shallow evaluation. It also reduces accountability because it becomes impossible to distinguish an informed decision from a superficial preference.
Weak quality of feedback
The quality of feedback provided during the budget-review process was weak in many cases.
When dozens of proposals compete for Treasury access, the value of the process cannot be limited to producing a final list. It should generate useful information for proposers, dReps, SPOs, ecosystem members, future budget cycles, revision of rejected proposals, and identification of recurring quality standards.
Generic comments, short rationales, and absent justifications do not perform this function.
The lack of substantive feedback also makes it difficult to evaluate the quality of the process itself. It is not possible to determine whether a proposal was rejected for budgetary, strategic, technical, political, procedural, or merely preferential reasons.
Intersect claims a role in coordination and governance improvement, but the design of the process did not impose minimum standards compatible with that responsibility.
A process that encourages superficiality
The problem does not depend only on individual participant behavior. The mechanism itself encourages low-depth evaluations.
When rationales are not mandatory, detailed evaluation provides little additional institutional value compared with an unsupported vote. A participant who spends many hours evaluating a proposal produces formally the same result as someone who votes after minimal consideration.
This creates a negative asymmetry: deep diligence requires time, but the process does not adequately distinguish or value that effort.
An adequate institutional design should require minimum rationales, establish evaluation criteria, preserve decision trails, permit challenges, guarantee transparency, encourage consistency, and make the quality of participation visible.
Without these elements, the budget process risks becoming another political stage rather than a robust strategic-allocation mechanism.
Inability to coordinate an integrated budget strategy
There is insufficient evidence that Intersect’s coordination layer is producing a truly integrated budget strategy.
Treasury allocation continues through separate initiatives, proposals, and processes. There is insufficient clarity regarding aggregate priorities, trade-offs among areas, recommended limits by category, duplication analysis, dependencies among proposals, future resource availability, and strategic distribution among infrastructure, governance, adoption, community, and sustainability.
The budget framework should reduce this fragmentation. It has not achieved that objective to a satisfactory degree.
Different evidentiary limits across committees
The criticisms of different committees do not have the same evidentiary basis.
There is direct experience and internal knowledge concerning the Budget Committee. The objections related to it therefore have a stronger foundation.
There are observations concerning the results, speed, and outputs of the Civics Committee and Product Committee, but knowledge of their internal operations is more limited.
There are recurring public criticisms of the Membership and Community Committee reported by third parties, but insufficient basis to validate all of them.
No critical problems were identified in the technical committees, especially the Technical Steering Committee, but there is also insufficient information for a deep evaluation.
Perceptions, third-party reports, and partial knowledge should not be transformed into categorical conclusions.
Membership and Community Committee
Participants in the ecosystem have raised criticisms concerning the historical performance of the Membership and Community Committee, particularly its ability to improve the membership, participation, and engagement experience.
These criticisms appear recurrent and have been expressed publicly. There is not enough direct knowledge to independently confirm all allegations.
The MCC’s performance should therefore not serve as an isolated or determinative basis for the vote. It provides an additional signal that the coordination problems observed in the Budget Committee may not be confined to one structure.
The exact extent of the problems and Intersect’s specific responsibility remain Unknown, although the existing criticism deserves consideration.
Civics Committee and slow governance evolution
Governance and civics work appears to be progressing more slowly than necessary.
Cardano has a new, complex, and still-developing governance system. Caution, consultation, consensus-building, and institutional review are naturally required. Not all problems can be resolved quickly.
Complexity cannot indefinitely justify limited delivery capacity.
Intersect is one of the entities responsible for facilitating coordination, process development, and institutional evolution. Many important issues nevertheless remain without sufficient progress, and the processes appear excessively slow.
The Civics Committee and Intersect do not possess authority to impose decisions on the Cardano ecosystem. The proposal correctly states that Intersect is not a decision-making authority over Cardano governance.
Facilitation does not mean absence of responsibility.
An entity funded to coordinate should be able to organize discussions, establish timelines, structure proposals, identify pending decisions, publish options, record disagreements, bring matters to an institutional conclusion, and facilitate the conversion of discussions into concrete action.
The absence of formal authority does not eliminate responsibility for the quality of coordination.
Product Committee and delayed operationalization of Cardano Vision 2030
The Product Committee’s work on Cardano Vision 2030 is important. A shared strategic vis
- Yes260.2K ₳No rationale
- No245.5K ₳Rationale
This price is enormous. Intersect makes money by taking a cut of treasury withdrawals it submits on behalf of proposers - which is a valid service, as they put up the 100k deposit so that the proposers don't have to; as well as through paid membership subscriptions. It should not be the treasury's responsibility to pay such a massive amount of Ada to keep Intersect afloat. If it is struggling financially, then it is not a sound business model. Governance will not be impacted if Intersect stops operating. Development of the Haskell node can continue in a forked repository, or repo ownership can be transferred elsewhere. The developers won't go anywhere, only the expensive administrative overhead would go away - and I happen to know from experience that their operations could be significantly cheaper, but it's the conscious choice of only a few people to continue paying for overpriced operational costs. It's time to tighten the belt by a lot of notches.
- No238.8K ₳Rationale
- Not clear ROI given my criteria bulletin points below
- Treasury runway is shrinking rapidly and must be protected. The 350M ADA 2026-27 NCL already risks ~21% drawdown. Aggressive prior spending + ADA weakness demands selectivity to avoid depletion before real adoption.
- Infrastructure is important, but it is not the primary bottleneck. Cardano's core tech is solid. The ecosystem stalls on adoption, liquidity, developer experience, and compelling use cases (DeFi, RWAs, revenue-generating apps). Broad infrastructure funding without adoption KPIs won't drive organic ADA demand.
- Hoskinson's concerns deserve respect, but governance requires balance. Core maintenance matters for competitiveness. DRep duty is long-term sustainability: not unlimited spending. Past allocations often failed to yield proportional TVL/users/ADA utility. Prioritize evidence-based proposals.
- Better capital allocation strategy: Favor high-leverage use-case initiatives, especially RWAs and revenue generating applications that commit to direct revenue or ADA return mechanisms back to the treasury, with clear milestones, private co-funding, and proven traction. Target specific tech unlocks only when tightly tied to measurable adoption impact. This builds real value without creating dependency.
- No234.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes215.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes207.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes196.1K ₳No rationale
- Abstain191.1K ₳No rationale
- Yes182.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes181.9K ₳No rationale
- No171.1K ₳No rationale
- Abstain142.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes137.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes131.9K ₳No rationale