Withdraw ₳96,817,080 for 2025 Input Output Engineering Core Development Proposal
196 DReps voted · 57 with a rationale · 9 changed their vote
Open a row to read the rationale.
- 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
- Yes174.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes166.4K ₳Rationale
We would vote yes for Leios and the KES agent alone (four years of manual KES key rotations..), there is so much more here, usual Pro/Con list follows. While we are voting yes here, it should be noted that we feel this large omnibus style funding request could have been broken into several smaller requests and that would have served the community better.
Pros (Reasons to Vote 'Yes')
Fundamental Infrastructure Upgrades: This proposal funds numerous critical, deep-level upgrades to Cardano's core infrastructure. This includes the next-generation consensus algorithm (Ouroboros Leios), a complete node architecture refresh (Acropolis), and major performance enhancements (Ledger-HD, UTXO-HD), which are essential for the long-term scalability, security, and competitiveness of the network.Comprehensive Ecosystem-Wide Benefits: The 18 distinct initiatives benefit every type of user:
SPOs: Reduced operational costs (lower RAM needs), enhanced security (KES Agent).
Developers: Vastly improved smart contract security and tooling (Plutus High Assurance suite), and a more modular node.
End Users: Better scalability, potential for paying fees in other tokens (Babel Fees), and improved L2 solutions (Hydra).
Continued Development by the Founding Team: The work will be performed by Input Output (IO), the engineering company that has led Cardano's development from the beginning. This ensures unparalleled expertise, continuity, and a deep understanding of the protocol's architecture.
Addresses Key Challenges: The proposal directly targets known limitations within the ecosystem, such as scalability constraints, node performance, developer experience, and user adoption friction points.
Strong Governance and Accountability: Like the previous proposal, this one uses the same robust Intersect-administered framework with audited smart contracts, legal agreements, third-party assurers, and an external Oversight Committee to manage the funds, ensuring a high degree of transparency and accountability.
Keeps Cardano Competitive: The development of features like Minotaur (AVS) and the implementation of Ouroboros Leios are designed to keep Cardano at the cutting edge of blockchain research and development, ensuring it remains a competitive platform.
Cons (Reasons to Vote 'No' or Abstain)
Extremely High Cost: At ₳96,817,080, this is an exceptionally large withdrawal from the treasury. Voters must weigh whether funding a single entity, even the founding one, with such a large sum is the best use of community funds.Bundled "All-or-Nothing" Proposal: The proposal bundles 18 distinct, large-scale projects into a single vote. This prevents the community from funding certain initiatives while rejecting others, forcing an all-or-nothing decision on a massive and diverse scope of work.
Centralization of Core Development: While IO's expertise is a pro, funding them with such a large grant perpetuates the centralization of core protocol development. A key goal of the Voltaire era is to diversify the entities building and maintaining Cardano, and this proposal concentrates that power and responsibility heavily within IO.
Massive Execution Risk: The proposal contains multiple highly ambitious and complex engineering efforts. There is a significant risk of delays, scope changes, or under-delivery on one or more of the 18 initiatives, which could have cascading effects on the overall roadmap.
Part of a Larger Budgetary Concern: This single withdrawal represents more than a third of the total ₳275M budget action it belongs to. Voters may have reservations about the sheer scale of this coordinated spending from the treasury in a single budget cycle.
Limited Community Choice: By presenting this as a single, massive proposal from the primary development entity, it may leave little room in the budget for smaller, independent, or competing development teams to get funding for their own innovative ideas for core infrastructure.
- 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
- Yes92.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes69.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes65.7K ₳Rationale
This proposal will advance Cardano’s ecosystem by addressing scalability, security, and usability challenges. Here are the key benefits in a nutshell: For the ecosystem: It boosts Layer 1 throughput with Ouroboros Leios, enhances Layer 2 scaling via Hydra and Mithril, and introduces new functionalities like Minotaur AVS, making Cardano more competitive and decentralized. For users: You’ll get faster transactions, reduced network congestion, near-instant finality for some apps, and the ability to pay fees with native tokens via Nested Transactions, improving overall experience. For developers: It delivers advanced tools like Plutus High Assurance for secure smart contracts, a modular node architecture (Acropolis) for easier development, and better transaction capabilities, lowering barriers to building complex dApps. For stake pool operators: Expect lower node operational costs through Ledger-HD and LSM, enhanced security with KES Agent, faster node sync with Mithril, and potential new revenue from Minotaur AVS. Overall, it drives Cardano’s growth, performance, and adoption while maintaining security and decentralization. Want me to zoom in on any specific benefit or component?
- Yes64.4K ₳No rationale
- No55.9K ₳Rationale
I am not against IO, I respect them and commend for what got delivered.
I am also not against what they propose.
But I am very much against how they expect this proposal to be sufficient in detail that justifies the large amount of money it asks for. The alternative budget item from the TSC from the Ekklesia process included all/most of this, even pre-attributing most of the items to IO already. I think it was MUCH more mature, and contained proper checks and balances and included parties across the ecosystem that need to collaborate to bring items to life. Assigning everything to one company is unsustainable for the future of Cardano.This proposal feels like a rubberstamp to what IO is doing.
- Yes48.6K ₳No rationale
- Abstain46.5K ₳No rationale
- Yes45.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes40.4K ₳No rationale
- Yes39.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes36.3K ₳No rationale
- Yes36.3K ₳Rationale
✅ Vote: YES
📜 Proposal: 2025 Input Output Engineering Core Development
🧾 Amount: ₳96,817,080
🗳️ Governance Action ID: gov_action1f9da8n2yaf4updxzmwc7fnw8ug2gwnpvqays5n3yw6nz0mu3z2qqq6ggge9I voted YES on this treasury withdrawal because it directly funds foundational improvements across Cardano’s infrastructure:
• Scalability: Leios, Hydra, Mithril, and Nested Transactions unlock throughput gains, faster sync, and fee flexibility.
• Security & Reliability: KES Agent, Ledger-HD, and audit layers improve SPO operations and long-term network health.
• Developer Experience: Plutus High Assurance tools (Formal Verification, PBT, Static Analyzer) reduce risk and improve smart contract safety.
• Node Architecture Modernization: Acropolis enables a modular, maintainable node structure for future development agility.
• Fairness & Efficiency: Investigation into stake pool incentives and tiered pricing helps balance decentralization with performance.The budget is large, but IOE has a long track record of delivery and technical excellence. This proposal strengthens Cardano’s core across the board — from L1 consensus to L2 channels to tooling — and positions the ecosystem for sustained, decentralized growth.
- Yes25.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes23K ₳No rationale
- Yes15.2K ₳No rationale
- Yes10.6K ₳Rationale
I vote for this proposal
- Yes7K ₳No rationale
- Yes6.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes4.8K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.7K ₳No rationale
- Yes1.6K ₳No rationale
- Yes839.2 ₳No rationale
- Yes682 ₳No rationale
- Yes335.3 ₳No rationale
- Yes280.6 ₳No rationale
- Yes13.5 ₳No rationale
- Yes8.3 ₳No rationale
- Yes0 ₳No rationale
- Yes0 ₳No rationale
- Yes0 ₳No rationale
- Yes0 ₳No rationale
- YesRevoted0 ₳History
Earlier votes
Yes0y agoSuperseded
- Yes0 ₳No rationale