Announcing the stake pools chosen for November 2024

English News and Announcements
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The Cardano Foundation (CF) remains dedicated to promoting the growth and decentralisation of the Cardano ecosystem through its delegation strategy.

Over the past year, we have supported the community by delegating to community pools. Our delegation strategy involves continuous monitoring of pools throughout the year, with the flexibility to redelegate as needed. We actively assess pools based on their alignment with our strategy and their ongoing contributions, such as impactful work on developers.cardano.org, Cardano improvement proposals, Aiken, open source contributions or cardano.org. Pools must also meet technical criteria, including maintaining at least two registered relays. This approach ensures that our delegation reflects data-driven insights and supports pools that actively contribute to the ecosystem.

Delegation Criteria

The delegation strategy and criteria, as described in the previous delegation strategy, remain in place.

Expectations

While receiving CF delegation may tempt pools to raise fees, note that any fee increases or cost adjustments could result in the withdrawal of delegation. Additionally, CF continues to monitor pools and maintain engagement to ensure they continue to contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem. We will continue to work with pool.pm to showcase our wallets and current delegation packages.

Stay up to date

To stay informed about upcoming delegation rounds and other operator-relevant updates, network monitoring insights, and workshops, please share your ticker and email address with us here: SPO notifications.

Selected pools for CF delegation:

  1. 314: Pi remains a key Cardano contributor to open-source projects like Aiken and Apollo (go-lang transaction builder), and is actively participating in CIP-1694 public discussions.

  2. ABLE: Mike consistently delivers high-quality content on Cardano’s on-chain governance, especially through infographics. His active efforts to educate the community about GovTools and SanchoNet make him a key player in driving public discussions around Cardano’s governance. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  3. ADA: Holger provides daily support to SPOs, maintains an extensive network of play nodes, and actively supports African stake pools and projects, driven by his dedication to unity, freedom of expression, and community potential. He also contributes through initiatives like Cardano24.Social, benefiting the Cardano ecosystem. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  4. AHL: Ola remains actively engaged in the Cardano community, contributing to open-source tools like CNTools, gLiveView, and other utility scripts essential for stake pool operations. He also played a key role in launching the Eternl Wallet and continues to support the Koios public API query layer. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  5. ANP: Eystein has become a prominent figure and educator in the Cardano community since engaging in public discussions over a year ago about governance. He has recently led governance workshops in Norway, Toulouse, and Las Vegas and has spoken on multiple panels during this year’s Cardano Summit 2024 in Dubai. He is also one of the contributors to the DRep Code of Conduct.

  6. APEX: APEX is known for contributing to open-source development, with examples including the creation of the Koios-API in Python, among other contributions.

  7. CARDS: CARDS pool is led by Maria Carmo, an active educator who regularly updates and engages with the Brazilian Portuguese-speaking Cardano community, fostering connection and understanding.

  8. COSD: Robert is known for his consistent and active contributions to the developer portal. He is also a CIP editor.

  9. CSN1: Strica is known for developing the widely used Cardano block explorer, Cardanoscan.io. The team continues to add value by introducing new functionalities such as the recently added Transaction Count Chart, the new certificates listing page, the Governance Action Detail Page, and more.

  10. FROG: Kyle’s contributions with DripDropz.io continue to draw additional transactions to the chain. DripDropz has definitely earned its spot as the most valuable “token dispensing service” on Cardano.

  11. GMBL: Gimbalabs provides various resources, tools, and educational content to help developers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts engage with Cardano technology. Their initiatives include hackathons, workshops, tutorials, and weekly Cardano Go Live coding training sessions—all aimed at accelerating learning and development within the Cardano ecosystem.

  12. HAZEL: HAZEL is a well-known Community Developer, creating useful tools to help users manage their communities effectively. For SPOs, there is a tool designed to facilitate interaction with their delegators. For DReps, there is a tool that helps them connect with their constituents. Tooling also includes support for NFT projects, DAOs, and more. https://www.vibrantnet.io/. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  13. JUNO: JUNO’s ongoing contributions to Cardano include GovTool QA testing, ensuring governance tools meet community needs, and active support for SPOs. They also developed the Kuber IDE, which simplifies transaction composition for Plutus and Haskell developers, among other efforts.

  14. KORA: The team behind $adahandle, Cardano’s most loved user-friendly address solution, continues to provide excellent support for Cardano handles while actively developing new features. Their recent innovation, SubHandles, highlights their ongoing commitment to further enhancing the user experience.

  15. LACE: Besides his active contributions to open-source development, Robin is also known for his work in developing and maintaining CardanoCube.com, an online explorer that showcases all the projects and DApps built on the Cardano blockchain. You can find more about his open source contributions on GitHub.

  16. LIDO: Lido remained committed to education, providing essential resources like the LidoNation Catalyst Explorer and the 1694.io DRep List, which have significantly benefited the Cardano community, among other valuable contributions. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  17. LOGIC: The LOGIC team continues to contribute to open-source development, focusing on smart contract development in Aiken and governance-related tooling.

  18. LOVE: Papacarp remained committed to maintaining and improving one of Cardano’s most widely used block explorers, PoolTool.io (PoolTool-io · GitHub). He is also involved in development and maintenance of the PoolTool App, including the Telegram notification bot, which is still widely used by stakers and SPOs for updates, reward tracking, and pool performance monitoring.

  19. POOLS: Cexplorer.io consistently provides valuable insights to the Cardano ecosystem through their block explorer and informative blogs. They stay on top of current issues and topics, offering a reliable resource for critical information. Additionally, they are known for their contributions to the development and maintenance of the NFT marketplace “Jam on Bread.”

  20. PRIDE: PRIDE is an active community builder within the Cardano ecosystem, generating high engagement on X and sharing insightful content. As a mission-driven SPO, PRIDE supports several humanitarian organizations and promotes Cardano’s positive impact.

  21. SMAUG: SMAUG remained committed to further developing and maintaining Pool.pm, one of Cardano’s most popular and user-friendly visual block explorers. Its ease of use and consistent updates make it a valuable tool in the Cardano ecosystem. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  22. STAT: The operator actively contributes to the Cardano ecosystem by: Developing and maintaining AdaStat.net, one of the Cardano blockchain explorers, and ensuring that new features are continuously implemented to add value to the ecosystem. For example, the recently added overview for tracking governance actions. Keeping AdaStatBot updated to provide its Telegram users with timely reward notifications. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  23. SWARM: SWARM is dedicated to bridging communities and fostering collaboration within the Cardano ecosystem. Their ongoing initiatives include: Open-Source Treasury System: For transparent and efficient fund management. Task/Bounty Systems: Promoting decentralized project management and rewarding contributions. Open Community Space: A platform for the Catalyst community to connect and collaborate. They remain committed to these initiatives, including their role as a Polkadot-Cardano uniFire.

  24. TMS: Fabian is a highly engaged moderator on Telegram and the Cardano Forum, consistently providing prompt feedback and support.

  25. WADA: WADA continues to expand technology access and bridge Web 3.0 opportunities across the African continent. They host weekly educational sessions via the YouTube Wada Forum to engage with the community. These sessions serve as valuable resources, fostering discussions that drive innovation and collaboration. Additionally, WADA supports African-based projects building services on Cardano, alongside other significant contributions to the ecosystem, including promoting blockchain literacy and driving forward local development initiatives. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

  26. ZW3RK: ZW3RK continues support to the Cardano ecosystem by enhancing the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) and its ecosystem. Operated by Moritz, an expert in systems engineering and GHC development, the pool contributes to GHC’s Continuous Integration infrastructure, improving build machines and extending support to other Haskell projects. The team also works on cross-compilation and deployment, including iOS and Android, and supports the RISC-V code generation backend. Additionally, ZW3RK offers pre-built static Cardano node packages, easing access for stake pool operators and enabling experimentation with innovative deployment options like Synology DiskStations. This pool was also featured in the spotlight on stake pool series.

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EN

Sorry, I totally disagree with the selection of the delegation.

ALL the selected pools are above 20M stake, there are even some with 64M.

These are self-sufficient and profitable.

There are many other pools that would do very well with this delegation to be able to maintain their infrastructure and not bet out of their own pocket on the network. Anyway.

When was the vote? From where? No notification or email was sent?

Congratulations to all the winners in this delegation.

ES

Lo siento, no estoy nada deacuerdo en la seleccion de la delegaciĂłn.

TODOS los pools seleccionados están por encima de los 20M de stake incluso hay algunos con 64M Estos son autosuficientes rentables.

Hay muchos otros pools que les iria muy bien esta delegaciĂłn para poder mantener su infraestructura y no apostar de su bolsillo por la red.

Cuando se ha votado? desde donde? no se ha avisado ni enviado ningun correo?

De todos modos. Felicidades a todos los ganadores en esta delegacion.

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why do they send me an email if they have already selected the pools? The truth is I feel like my contributions are not taken into account, this is so sad, since they changed the delegation strategy it was controversial and continues to be controversial, most likely next year I will end up closing my pool which is the support of my family, which will make me have to look for a job and have less time to contribute to Cardano, a project in which I have been from the beginning supporting it in every way possible, but it seems that a veteran in Cardano like me is not important and does not deserve help.

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Hey @Cardapool your statement isnt correct.

I didnt check for all the other pools but my own pool had a delegated stake of ~3,6m ADA before we received the CF-delegation.

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Hi, Zyroxa. Maybe yours is safe. Sorry, I didn’t look at all of them. But I saw some with more than 64M… Check it out and tell me if those need delegation?

:face_exhaling:

Congratulations on your delegation

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Well the question is, what is the Cardano Foundation trying to achieve with its delegation strategy? At the beginning it was to support decentralisation. It made sense to focus on small pools but now this has changed.

Now their focus is to support builder and contributer (not saying you arent such) but i feel its ok to support big pools aswell, as the decentralisation of our network is already pretty decent id say.

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I would have to disagree with the decentralisation aspect - over 52% of pools hve minted less than 100 blocks and only 5.67% have minted more than 10,000 blocks with a third of all pools never minting blocks - the power remains very much with the early adopters and stake sticks like glue to these pools - even founding entities such as Emugo run numerous pools and at leat 4 with over 100M ADA in them that are retired - is this right from conflict of interest standpoint ? - anyway as a Stakepool operator that has been running a pool with zero downtime for over 4 years costing me thousands of dollars in losses and being as active as possible during this entire period I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that this is a closed system that is anything but decentralised (no matter what your definition of decentralisation should be)

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But is there the possibility that Cardano Foundation will add up some other Stake Pools in the future?

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Good job guys! Keep building :slight_smile:

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I truly appreciate it! Your delegation not only means a lot, it also has a significant impact! Thank you!

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Like so much current development in Cardano, the CF delegation strategy operates without clarity on the difference between numerical values and human values. The result is an effort that claims to benefit the interests of the ecosystem while actually behaving in a self-interested way, fueling the resentment expressed by many community members here.

Focussing on encouraging more development in the Cardano ecosystem will not lead to mass adoption because most people in the world do not make decisions in their lives based purely on logical thinking. The incentives of the CF delegation strategy do not align with the desired outcome for the project.

In other words, the current CF delegation strategy does not truly resonate with the Ethos of Our Cardano, also developed by CF. In fairness, Our Cardano did not exist when the current delegation strategy was adopted. Still, “one hand” of CF should know what the “other hand” is doing.

There is definitely room for improvement.

[CHG]

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These percentages alone say little about decentralisation.

You can make any ecosystem look bad with those statistics by just adding pools that try to produce blocks, but do not have the resources to achieve it.

Just convince 100k people to try to mine Bitcoin with their graphics cards like its 2010. Voilà 90% of miners never produce a block! That’s not decentralised! (Okay, Bitcoin really has a problem with centralisation due to its few huge world burning operations basically being the only ones still able to mine.)

In Cardano, those resources are delegated stake. And the plan how to reach enough Cardanians who are willing to delegate to a pool has to be part of the plan to run a stake pool. Should have been from the beginning. The “Everybody can run a stake pool! Isn’t that great?!?” marketing was a huge disservice in my opinion leaving legions of frustrated stake pool operators. Should have been made very clear that running a pool is much more likely going to be a medium expensive hobby than something financing your life.

Delegation programs such as CF’s are just a drop in the bucket, cannot fundamentally change that. So, it is in my opinion totally their right to say: “We mainly do this as an appreciation of what the operators of those pools do for the community.”

So, founding entities running multiple pools is bad. But if they retire half of their pools that’s also bad? Emurgo cannot change if their delegators – probably to a large part not very experienced and active Yoroi users from ca. four years ago – do not notice the retirement and stay delegated to the dead pools.

By the way, this also makes another huge question mark on the desired effects of raising k: If delegators do not even switch from retired pools, do you think they would switch from oversaturated ones? And if they are so little informed, do you think they would look further than the newly created pool by their original stake pool operator?

Is it, though? If you sort https://adastat.net/pools by produced blocks, it’s a good mixture of OG and newer pools. And for the OG ones, there are also many who don’t operate huge pool groups (like 1PCT or DIGI), but just one or two pools since the ITN and are very active in the developer and/or SPO community. Is it really bad that they keep their position in the ecosystem?

The first question should be what the goal of “decentralisation” should be. By the usual arguments, it is not that anybody should have a chance to establish a business profiting off the ecosystem, but to ensure that enough independent pools are operating that nobody can censor or – worse – double-spend or disrupt the network, that enough of them are capable and active enough to assess and decide on hard forks as well as emergency actions.

The second question should be how many pools we can finance from the transaction fees in the long run. If you look at https://adastat.net/epochs, there are at the moment only around 100k ADA per epoch transaction fees or 600k ADA per month. The rest (>95%) of the rewards for pools and delegators are inflation from the reserve and won’t be there forever, already have gone down massively since the start of Shelley and will continue to go down.

There are a lot of moving parts – ADA price, usual pool margins, transaction volume and fees per transaction accepted by the users. …

But I would think it’s totally reasonable to only finance around, say, 100 pools long term. If those are the “right” ones, so that the principal goals of “decentralisation” can still be fulfilled, that would be totally fine with me and make sense since the rewards financing them are taken in one way or another from the whole community, from “us” and therefore there also should not be too many of them.

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Strong disagreement on multiple fronts.

In order to drive “mass adoption”, there have to be businesses appealing to the masses. And the people and companies building those businesses first need the infrastructure – documentation, libraries, wallet apps, chain itself – to build those solutions.

It is the job of founding entities, pool operators, projects funded from the treasury to provide this infrastructure, not to build the businesses themselves. (In my opinion, also “marketing” shouldn’t be a job of founding entities and shouldn’t be financed from our treasury, but we’ll see.)

(There also is the question if “mass adoption” really is a worthwhile goal. If we should really invite masses who often have no interest in learning the necessary details of self-custody without middlemen into crypto ecosystems, just to get scammed and rugged here in astonishing numbers.)

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I don’t quite agree with this notion.
Going through the report and the history of their strategy, it’s quite clear and inspiring to see how they build and present networks.

May it be stake pool selections or institutional partners, I think the Cardano Foundation has done a great job securing the network, the brand and decentralising power.

There are all kinds of Developers. Some develop social infrastructure and some develop code.

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Cardano may make strides towards mass adoption when the developers realize that they do not play the most important role in the ecosystem.

To use an analogy, Cardano devs are like engineers who built an airplane and insist on constantly standing around inside the plane admiring their work. It’s time for the developers to get off so the airline can sell some tickets and the general public can take some flights, as the plane was intended to do.

While I don’t necessarily agree, scientists tend not to receive credit for their work the way that artists tend to receive credit. To continue the analogy, maybe there should be a plaque on the plane listing all the engineers who contributed to building the beautiful thing, but there are no such plaques. If receiving credit is so important to Cardano devs, then maybe go work in Hollywood instead.

At this point, the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result,” is relevant to Cardano achieving mass adoption.

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Good analogy

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I think there are a few key issues with this argument that get overlooked, and they’re worth discussing:

  1. Decentralization Metrics: True decentralization isn’t just about “enough independent pools to avoid censorship.” It’s about creating equitable opportunities for everyone to participate. If 66% of pools aren’t minting blocks, can we really call this decentralization? These aren’t random pools thrown in to skew stats—these are SPOs who followed the rules, invested in the ecosystem, and yet are unable to compete. Comparing it to Bitcoin mining misses the point: Cardano was designed so anyone could run a pool if they brought value. Are we now walking back on that vision?
  2. Founding Entities & Delegation: You defend the delegation strategy, but where’s the transparency? Emurgo retiring pools with 100M ADA still linked to them is a clear example of unresolved conflicts of interest. Delegators often don’t even realize they’re still tied to retired pools—this isn’t just an operational oversight, it’s a problem of communication and accountability. If founding entities don’t set a better example for decentralization, how can they expect others to? Similarly, CF delegations going to already large pools undermines the small operators who are critical to the network’s diversity.
  3. The “100 Pools” Vision: Saying the network should only support ~100 pools long-term feels like a pre-emptive resignation to centralization. The assumption that most pools will fail or leave isn’t a reflection of natural competition—it’s the result of systemic imbalance. Decentralization isn’t just about technical resilience; it’s also about governance, fairness, and ensuring influence isn’t concentrated in too few hands. Is this really the future we want?
  4. Mass Adoption & Fees: The idea that we can’t sustain more pools because of declining reserves ignores what mass adoption could bring. More users would mean more transactions, higher fees, and a network that could afford to sustain far more pools. Shrinking the ecosystem to match today’s fee income is short-sighted and misses the growth potential.

The bigger picture is that decentralization wasn’t supposed to be about a privileged few holding onto power under the guise of “competence.” If we accept this system as is, we risk losing what makes Cardano unique—fairness, inclusion, and the ability to empower a global community.

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Where did you get that promise? Especially concerning stake pool operation?

They threw themselves into the stats, yes, but it’s still not a meaningful number. It was never promised that you will be able to sustainably operate a stake pool if you just “follow the rules”. Even if they do not intend to skew the stats, it does not change if our decentralisation is “good” or “bad” if more or less small pools are operating that do not manage to attract the necessary stake to do so successfully. It’s just irrelevant.

First and foremost, “proof of X“ uses a scarce resource “X” to ensure that not anybody can just attack and take over the network:

  • Proof of work uses hash power as scarce resource. Anyone can run a miner, but if you do not invest enough hardware and energy, you are not guaranteed to produce blocks and earn rewards.
  • Pure proof of stake uses the native currency of the network as scarce resource. Anyone can run a validator, but if you are not rich enough, you are not guaranteed to produce blocks and earn rewards.
  • Delegated proof of stake – what Cardano does – uses delegations of the native currency by users of the system as scarce resource. Anyone can run a pool, but if you do not attract enough delegation, you are not guaranteed to produce blocks and earn rewards.

Stating that not every pool is entitled to survive is not walking back on a supposed vision. It’s just basic logic that in order to fulfil its function, it has to be hard to attract delegation, it has to be possible to fail.

Community and also CF have tried from the beginning to inform users on how to select a stake pool, to provide opportunities for pools to present themselves. There are lots of tools to view and select a stake pool. And a lot of them do manage to get enough delegation. It obviously helps if the pool is visible because it belongs to a well-known project and is known to its community, because the operator is well-known on social media or on YouTube, because it belongs to a wallet app and is more or less subtly featured in it, …

It might seem unfair that it is not enough to “just” operate a pool (which already seems so much work for some operators, especially those not well-versed in system administration … who arguably maybe just shouldn’t operate a pool?), but, no, doing the advertising and outreach is part of operating a pool. Yep, some of the things that are kind of successful are also questionable in my opinion – why should a YouTube shiller be a good SPO? – but it is how it is.

In the very post we are currently discussing under? In Cardano Foundation Updates Delegation Strategy linked in that post? What more do you want? Why do you think you are entitled to more?

I still honestly don’t understand what you want here. Running multiple pools is arguably bad for decentralisation, especially if it are so many as Emurgo is operating. So, retiring some of them is kind of good?

Yes, they could have announced that even more prominently (although I do remember one or more X posts and I really hope that Yoroi shows upcoming pool retirement somehow). But there simply is no way to reach delegators proactively. If they don’t follow the SPO’s announcements and don’t regularly check their wallet app because they are not that actively interested in Cardano, because it is just one among many cryptos they hold long-term, because they are dead, there is nothing Emurgo can do about it.

A good solution for this and other “sticky stake” problems would be to let delegations expire, to force people to redo and hopefully reconsider their pool delegation from time to time.

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just like your opinion, man.

The design of Cardano’s reward sharing scheme “wants” it to converge to k fully saturated pools: https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/reward-sharing-schemes-for-stake-pools/
So, as long as a pool is not fully saturated, it should be okay to delegate to it. Could maybe even argued that it is better for this convergence to delegate to larger pools than to small pools that will likely never reach sustainability.

Is this reward sharing scheme good? I usually don’t think so. The debate about a better scheme would in my opinion be much more productive than the thousandth complaint about CF not delegating to the pools this or that SPO wants them to delegate to (mostly themselves?), the hundredth discussion about raising k in the deceitful hope that that might “fix things”, or shaming users for not doing hours of research into selecting a “good” pool, but just delegating to some huge multi-pool offering the best ROS.

What I would propose:

  • As already stated above: Let delegations expire to force reconsideration, to not have delegations from lost keys, users left for good etc. pp. forever.
  • Just remove “k” (stakePoolTargetNum, previously nOpt). It has been subverted by just running multiple pools from the very beginning.
  • Also remove the bonus for pledge. It only really matters for fully pledged private pools, only benefits the ADA rich.
  • Instead: Make pledge matter by defining a maximal leverage parameter. Saturation then is maxLeverageĂ—pledge.
    If you want to have lots of delegation, you need to have lots of your own (or borrowed) skin in the game.
    But it kind of scales: You can start with a low pledge when attracting the first delegators and only have to raise after you have grown enough (and hopefully accumulated enough for a higher pledge in the process).
    And it incentivises transparency – large operations can still just operate one pool with all of the pledge and all of the delegation in it, there’s no advantage in running multi-pools anymore (that then have to be analysed to get a grasp on how much of a problem Binance et al. really are).
  • (Alternative idea: To not have to decide on a sensible maxLeverage, we could try to let the rewards decline with higher leverage, so that delegators are incentivised to search for a pool with as low a leverage as possible, to distribute themselves over the pools. But at some point, the question arises why have delegation at all? Why not just do pure proof of stake/pledge then?)
  • Remove minPoolCost (and poolCost itself?): minPoolCost never made sense since it is only paid if a block is produced at all, so it never ensured that SPOs get their operation financed. It just made small pools less competitive because a static cost is much more relevant if only few blocks are produced. It is much better to let them be competitive from the very beginning (albeit not necessarily covering the costs even with blocks produced). Maybe we don’t even need a pool margin and the rewards for the pledge are enough?
  • Maybe very controversial: Introduce locking and slashing, maybe only for pledge, maybe for all delegations. If nothing is at stake, it’s not really proof of stake. Sufficiently definable bad behaviour should be punishable. If this also extends to delegators, it loses some of our selling points (“ADA are never locked! It’s totally risk-free!!!”), but it incentivises delegators really searching for a good SPO, assessing if the pool is trustworthy which they now don’t have to care about at all.

This all has little to do with CF’s delegation strategy. I still think they are free to choose what they want to prioritise and supporting outstanding contributions to the community is a very sane choice. How else should they select among the thousands of pools? Just randomly among all below 1m ADA stake?

This relies on your opinion that 100 pools (just an example) are “too few”. I think that can be more than enough to achieve what I want from the pools operating a cryptocurrency network. What you dismiss as “just technical resilience” is their only job. Why should I want to finance more than is necessary? Inefficiency as end in itself?

As said: Lots of moving parts.

  • There cannot be that many more transactions with the current setup due to limited block space and increasing block size or reducing block time can only marginally change that. Maybe Leios fixes that. But other proposals – Hydra or other roll-up/sidechain solutions – move transactions off the main chain and, hence, lead to less transactions and fees.
  • ADA’s price rising could alleviate the problem a bit, but on the other hand lead to pressure to lower the fees per transaction because users are very allergic to high fees (and we are so proud to not have Ethereum-style fees, while Ethereum is the only crypto that comes close to financing its network from transaction fees).
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While I agree with many of your latter points regarding improvements to how pledge, leverage and min pool cost should be handled I am not in agreement with your points about transparency and accountability for the Cardano Foundation (CF). Let’s not forget that these entities were entrusted with funds raised during a public ICO—roughly $62 million back in 2017. This wasn’t private investment money; it came from a broad community of contributors, mostly in Japan, with the understanding that these funds would drive Cardano’s development, growth, and its decentralized vision. With that responsibility comes an obligation to maintain high levels of accountability and transparency.

The roles of these entities were clear from the outset. IOHK (now IOG) was tasked with building the technology, Emurgo was meant to focus on commercial adoption and business development, and CF was to oversee governance, promote the Cardano ecosystem, and engage with the community. These are complementary roles, and their execution is crucial to the success of Cardano.

However, the delegation practices of CF are raising some serious questions. Delegation policies are supposed to reflect the ecosystem’s decentralization goals, yet the perception among many is that CF’s delegation program disproportionately favors certain operators—often larger, established pools. This isn’t just about fairness; it’s about maintaining trust within the community. When CF’s actions seem to contradict Cardano’s decentralization principles, it damages the credibility of the platform as a whole.

One way CF could address this is by being more transparent about how they select pools for delegation. Publishing detailed audits and clear criteria for their decision-making process would go a long way in rebuilding trust. Delegation is a powerful tool for supporting smaller pools and fostering decentralization, but if it’s not handled equitably, it risks creating an uneven playing field.

Lastly, there’s the broader context of ICO accountability. These funds were raised with a specific purpose: to build a decentralized ecosystem. If there’s a perception that any of the founding entities are acting in ways that conflict with that purpose, it’s understandable that people would question their governance. The community deserves regular updates on how funds are being used, what progress is being made, and how decisions align with Cardano’s mission.

Oh I should make it clear that this is not a case of sour grapes as I never applied for any delegation like many small SPO’s as they know they are extremely unlikely to ever be selected but I have followed the selection process over the years and I do beleive that many disgruntled SPO’s (not all) have had some valid points with regards to the selection process

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Good job guys!