Summary: Cardano Parameter Committee Meeting – April 30, 2026
This meeting marked a major transition point as the committee moved toward the Van Rossem hard fork execution and finalized a long-debated reduction in stake pool fixed costs.
1. Van Rossem Hard Fork & Cost Model Timeline
The network is entering the final stages of the Protocol 11 upgrade.
- Preview/Preprod Deployment: The hard fork is expected to “push the button” on the Preview network next week. The Plutus cost model update will be submitted to the Pre-production (Preprod) environment shortly after, with an enactment target around the May 8th epoch boundary.
- Library Risks: Testing on Preview revealed that certain dApps broke because common libraries (specifically Lucid and Evolution) were not yet updated to handle the new cost models.
- Deployment Strategy: To minimize the period where testing environments differ from Mainnet, the committee plans to submit the Mainnet update just one week after Preprod.
2. MinPoolCost Reduction (PCP-006) – Consensus Reached
The committee reached a formal consensus to lower the MinPoolCost from 170 ADA to 75 ADA.
- Rationale: This restores the “delegator penalty” to approximately 22%, aligning with the levels seen during the Shelley era. This move makes smaller pools significantly more attractive to delegators as block rewards naturally decrease.
- Independent Action: The committee decided to split this from the $k$ (target pool number) increase to ensure a cleaner voting process for DReps and SPOs, as the MinPoolCost reduction is considered far less contentious.
- Implementation: The change is slated for implementation before Q4 2026.
Presentation:
3. Debate: Increasing $k$ and Pledge Efficacy
While MinPoolCost moved forward, the proposal to increase $k$ (the target number of pools) met significant resistance.
- Discussion on Increasing K and Decentralization: The effect of increasing K was debated, with some participants expressing deep concerns about the logic behind the proposal and historical results. Previously, increasing K had little effect on stake spreading, with large pools simply splitting, and it could make it more difficult for the whole system to pay for itself due to resources being spread wider. There is a lack of evidence to support that increasing K would significantly increase decentralization or cause stake to move in the desired way, making it a more complex, potentially risky proposal.
- Pledge Efficacy and K-Value: An argument was made that increasing K would double the efficacy of pledge because it would halve the amount of ADA needed to pledge to reach the required percentage threshold in a saturated pool. This addresses a concern that the rising value of ADA has made it harder to acquire the necessary pledge to make staking worthwhile. However, others noted that the incentive mechanism regarding pledge is “squiffy,” and the associated risk (e.g., Sybil attacks) is not currently material.
- Next Steps: Due to the complexity and lack of evidence that $k$ drives stake movement as intended, the discussion will be continued in the next call to allow for further research review.
4. TSC Funding & Professional Assurance
The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) is formalizing a budget to support the Parameter Committee’s independence and accuracy.
- Budget Highlights: up to $10,000 for four detailed technical reports.
- this means $40,000 are available between PC member incentives, for professional advice/consultancy, and for Funding for community reimbursement and technical workshops.
- Risk Management: The committee intends to hire a corporate risk management expert to critique the current incentives research, ensuring the proposed changes don’t introduce systemic vulnerabilities (like Sybil attacks).
5. Constitutional Committee (CC) Size Reduction
The proposal to reduce the minimum CC size from 7 to 5 will follow the Plutus cost model update.
- Sequence: The CC reduction is legally dependent on the Plutus update passing on Mainnet.
- Approval: This change requires 75% DRep approval at the epoch boundary.
Current working doc for PCs recommendation on k: Review_of_stakePoolTargetNum.docx - Google Docs
Dedicated research: