Cardano Governance Support Budget Proposal

Governance Budgets 2025
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Governance Support Budget

Here you can find all the details about the proposed Governance Support budget for 2025

The budget process and supporting documentation represent a collaborative work-in-progress, compiled from inputs across Intersect committees and working groups. All figures, timelines, and proposals are strictly indicative and subject to community feedback, market conditions, and on-chain approvals. Nothing herein is finalized.

More Details can be found here and the detailed spreadsheet can be found here for Civics Committee and here for Budget Committee

Committee members

This proposal was defined by the Cardano Civics Committee and the Cardano Budget Committee via community consultation

Cardano Civics Committee

Chair: Jose Miguel De Gamboa
Secretary: Danielle Stanko
Committee Member: Reshan Fernando
Committee Member: Eystein Magnus Hansen
Committee Member: Taichi Yokoyama
Committee Member: Michael Madoff
Committee Member: Daniela Alves
Committee Member: Mercy F
Committee Member: Takeshi Ohishi
Committee Member: Nicolas Cerny
Committee Member: Vacant Seat

Cardano Budget Committee

Chair: Steve Lupien
Secretary: Lawrence Clark
Voting Member: Kriss Baird
Voting Member: J.J. Siler
Voting Member: Mercy Fordwoo
Voting Member: Jose Velazquez
Voting Member: Kristijan Kowalsky
Voting Member: Pepe Otegui
Voting Member: Shunsuke Murasaki
Voting Member: Rita Mistry
SME: Lloyd Duhon

Proposal Summary

The proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal period will encompass all funding requests made by the Cardano Civics Committee and the Cardano Budget Committee. The primary mandate for allocating these requested funds is to cover several key areas: Sustaining, educating, and evolving the Cardano Constitution, along with the responsibilities of overseeing and facilitating all activities connected to the Cardano Budget Committee, which governs the allocation and management of funds to ensure that resources are used effectively and transparently.

The proposed Governance Support Budget is ₳ 13,170,500. This is to be managed by one Treasury withdrawal action using a smart contract:

June 2025: ₳ 13,170,500

Cardano Civics Committee Proposal

Cardano Civics committee ensures that the governance of Cardano is accessible, fair, and transparent.

Cardano Civics committee has identified 3 key focus areas for 2025:

  • Supporting Governance Participants

    • DReps: compensation, training, tooling

    • Constitutional Committee: administration, technical support, legal support, hardware, remuneration, training

    • SPOs: governance training

    • Ada holders: Education

  • Steward Governance Process

    • Drive ratification of Constitution on-chain following Convention

    • Facilitate Constitutional Committee election for new members

    • Oversees development of tools and processes to enable Cardano governance, including on-chain voting

    • Cardano Civics Committee events, activities, and remuneration

  • Facilitate Governance Improvement

    • Support definition of future governance processes mandated by the Constitution

    • Gather technical requirements to address new Constitutional provisions

    • Commission annual report on the state of Cardano Governance

    • Regional and global events to facilitate cooperation among Cardano governance participants

Cardano Budget Committee Proposal

Budget committees proposal

  1. Audit We plan to allocate funds to engage a globally certified auditor for all financial transactions, ensuring transparency and accountability. The auditor will also verify vendor transactions to confirm the proper use of funds.

  2. Tax We will reserve part of the budget for an international tax advisor to guide Intersect on the tax implications of transferring and converting ADA. This advisor will also help build a comprehensive knowledge base around global tax regulations and best practices for the community.

  3. Financial Experts Additionally, we will enlist financial experts to assist working groups where and when needed. Their primary role includes providing strategic input, assessing financial risks, and optimizing resource allocation to ensure the foundation operates sustainably and effectively.

  4. Other

Budget details

Civics Committee

The detailed spreadsheet can be found here

Requested budget: ₳ 11,270,500

Cardano Budget Committee

The detailed spreadsheet can be found here

Requested budget: ₳ 1,900,000

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From the spreadsheet: CC member compensation equals ₳6k/month, 7 members = ₳42k/month, total is ₳504k, so that’s 12 months. So this budget is for a whole year then and not just for until the end of 2025? Or how do I need to interpret this?

My first impression is that we’re missing some time data in all of the proposals…

And how would that work in practice then? Because the table also contains an USD equivalent, which would correspond to $3k (ADA price seems to be set to 50 cents in the budgets).

  • Option 1: each CC member just get ₳6k regarding of price?
  • Option2: every month each member get the equivalent of $3k in ADA; if at the end of the budget period, there’s still some ADA left, it goes back to the treasury. If there’s not enough left of the appointed ₳504k, they get nothing anymore for the remaining months (and the last paid month they divide what’s left).

EDIT: ow, the above is just the compensation they get for time spent, there’s a different budget for costs made for exercising their role. :grinning:

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So I see 1.8M set aside for compensating dreps. I don’t think dreps should get paid (maybe in the future, but certainly not in 2025).

But assuming this drep compensation will go through… Where is the compensation for SPOs that need to vote on some governance actions? Researching the effects of the parameter changes they need to vote on or network and/or ecosystem readiness for a HF also takes time!

I remember this slide from a masterclass last summit:

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Great call out! We’re looking through the budgets to find any year long expenses to reduce to six months. We’ll add this to the list and get it updated.

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Just made this topic before reading this comment: Clarity on timelines

No need to change all numbers if they’re yearly on the documents already made, with the risk of errors and mistakes if you just add some durations in parentheses after the totals.

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Do we really need to spend 284k ADA for changing (I)CC? I read the idea is to do it adjacent to an already existing event, so it seems even more unnecessary? :thinking:

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My perspective on payments for member-based organizations is shaped by years of experience working with diverse companies (including Medical Boards) and leading my own businesses. Over time, I have developed a self-reinforcing bias on the importance of balancing incentives to ensure both accountability and long-term commitment.

Governance requires strategic and decisive leadership.
Overcompensate, and we risk inefficiency and complacency.
Undercompensate, and we struggle with retention and engagement.

Most Cardano Civics Committee (CC) members are not exclusive to the Cardano ecosystem—nor should they be. This creates a dichotomy:

Push too hard → Members leave due to excessive demands.
Push too little → Members become passive and lose focus.

Proposed KPI-Based Compensation Model

To ensure fairness, sustainability, and accountability, I propose a performance-driven compensation model based on:

:one:Hours Contributed to Cardano Governance – Ensuring members are fairly paid for actual work done while discouraging inefficiency.
:two: Achieved Governance Impact – Rewards based on milestones, policy improvements, and measurable contributions to governance.
:three: Community Feedback & Evaluation – Incorporating peer reviews and ADA holders’ input to assess members engagement and transparency.

DReps
compensation should only cover voting fees at least for now.
After one year we should re-evaluate based on their effectiveness and contributions.

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4
Category Weight (%) KPI Description Score (1-5)
Governance Participation 30% Attendance at meetings, voting participation, engagement in discussions.
Deliverables & Contributions 30% Reports, proposals, governance tool development, community education.
Community Engagement 20% Interaction with ADA holders, answering governance questions, transparency.
Initiative & Leadership 10% Proactively improving governance processes, mentoring, policy development.
Adherence to Ethics & Transparency 10% Ensuring fair governance, disclosing conflicts of interest.
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The Intersect budget uses 50 cents for its $ADA treasury withdrawal calculations. Would like to see a higher $ADA value used (e.g. $1) before I’m comfortable approving. In the event of a significant market drop, additional withdrawal requests may be required. I understand that the 50 cents was made with material consultation with Treasury experts across folks at IOG and beyond. I feel it’s too conservative though.

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The difference in thoughts by the community and treasury experts regarding the growth of ADA’s value is somewhat funny :slight_smile:

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The word transparency is used 19 times in this budget proposal though no specific line item for a database with easy accessible information about all contracts, mile stones, payouts and most important, the people (yup, fully kyc’d) who get all this sweet ADA is found anywhere. So how will this elusive transparency actually work?

How can I, an random guy from the Internet, easily verify (remember, we don’t trust, we verify around here) that the treasury ADA is spent correctly with no conflicts of interest? How can I easily find out from how many line items a single person profits?

There seem to be a lot of planned hand outs, ceremonies, compensations, travel expenses, etc. - seems very likely that there are tons of conflicts of interests already.

If you want to have a yearly meetup in a nice warm country with beaches and all paid expenses on behalf of the Cardano Community, your name should be on a list in a database, so everyone knows. This is what transparency looks like.

Did I miss this line item? Because this level of transparency is quite the technical undertaking.

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On the one hand, you are so right!

On the other hand, as far as I understood their strange plan of how this should be done, the budget only says what should be done. Who will do it, who will receive all those sweet ADA will be decided later by the Intersect tendering process, by those half-elected committees whom the Intersect bureaucrats tell what to do.

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I am not looking for the actual information rn, I am looking for a line item that guarantees a plan to gather and display all that information in an easy and accessible manor. Without it, the word transparency should probably not been thrown around this lightly.

This can’t even be an Intersect project, because if Intersect gets disassembled or won’t be the administrator of the next budget, we - the community - still need that data to track transparency and potential conflicts of interest further down the line. Also, Intersect can’t track itself in terms of transparency.

So nobody has thought about something like this? How will we know how much ADA a single person gets paid from the treasury within a year? (please don’t say “its all on chain”)

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Hi everyone,

Following discussions within the Constitutional Committee, I seek clarification on aspects of the off-chain budget process, particularly regarding DRep and Constitutional Committee (CC) compensation. Given the urgency of this matter, I am evaluating the situation and gathering feedback before the GA is submitted on-chain.

One of the key concerns is whether requiring Intersect membership, KYC, and a signed contract to receive funding aligns with Article II, Section 1 of the Cardano Constitution. This article explicitly states that no formal membership shall be required to use, participate in, and benefit from the Cardano blockchain. If funding is contingent on these requirements, it could introduce an unconstitutional barrier to participation.

Additionally, Article VII, Section 8 mandates that CC compensation must be disclosed and approved through an on-chain process. If payments depend on private contracts or off-chain agreements, this could undermine the transparency required by the Constitution. To maintain decentralization and accountability, funds for CCs should be distributed directly from the treasury using an on-chain mechanism rather than through a third-party entity subject to external laws.

Beyond the constitutional articles, this issue also raises broader governance concerns. CCs and DReps are integral components of Cardano’s governance, not external service providers. A centralized entity managing payments could introduce jurisdictional risks and legal restrictions that limit participation based on geographical location. This contradicts Article I, Tenet 9, which ensures fair and impartial treatment of all blockchain participants. Restricting funding to those who comply with external legal requirements could create unnecessary barriers, undermining Cardano’s decentralization and resilience.

Clarification

To ensure that CCs and DReps can fulfill their constitutional roles without external constraints and to maintain transparency and compliance with the Cardano Constitution, I request clarification from Intersect on the following points:

How do Intersect’s membership requirements (if any) impact eligibility for budget funding?

Will Intersect publicly disclose any contracts that DRep or CC members must sign to receive compensation?

Do KYC or contract requirements affect the constitutionality of the budget process?

Does requiring CCs and DReps to enter into contracts with Intersect or another legal entity for payment violate the constitutional tenets and articles referenced above?

What alternative, constitutionally compliant mechanisms are being considered to ensure payments occur on-chain and without jurisdictional barriers?

Additionally, does the Intersect team recognize that tying governance core components such as CCs and DReps to off-chain legal agreements could:

Create discrimination, conflicting with Tenet 9
Reduce transparency in CC compensation, contradicting Article VII, Section 8

Go against censorship resistance ethos of a blockchain ecosystem.

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An unsubstantiated claim creating FUD :face_with_raised_eyebrow:.

I am a committee member and I can tell you, nobody is telling me what to do.

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There are a few different topics here, which might have been easier to deal with as seperate posts.

Regarding DRep and CC compensation. Surely having placeholders in the budget in case it is decided to proceed with making payments, doesn’t mean the funds have to be taken in a treasury withdrawal if the community decides against. Like the entire budget, these are areas for consideration and subject to change.

I also don’t think they would be treated like contractors doing work, so KYC shouldn’t be an issue.

For actual contract work, of course companies will require contracts and KYC. The ONLY benefit to having a legal entity that the MBO is represented under, is so traditional legal contracts can be made with people doing the work. Once the legacy system is replaced by full on-chain contracts and payments, the need for a legal entity will be reduced. This legal entity is used by many FUDsters to say that we are now more centralised than pre-Voltaire as we went from 3 founding entities to 1 legal entity, without considering the thousands on members that make decisions under this entity.

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Labelling all opinions dissenting from yours as “FUD” is the best discussion style. Not.

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That’s a very constructive way to give feedback. Way to go, Phil!

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Okay, so if we are going to have a constructive discussion, please elaborate on what you mean by “those half-elected committees whom the Intersect bureaucrats tell what to do”.

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I will not apologise for defending myself and others working hard on committees when we are being unfairly criticised. You are of course free to disagree with me and my approach to engaging people discussing an important topic such as this.

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I agree that placeholders in the budget don’t necessarily mean automatic fund withdrawals, but the main concern here is how these payments would be made if approved and whether the proposed mechanisms comply with the Cardano Constitution.

The issue of KYC and contracts is also not about their necessity for traditional work, but rather whether requiring them for governance roles like DReps and CCs creates a barrier to participation and violates constitutional principles. Article II, Section 1 states that no formal membership should be required to participate in the blockchain, and Article VII, Section 8 mandates that CC compensation must be transparent and on-chain.

Let’s try keep the focus on the main topic and not deviate with other narratives.

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