Personal consolidated feedback for all budget areas and committees/working groups:
Bear with my early AM rant here. My biggest take aways and/or strain points when it comes to budgeting process so far, and candid feedback on Intersect in general:
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Lack of process is displayed for all to see when after a few run throughs of the budget it becomes clearer that many of the committees were working in silos despite “best efforts” to build their budgets.
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The result of this was overlap in strategic planning, demands of budget, and overallocations for resources across multiple committees asking for the same line items. A ~250M+ ADA budget that didn’t need to exist being whittled down with an axe because of gross missteps during the process.
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The fallout from that is erosion of trust and varying degrees of pushback and criticisms. Deserved or not in some, it’s a result of a top-down lack of organization through the budgeting process. Something to think about. If discussions are being had, but nothing effective is happening - process needs to change at the top. Tooling, having an actual standard of process and compliance that everyone uses and is enforced, etc.
This is all salvageable, given time, and correcting the process and getting more people involved. You can call it what you want, “socialization” process, but it’s not going to go over like the Constitutional process did. It’s just not.
Intersect’s budget would have been well received by simply providing the use case for it existing to begin with and aligning costs for just that.
Starting with the end in mind here was maybe too much to chew on for 2025 - “What Is Intersect”?
“Intersect is a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem tasked with ensuring its continuity and future development. Bringing members together behind a shared vision, Intersect enables a more resilient, secure, transparent, and innovative Cardano ecosystem that puts members in the driving seat of Cardano’s future.”
- Do the budget items proposed from the committees line up, in any way, to Intersects direct mission here? A lot of them, at least half - no.
Why would I say that?
Identify what needs Intersect and throw everything else out of the budget for direct proposal (especially for those entities capable of doing so without Intersect). Doing anything more adds unnecessary overhead to Intersect for an organization not large enough and hasn’t shown the ability to handle anything more at this time.
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Example: Catalyst - take it out. That’s 75M+ right there.
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Example: CF, Emurgo, IO - should not be within any buckets. Direct proposals for all of them, they can manage their own audits, etc.
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Example: Intersect should not put on any events at this time. Rare and any other entities should go to direct proposal for funds.
I can absolutely and will support an Intersect organization that is funded to help bring the community together, keep working groups and committees as accessible as possible globally - it’s needed. What’s more difficult to support is entrusting the entirety of Cardano’s ecosystem development and growth in the 2025 budget given what we’ve seen so far.
Identify what needs Intersect and throw everything else out of the budget in 2025 for direct proposal (especially for those entities capable of doing so without Intersect). Doing anything more adds unnecessary overhead to Intersect for an organization not large enough and hasn’t shown the ability to handle anything more at this time.
