Thanks to all of you who have made comments and asked questions on the IO Engineering proposal as part of the budget process. The team has taken all these on board, compiled the key themes and questions and endeavoured to answer them. We hope this addresses the concerns and helps provide further clarity.
If you do have further questions please do post them below and the team will try to answer them in a timely fashion! Thank you.
Clarifications and Expectations
We’ve gathered questions from GovTool & the community regarding our IOE proposal. This thread aims to address your questions, provide further clarity & outline how we envision the work being contracted through Intersect, should our proposal succeed. Let’s dive in.
Scope
First, let’s clarify scope: Our proposal does not cover the entire “core” roadmap. This is a common misconception we want to address. Input | Output has collaborated with identified contributors to determine leads/support for various projects, some of which were submitted in the IOE Proposal.
Our proposal references other proposals from suppliers for projects such as the New Anti Grinding Measure, Peras, Midgard, Gummiworm, Rust Node (Amaru), Daedalus Maintenance and Enhancement, Canonical Ledger State, Black box Ledger Conformance Testing, Conformance Testing of Consensus, Plutus Script Re-Executor, Gastronomy (UPLC debugger), Genesis Sync Accelerator, Canonical Block and Transaction Diffusion Codecs, Hoarding Node, Block Cost Investigation, Cardano-node-emulator, History Expiry, Programmable Assets, Starstream, etc. For a full picture, please refer to their proposals.
Overall Proposal Cost
Let’s talk cost: Our costs reflect fully-loaded expenses for top-tier Haskell/Rust engineers, PMs, architects (incl. competitive base salaries, bonuses, insurance), incorporate payments to third-party suppliers at their rates, technical audit costs, & a shared services markup (AWS pass-through %, software licenses, shared services support functions)…
Costs outlined reflect our maximum budget request for a 12 month period (Note: Leios cost is for yr 1 of an estimated 2-yr project).
We believe the proposal provides fair estimates; given the complex nature of this work, we may not be net profitable.
If our actual effort costs less than budgeted, we ONLY charge the lower amount. Any excess funds received will be returned to the Cardano Treasury via the appropriate process. Our teams continue our ongoing delivery of this work, tracked here: Cardano Development Updates
Maintenance Cost
Maintenance isn’t about just ‘keeping the lights on’. Responsible maintenance is both reactive and proactive, ensuring the ongoing security, resilience and efficiency of financial infrastructure with a market cap in excess of $20B. Support & maintenance includes 40+ activities, such as unit/property test maintenance, CI/CD maintenance/support, release management, performance analysis, Haskell compiler support, network monitoring, disaster recovery, L1-L3 support, Plutus Core/CLI maintenance, open source code review/integration, code modernization etc.
The cost of maintenance is in line with the TSC’s ~35% recommendation & consistent with previous years annual budgets ('23-'25) by IOE/IOG. It requires the combined expertise of ~50+ engineers, covers direct AWS costs, & includes a 24x7 SRE on-call team for infrastructure maintenance/monitoring.
Staffing & Contributor Allocations
We estimate 120-150 FTEs for the proposed work, distributed roughly according to project cost ratios. IO Engineering will either subcontract or request that Intersect contract directly with the suppliers in our proposal, or potentially others that would like to be included.
We plan to work closely with these suppliers in the coming month to refine work packages, staffing/resource needs, cost allocations, and billing rates, providing clearer expectations for everyone involved.
For cost optimization, engineers are often shared across projects (tracked precisely via monthly timesheets allocating % effort). This ensures we only charge projects for the required time, not full engineer allocation if unnecessary.
If work outlined in our proposal overlaps with others, we commit to collaborating closely with Intersect and the relevant proposed contributors to make necessary adjustments, reducing potential duplication and overall costs.
Milestones & Payments
We will work with Intersect to define quarterly milestones in advance for each upcoming quarter. We would expect to receive payments upon successful delivery against these agreed milestones, with sufficient oversight from the Administrator and smart contract mechanism. For projects needing scope finalization, costs were estimated based on comparable past work.
We will track progress reports via Cardano Development Updates for community transparency. Monthly timesheets detail effort per project; we will ONLY bill for this tracked time, preventing double spending.
Payment in $ADA
If approved, we plan to accept $ADA for completed work against milestones, billing based on timesheet tracking. The $0.50 $ADA price mentioned was a placeholder only.
We anticipate that the final ADA price/mechanism will be defined in the contract with Intersect (CDH) (as Administrator) and IOE (e.g., fixed at contract signing) to be paid on a recurring or milestone-based schedule. IOG plans to accept $ADA volatility risk for 2025.
Reminder: We only charge the actual effort, & return any excess.
Regarding the TSC’s Proposed RFP
IOE will not participate in the proposed TSC RFP process for 2025.
IOE initiated close collaboration w/ core development contributors in early April after repeated calls over 3+ months for the TSC to facilitate group supplier discussions weren’t actioned, and the Intersect submission form deadline loomed. We were unaware of the TSC’s separate proposal until it was published.
Not only does the TSC’s proposed process risk further delaying Cardano’s critical funding and resulting competitiveness, but we also object to a small group (unelected by the broader community and potentially conflicted suppliers) directing Cardano’s development in 2025. The proposal effectively centralizes the process, consolidating administration/contracting, vendor selection, delivery, oversight & payment roles within Intersect.
Our direct proposal provides a trusted path, ensuring continuity as IOE & proven ecosystem contributors have the skills, capabilities, and track-record, and are already delivering this work. It broadens contribution and developer diversity while maintaining momentum in this critical transitional year. Track progress: Cardano Development Updates
IO is 100% committed to working with Intersect and other parties to define and refine scalable processes for 2026 to strike the right balance of technical steering and counsel by technical experts within a framework that is operationally viable, commercially appropriate and has the full consent of the widest possible community.