Summary: Governance Hour – Daedalus Wallet Maintenance and Improvements
In this episode of the Governance Hour, Nicolas Cerny (Governance Lead at the Cardano Foundation) speaks with Samuel Leathers, a co-founder of Se7en Labs. They dive deep into the treasury withdrawal governance action requesting 1.79 million ada to maintain and improve the Daedalus wallet over a 12-month period (2026–2027).
The Importance of a Full-Node Wallet
Daedalus remains Cardano’s only full-node desktop wallet. By running a node locally, users do not have to rely on or trust third-party centralized servers to transact on the network. This architecture provides maximum security and privacy, and it ensures that users can broadcast transactions directly to the network even during times of high congestion, bypassing the bottlenecks often experienced by light wallets.
Recent Milestones: Speed and Efficiency
The Se7en Labs team has already delivered massive improvements to the wallet. They integrated Mithril support, meaning users no longer have to endure days of syncing from the genesis block; instead, Daedalus can pull a trusted snapshot and sync to the tip of the chain in just four to five minutes. Furthermore, Daedalus was the first wallet to support log-structured merge-tree (LSM) storage for UTXO HD, which drastically reduced its RAM requirements down to around four to five gigabytes, making it accessible for older hardware. They also successfully updated the severely outdated Electron and NodeJS software stack to ensure the wallet remains highly secure.
Upcoming Features: DApps and Governance
A core part of the proposal is expanding the utility of Daedalus. The team is building a DRep dashboard to make governance participation significantly easier. More importantly, they plan to introduce CIP-30 support via a thin Chrome extension. This extension will act as a secure bridge, allowing Daedalus users to seamlessly connect their local full node to decentralized applications (DApps) and DeFi protocols directly from their browser.
Long-Term Vision and Architecture
Addressing the volatile price of ada, the team plans to swap a significant portion of the treasury funds into stablecoins to secure their runway and ensure continuous delivery. Looking ahead, Se7en Labs will conduct an architectural assessment to evaluate if Daedalus should transition away from the Haskell node to alternative lightweight nodes (like Rust or Go implementations) or replace the Electron frontend. However, for this year, their primary focus will be supporting the three upcoming hard forks (including Dystra and Oiler) and ensuring the wallet remains a reliable, open-source public good without ever resorting to paid “pro” plans.
Top Five Q&A (FAQ) about the Daedalus Maintenance Proposal
Question 1: What is the main goal of the Se7en Labs proposal?
Answer: The proposal requests 1.79 million ada to fund the maintenance, security, and feature improvements of the Daedalus wallet over a 12-month period. This ensures Cardano retains a high-quality, open-source full-node wallet.
Question 2: Why do users still need a full-node wallet like Daedalus?
Answer: Daedalus runs a Cardano node locally on the user’s machine, offering maximum privacy and trustlessness because it does not rely on third-party servers. It also allows users to bypass network bottlenecks during times of high congestion by submitting transactions directly to the mempool.
Question 3: How has the team solved the long syncing times and high RAM usage?
Answer: The team implemented optional Mithril syncing, allowing users to securely download a snapshot and reach the tip of the chain in under five minutes. They also integrated LSM tree support, which significantly reduced the wallet’s RAM usage to around four to five gigabytes.
Question 4: Will Daedalus users be able to interact with DApps and DeFi?
Answer: Yes, the proposal includes the development of CIP-30 support. The team plans to build a thin Chrome extension that communicates securely with the local Daedalus node, allowing users to connect to DApps and sign transactions without exposing their keys to the browser.
Question 5: Will Daedalus ever introduce paid features or subscriptions?
Answer: No, the team is strictly against implementing a “pro” plan or putting features behind a paywall. They believe a full-node wallet is a critical public good that should remain entirely open-source and free for the Cardano community.
Wednesday, 22 July
15:00 – 16:00 UTC