The Libertarian Cardano Budget Proposal

Governance Budgets 2025
1

The Libertarian Cardano Budget Proposal 🟨⬛

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies were born from the Cypherpunk ethos which has its roots in libertarian and techno-liberalism philosophies. Cardano, therefore, is an offspring of these schools of thought. But it seems that the Cardano community, or at least the people who worked on this budget proposal, have forgotten this.

One of the main positions of libertarianism is the idea that individual is the best agent suited at making spending decision with their own money, since they know their desires and they had to work to gain that money. On the opposite side you have an entity (Intersect) spending other people’s money (Cardano Treasury) for other people’s benefit. This is the least efficient way which leads to waste.

Therefore, I present here what I believe to be a libertarian budget proposal for the Cardano community. The cornerstone of this proposal is the idea that the Treasury must only be used to fund ongoing operations, maintenance and development. Administration, management, contracting, etc. must be funded only with donation/crowdfunding. Otherwise we get big government. As I posted on X back in November 21, 2024.

This means:
NO budget for travelling, in-person meetings, hotels or expensive restaurants.
NO budget for influencers, management or bureaucrats.
NO budget for any other entity than the Cardano blockchain itself.

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Budget Committee Budget Proposal

BC-0001-2025 SME for media services AFUERA saved $300,000
BC-0005-2025 Budget summit AFUERA saved $300,000

Budget Committee waste saved: $600,000

Product Committee Budget Proposal

P-0029-2025 Workshop and Management of the process AFUERA saved $200,000

Product Committee waste saved: $200,000

Technical Steering Committee Budget Proposal

TSC-0019 Technical Meetings and Events AFUERA saved $601,200
TSC-0026 Contributor Reimbursement AFUERA saved $500,000

Technical Steering Committee waste saved: $1,101,200

Membership & Community Committee Budget Proposal

MCC-0001-2025 Community Hubs AFUERA saved $968,000
MCC-0009-2025 Membership Support AFUERA saved $432,000
MCC-0006-2025 Catalyst: Community Grants - Support Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Innovation AFUERA saved $22,650,000
Rationale: Project Catalyst is its own entity and as such it must request their own budget proposal to be approved by the community.

Membership & Community Committee waste saved: $24,050,000

Civics Committee Budget Proposal

CC-0001-25 Constitutional Committee Compensation AFUERA saved $252,000
CC-0003-25 Interim Constitutional Committee legal advisory AFUERA saved $80,000
CC-0004-2025 CC Contributor Reimbusement AFUERA saved $265,200
CC-0006-25 Legal CC advisory AFUERA saved $350,000
CC-0007-25 Education and Training - CC AFUERA saved $221,000
CC-0008-25 CC Hardware AFUERA saved $37,500
CC-0009-25 CC handover ceremony AFUERA saved $142,000
CC-0010-25 DRep Compensation AFUERA saved $900,000
Rationale: get pay in hosky token as proposed by @CardanoNoodz on x.com
CC-0011-25 DRep support definition AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0012-25 Education and Training - DReps AFUERA saved $158,250
CC-0013-25 Education and training - SPO Cohort AFUERA saved $158,250
CC-0014-25 Education - ADA Holders AFUERA saved $158,250
CC-0018-25 Ratify Constitution AFUERA saved $112,500
CC-0020-25 CC Elections admin AFUERA saved $150,000
CC-0021-25 CC election tool AFUERA saved $20,000
CC-0024-25 Annual CCC meeting AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0025-25 Expert consultation AFUERA saved $62,500
CC-0026-25 Travel and events budget AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0027-25 Process definition AFUERA saved $125,000
CC-0028-25 Research AFUERA saved $50,000
CC-0029-25 Gather technical requirements to address new Constitutional provisions AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0030-25 Expert consultation AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0031-25 Report research AFUERA saved $75,000
CC-0032-25 Ecosystem mapping AFUERA saved $50,000
CC-0033-25 Data analysis and measurement AFUERA saved $50,000
CC-0034-25 Regional governance events AFUERA saved $150,000
CC-0035-25 Annual governance conference AFUERA saved $212,500

CC-0036-25 Refund Ikigai out saved ₳100,000 why is this even here??

Civics Committee waste saved: $5,603,950

Growth & Marketing Committee Budget Proposal

2025 Cardano Summit & 2026 Down Payments AFUERA saved $1,550,000
Regional Tech Events AFUERA saved $2,350,000
Community Led Events AFUERA saved $400,000
Industry Events with Cardano booths AFUERA saved $2,327,270
Community Led Marketing AFUERA saved $1,000,000
Digital Marketing - Social Media AFUERA saved $200,000
Digital Marketing - Advertising AFUERA saved $250,000
Digital Marketing - Bounties AFUERA saved $100,000
Digital Content Production AFUERA saved $300,000
Print Content/Merch Production AFUERA saved $50,000
Partnerships and Collaborations AFUERA saved $300,000
Influencer Marketing - RFP Influencer Directory AFUERA saved $40,000
Influencer Marketing AFUERA saved $180,000
Research & Development AFUERA saved $100,000
Research & Analysis AFUERA saved $250,000
Marketing Education & Support AFUERA saved $200,000
Cardano Reporting - Messari AFUERA saved $150,000

Growth & Marketing Committee Budget Proposal waste saved: $9,747,270

Open Source Committee Budget Proposal

OSC-0015-25 Events AFUERA saved $50,000
OSC-0010-25 OSC Attendance to Events AFUERA saved $25,000
OSC-0012-25 Google Summer of Code or Equivalant for Cardano AFUERA saved $200,000

Open Source Committee waste saved: $275,000

IntersectMBO

CR-0001-2025 Intersect Administration Fee AFUERA saved $10,000,000
Rationale: If Intersect can’t administer itself without treasury funds then it shouldn’t exist.

IntersectMBO waste saved: $10,000,000

Summary

Budget Proposal Total USD Total ADA
Budget Committee $350,000 ₳414,899
Product Committee $13,405,652 ₳15,891,382
Technical Steering Committee $49,608,500 ₳58,807,108
Membership & Community Committee $16,303,667 ₳19,326,759
Civics Committee $31,300 ₳37,104
Growth & Marketing Committee $450,000 ₳533,441
Open Source Committee $1,667,500 ₳1,976,695
IntersectMBO $0 ₳0
Total $81,816,619 ₳96,987,388

Considering ADA 2025 opening price: $0.84358

Libertarian Cardano Budget: $81,816,619

Total waste saved: $51,577,420

This what DOGE for Cardano looks like.

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10 Likes
2

I very much hate libertarians as much as I can. But if the target is the Cardano bureaucracy currently being constructed by Hoskinson’s minions at Intersect, I’m all in for it.

Just won’t sell it with positive references to Milei or Musk’s DOGE. Those are evil people.

8 Likes
3

Regardless of your own personal ideology, I think we can both agree that it is not in the best interest of the blockchain to be paying for insiders and influencers to travel.

8 Likes
4

One thing I want to push back on is removing travel from engineering. Engineers will attend conferences, whether they be blockchain ones, industry ones, etc… The reasoning for making it a line item in the budget rather than including it in the employees cost basis is it makes it more transparent how much is being spent on conferences and it doesn’t give a bad employer the opportunity to take the money for themselves. The engineers can submit a request to go to a conference, and those funds have to be used for that case.

9 Likes
5

Engineers have good salaries, if they wish to travel to a conference they can pay for it themselves.

3 Likes
7

I’m sorry but this is just wrong reasoning. If you attend a conference for your JOB, your employer pays for it, not yourself!

8

Then the employer pays for it, the Cardano treasury is not an employer.

5 Likes
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Yeah and where do you think that employer gets its money from? Cardano is the client of that employer. Like @disasm said, they split it up to be more transparent about where everything goes. You have some valid points in your proposal, but now you’re losing a bit of touch with reality imho…

11

Travelling is a luxury. Did development stop when the pandemic happenened and no one could travel? no, then its not essential. Since the Cardano Treasury will be funding the development its more than reasonable to expect a non-essential expense to at least be cover by the employer (IOG, CF, or whatever the case may be) if there’s a lone developer contributing on their own they can start a crowdfunding campaign to travel.

3 Likes
12

You really think software engineers are going to work for a company that requires them to be locked up in their home office all day?
They will just work find another job and we will be without talented people. We live in reality man…

And it is the employer that pays for the expenses. But where do you think the employer gets its money from? From selling their services. That’s how it works.

1 Like
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CC-0036-25 Refund Ikigai out saved ₳100,000 why is this even here??

If they fell victim to the early governance info action submission bug and didn’t get their Ada returned (see Bigpey’s K parameter gov action that did get fixed & paid back) , we should do the right thing and add this to the first budget passed

14

Was there a bug? As far as I have heard, it was just that they used a stake address that was not registered.

On the one hand, that would be own fault. You shouldn’t sign something that you don’t understand in crypto. And circumventing that is kind of a bad precedent.

On the other hand, yes, those ADA went into the treasury and it doesn’t really hurt to just pay them out.

2 Likes
15

Yeah more a problem with whoever made the gov.tools UI but I don’t think we’re down that bad to not pay them back :slight_smile: their loss of staking rewards can be the fine for the mistake

2 Likes
16

Nobody can seriously defend paying so much resource to post human bodies between “conferences” in this context.
As for “Libertarian” marketing, better to be non ambiguous.

17

I support this proposal, perhaps not at this extreme level (I’d leave a minimal budget for Intersect and all the marketing expenses).

1 Like