Welcome to this week's Intersect dev update! Here’s what’s happening in Cardano governance and at Intersect: Cardano constitution progress, committee activities, budget updates, Chang #2, the latest governance report, open-source developments, DReps, community tooling, and more. Let’s dive in!
Tracking the Cardano constitution journey Paving the way for Cardano’s first Constitutional Convention
The Cardano community has made significant strides in developing its governance framework. An interim constitution was established to maintain blockchain stability during the interim period. Subsequently, 65 workshops were conducted globally, engaging 1,400 participants to gather feedback for refining the draft constitution. This extensive community involvement highlights a collective commitment to establishing a robust and inclusive governance structure for Cardano.
The Constitutional Convention in Buenos Aires in December will mark a pivotal moment for the entire community to come together and celebrate all the work they have put in to get us to this point. Will we have a constitution we are all happy enough to ratify? We shall see. Ultimately, the Cardano constitution will be endorsed and ratified by the majority and have the consent of the majority. We explore these topics in this blog.
A dedicated microsite for the Convention will be published next week. Keep an eye on our X account!
Watch for much more information soon as we count down to the Convention!
The budget committee has begun facilitating an essential series of open discussions focused on its proposed 2025 Cardano budget process. These structured Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions bring together members, community stakeholders, and DReps to explore the framework for managing treasury funds in the post-Voltaire era. The initial sessions addressed vital topics, including what a sustainable funding range looks like, multi-stakeholder participation mechanisms, and comprehensive oversight frameworks. To participate in any open discussion AMA, please register here.
Central to these discussions is the commitment to ensure the broader community can participate in treasury governance and oversight, with Intersect serving as an administrator of a budget rather than a gatekeeper.
The sessions have highlighted essential developments, detailed quarterly reporting, and milestone tracking plans. Community members are encouraged to participate in upcoming sessions as we collectively shape the future of Cardano's decentralized funding mechanisms.
Take an active part in the process
Intersect encourages participation in the consultation phase through surveys, AMA sessions, and committee engagements. Contributions from all stakeholders enhance the planning process.
Core infrastructure roadmap - technical roadmap
The Core infrastructure roadmap working group has been reviewing and compiling a list of potential projects for prioritization within the technical roadmap for next year and beyond. Over the next few weeks, as work with the budget committee progresses, the community will be asked to provide feedback and prioritize these potential projects submitted to date.
These processes are anticipated to continue throughout 2025, providing opportunities for potential project submissions and further prioritization.
If you want to submit a project for review and consideration for core development next year, please see the outline steps here and complete the relevant submission for inclusion in the initial prioritizations.
Full details of the process and what to expect can be found on the CIR knowledge base.
Chang #2 bulletin
Two updates for the community this week!
Pre-production hard fork governance action
The hard fork initiation governance action for the pre-production environment is live! This action will bring protocol version 10.0 and full governance to PreProd if enacted. You can find it here via CardanoScan.
Experience and community feedback from the first upgrade indicated that the pre-production test time needed to be increased before the mainnet hard fork. This governance action now looks to address this concern.
The hard fork will be enacted on-chain once the governance action has sufficient SPO and ICC votes.
This action follows the ratification of the PreProd protocol parameter update gov_action1k5…n7ft, which updates the PlutusV3 cost model ready for the hard fork. This parameter update adds new costing, enabling the use of new Plutus primitives post hard fork.
You can keep track of all the governance actions and their status via our knowledge base.
Daedalus governance update
Daedalus 7.0.0 will enable users to delegate their voting power to delegated representatives (DReps) or choose an automatic voting option (abstain or no confidence), ensuring that Daedalus users have a voice in Cardano's direction.
In the new voting tab, users can select their registration preference for each wallet held in Daedalus.
For more on this update, follow the Intersect knowledge base and readiness page. We will keep you informed of its release. You can also follow Daedalus updates here directly.
See the Cardano governance documentation to learn more about DReps, stake delegation, and governance.
Keep informed
Join the dedicated Chang #2 Discord channel at #hfwg-chang-2
The Intersect knowledge base has been updated, and information about Chang #2 can be found in our refreshed Cardaro updates space. We recommend you bookmark this space and keep checking back. As confirmed by the hard fork working group, details have been added.
Latest governance actions As the landscape of Cardano governance constantly changes, with new governance actions being raised and voted upon, it is essential to cut through the noise and report on the latest governance actions. This bulletin is updated weekly so you can stay informed and involved in shaping Cardano's future.
This action was intended to update the Plutus V3 cost model by adding new costing variables for the upcoming Plutus primitives enabled by the Chang #2 hard fork. However, upon review, we found that the action did not produce the intended on-chain effect because the new costing variables were unintentionally omitted. This was an error but an expected one at this stage. Once this was spotted, the decision was made to invalidate the action’s metadata to discourage voting. You can read the full report Oops! What's up with governance action 51f4…74#0?..
Info action - Plutus V3 Cost Model Parameter Changes Before Chang#2: We propose to update the Plutus V3 cost model via a parameter update governance action to enable the new Plutus primitives that will be available following the Chang #2 hard fork (to protocol version 10). Existing Plutus cost model settings will not be changed. Note that the primitives will not be enabled in protocol version 9 (as enabled by the Chang hard fork).
Protocol parameter change
Submitted: 05.11.2024 (epoch 519)
Expires: 05.12.2024 (end of epoch 526).
ICC votes on governance action Take a look at the Interim Constitutional Committee’s current voting record across both live and expired governance actions: constitution.gov.tools
Open source
Project support survey now live Our project support survey is open for all Cardano projects. This survey helps us gauge demand for support services from Intersect’s open source office (OSO). If you have questions, contact the #os-project-support channel.
This survey gathers interest in support services, which will launch in pilot mode later in Q4 this year. Service fulfillment will be based on resource availability and complexity, with confirmation on a first-come, first-served basis.
Intersect’s OSO, supported by the open source committee, offers guidance on licensing, community engagement, and project management to maximize project impact. Details are availablehere. Also, check out the video explainer!
Exciting things are happening with our committees and working groups. Each committee has onboarded new members and is conducting reviews for each working group. Some committees have even spun up new working groups. Check out the full committee report and access our working groups on Discord. You can see previous committee reports here.
Community hubs
This week, our Europe hub, led by Clay Nation, attended the Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 11 to 14. The Web Summit in Lisbon is one of the world’s largest technology conferences, attracting startups, investors, and tech enthusiasts from across the globe. It serves as a key meeting point for innovation, networking, and industry insights, with discussions ranging from emerging technologies to global challenges and solutions in the digital space.
For the Cardano community and Intersect, being represented at the Web Summit positions us in front of a diverse, international audience that includes potential collaborators, members, and developers. It provides an opportunity to showcase Cardano’s technology, initiatives, and projects, highlighting its potential for societal impact and sustainable growth. Over 100,000 attendees have attended this year!
Our hub managers and CEO/COO of Clay Nation, Lenna, and Issy, are attending the Web Summit 2024
Our Europe hub will also stand at the Ledger 10th Anniversary Side Event on October 15 in Lisbon. The invite for this event is here.
Our other hubs are hosting the following events this week:
Japan hub
Discord voice chat on the Japan hub server on November 15. You can join the server here.
Africa hub (led by WADA)
WADA Town Hall was held on October 14 with 15 attendees. The recording can be found here (passcode: 3mm^32VZ).
And here you can see the updated community hub stats:
Community tooling
Educational grant completion: engaging young people in Cardano governance
MAV100 and the Selfdriven Foundation have completed their educational initiative, Engaging young people into Cardano governance. This project, funded through an Intersect community grant, introduces high school and university students to Cardano’s governance structures, including an in-depth look at CIP-1694.
The initiative follows a structured learning journey, including hands-on group discussions, interactive tasks, and quizzes. Key learning modules cover foundational blockchain concepts, decentralized governance representatives (DReps) roles, and Cardano’s on-chain governance mechanisms. By equipping young participants with this knowledge, the program aims to foster a generation of informed community members and future governance leaders.
Voting tool for the Constitutional Convention
Clarity, which is building the voting tool for the Constitutional Convention, has also completed its first milestone. This tool has two purposes. Firstly, it facilitates a poll to approve or reject the current draft constitution. If approved, we want this to be a celebratory occasion for the Cardano community as a whole, and we want the tooling to reflect this by being an on-chain voting tool and creating a spectacle. You can find more out here.
We have released a new version of GovTool, supporting CIP-129 and the change in the ada display format in voting. All updates are detailed in the release notes and are available on page 1.0.26. You can also track the community backlog here.
Cardano GovTool is in its bootstrapping phase, with a second hard fork planned in the coming weeks to enable full governance. All teams are working to ensure this transition supports full governance while maintaining system stability. Updates can be followed on SanchoNet, preview, and thecore-gov-tool-announcement Discord channel.
A new CC-Portal was released today after we resolved the same deployment difficulties we had with GovTool. The full release log is available on Discord. Next week, we aim to have another release that is fully CIP-136 compliant.
CC-Portal aims to offer easy access to the interim Cardano constitution and provide constitutional committee members with a streamlined interface for creating metadata as part of their on-chain voting rationale. Additionally, it serves as a platform for the Cardano community to understand committee members' voting actions better.
These improvements will make it easier for the constitutional committee and the wider Cardano community to engage with governance actions. The updates are expected to elevate both usability and transparency for all users.
Governance tools working group
The governance tools working group held another meeting this week, focusing on community backlog assessment and suggestions on how we can incentivize its work and make it more transparent and compelling to the community and the whole ecosystem. One of the members presented a draft of the process, which we will use as a starting point to get much-appreciated feedback on fairness and transparency. You can track the community backlog here.
The working group continues to invite community members to participate in discussions and feature development for the Cardano GovTool. All feedback is welcome (see guide on feedback), and ongoing conversations are held in thewg-governance-tools Discord channel, where new feature ideas are regularly triaged and implemented.
Governance in numbers
As we press ahead following Chang #1, follow the progress of governance actions on-chain here every week. Since Friday, November 8, 2024:
We've advanced from epoch 520 to epoch 521
Unique delegators increased by 8,297 (19,701 -> 27,998)
Total number of vote delegations increased by 8,742 (21,383 -> 30,125)
Total DRep votes increased by 18 (419 -> 437)
The total number of DRep registrations increased by 34 (654 -> 688)
DReps who have attached metadata increased by 32 (420-> 452)
To learn how to start using Cardano GovTool, explore GovTool documentation. Here, you'll find everything from step-by-step guides to detailed explanations of its features.
On the Intersect Discord server, you can connect to the core maintainers of governance tools via the new request and new help & support channels under Core Governance Tools in Discord.
November Intersect Town Hall update
The next Intersect Town Hall, organized by Swarm, is scheduled on Zoom on Thursday, November 28, at 16:00 UTC -Join here
This session will focus on gathering community perspectives on the current status of Cardano governance and expectations leading into the upcoming Constitutional Convention. If you have questions or topics you’d like addressed in future town halls, submit them using this survey link.
The Town Hall Working Group is drafting a proposal to extend these sessions beyond January 2025. To contribute, join the WG sessions in December or share your feedback in the Discord channel.You can also join the Town Hall WG Zoom meetings.
Important member resources
Intersect knowledge base - frequently updated, our knowledge base provides granular detail on our internal governance structure, committees and working groups, and funding opportunities, among many other items.
Support - Please always use your membership email address and contact Intersect for support with any application errors, login issues, or questions without answers.
GovTool - take part in testing governance actions on the SanchoNet testnet.
Discord / Telegram - join our lively community and interact with committees, working groups, and other members.
Intersect events calendar - keep up-to-date with all events Intersect hosts, such as working group and committee meetings, X spaces, and more.
Social - we are continually active on Twitter (X) andLinkedIn, so follow us there to stay updated on our latest news and insights.
Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading!
And finally, we’re interested in hearing more from you about subjects important to you, such as Cardano’s governance. Your ideas and suggestions are crucial to us. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please get in touch via email, X, or LinkedIn.
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