This close out report is published by Intersect in its role as the Administrator, and has been compiled with the endorsement and collaboration of the Cardano Foundation, Input Output Global, EMURGO, and Midnight Foundation.

 

Summary

₳70,000,000 was approved by the Cardano community in late 2025 under the Cardano Critical Integrations Budget (referred to here as CCI V1). This report accounts for what that capital delivered, how it was administered, where balances landed, and what comes next.

CCI V1 was scoped to bring tier one infrastructure onto Cardano: stablecoins, cross chain messaging and bridging, institution grade pricing oracles, on chain analytics, and institutional digital asset custody. Funds were administered by Intersect under Article IV of the Cardano Constitution, with strategic direction from a five entity Steering Committee and oversight on smart contract disbursements from an independent committee comprising Cardano Foundation, NMKR, Xerberus, SundaeLabs, and DQuadrant.

Four of the five priority integrations have been delivered or are in active development: Circle’s native USDC issuance on Cardano (USDCx), LayerZero cross chain messaging and bridge infrastructure, Pyth Network pricing oracles, and Dune Analytics coverage. The fifth, institutional custody via Fireblocks, did not result in a CCI V1 disbursement; the path the ecosystem took to address custody is described in its own section below, along with what remains unmet and how it will be addressed going forward.

A separate treasury withdrawal (CCI V2) will be brought forward in the coming days to fund Year 2 contracted costs and a 12 month maintenance and enhancement program for the integrations delivered under V1. This closure report exists to give the community a clear, verifiable account of V1 before V2 is decided.

Approved Scope and Administration

CCI V1 was authorized through Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action gov_action13a2dqgwxum7d6kjfprcs57cf9733ek2dkt5qnuhqd4ll5ntcwu7sqluwkxd, ratified pursuant to the corresponding Cardano Critical Integrations Budget Info Action and the 2025 Net Change Limit Extension. The withdrawal authorized ₳70,000,000 to a dedicated, publicly viewable address held by Intersect as Constitutional Administrator, delegated to the auto abstain DRep and not staked to any SPO, in compliance with Articles IV.2, IV.4, and IV.5 of the Constitution.

The approved budget structure was published in the original governance action: ₳65,000,000 (93 percent) for commercial terms and associated costs, ₳3,500,000 (5 percent) for development, legal, audit, and contract administration, and ₳1,500,000 (2 percent) as a contingency reserve. Strategic direction came from the Steering Committee, with one representative from each of Input Output Global, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, the Midnight Foundation, and Intersect (acting in a non voting administrator capacity). Quorum for any allocation decision was three quarters of the voting members.

Funds entered the Treasury Reserve Smart Contract Framework administered by Intersect. Drawdowns occurred only after signed integration partnership agreements and Statements of Work were submitted and verified, with each disbursement reviewed by the independent Oversight Committee against scope, amount, and recipient. Where vendors required fiat denominated payments, ada was converted to stablecoins under a hybrid conversion strategy that protected committed contractual obligations while keeping ada where terms allowed.

Delivered Integrations

Circle (USDCx on Cardano)

Native USDC issuance on Cardano went from contract to live integration in 84 days, the fastest delivery in the program and one of the fastest tier one stablecoin onboardings any Layer 1 has executed. USDCx provides Cardano with a regulated, fully reserved, dollar denominated base currency, the precondition for institutional liquidity, large scale DeFi growth, and the RWA flows that depend on stable settlement assets. The integration includes Circle attestor infrastructure, the operational tooling required to keep that attestation flow live, and the contractual commercial terms required to bring native USDC under Circle’s standard issuance framework.

Circle was the largest single allocation under CCI V1, reflecting the multi year licensing and platform fee structure required for native USDC issuance and the attestor and operations work required to bring it live. The integration is live on Cardano mainnet.

LayerZero

LayerZero delivers cross chain messaging and the bridge infrastructure that connects Cardano to the multi chain default state of the broader market. The V1 deliverable comprises Cardano endpoint operations, Decentralized Verifier Network (DVN) configuration and validator support, and the Cardano side engineering work required to keep the integration current with LayerZero’s upstream protocol releases. With LayerZero in place, assets and messages can move between Cardano and the major EVM ecosystems on a recognized institutional grade interoperability layer rather than ad hoc bridges.

LayerZero implementation is in advanced stages and is a significant development effort, targeting Q3 for launch. Specific tokens deployed on Cardano under LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard are explicitly out of scope for V1. Individual OFT deployments may be brought as separate community governance actions when the case is ready.

Pyth Network

Pyth Network provides Cardano with institution grade pricing oracle data, the data layer that DeFi protocols, RWA platforms, and stablecoin issuers depend on for collateral pricing, risk management, and settlement. The V1 deliverable covers oracle feed continuity for Cardano, Cardano specific relayer infrastructure, and the publisher and incentive arrangements required to keep feeds populated and trustworthy. Native, recognized oracle coverage was a precondition cited by major stablecoin issuers and DeFi platforms before deploying on Cardano, and removing that gap was a core motivation of CCI V1.

Dune Analytics

Dune delivers public, queryable on chain analytics for Cardano, bringing the ecosystem into the same observability tier as Ethereum, Solana, and the major EVM L2s. The V1 deliverable includes subgraph coverage of Cardano native data, schema maintenance, and a service level agreement that supports Cardano dedicated dashboard refresh cycles. Mature analytics matter for two distinct audiences: institutional participants who require transparent, real time views of liquidity, risk, and protocol health, and the developer community that needs accessible data to build, debug, and benchmark.

Fireblocks and Institutional Custody

Institutional custody via Fireblocks was scoped under CCI V1 as a fifth priority integration. CCI V1 did not result in a Fireblocks disbursement under this budget. The Steering Committee’s commercial negotiation with Fireblocks did not reach terms the program could execute against within V1’s window.

Independently of CCI V1 and without drawing on these funds, Iagon pursued an SDK level Fireblocks integration. That work delivered material institutional access for a meaningful set of ecosystem use cases, lowering the friction for institutions that can operate through Fireblocks’ SDK pathway. The community benefits from that effort, and the Steering Committee acknowledges Iagon’s contribution.

That said, the SDK pathway does not satisfy most institutional counterparties. A material set of institutional partners specifically require the full native Layer 1 Fireblocks integration, the same integration depth Fireblocks supports for other top tier networks. That demand is real, it is recurring, and it is named in active conversations with custodians, allocators, and exchange counterparties. CCI V1 did not close this gap.

Institutional custody, including a full native L1 Fireblocks integration, is included in CCI V2 which will be submitted as a Treasury Withdrawal governance action in the coming days.

Financial Reconciliation

CCI V1 was approved at ₳70,000,000 against a vendor pipeline costed in US dollars. The reference ada price at proposal submission was approximately $0.40, yielding roughly $28 million in purchasing power against a $36 million priority pipeline. The Steering Committee adopted a hybrid conversion strategy: convert near-term, contracted, fiat-denominated obligations to stablecoins as they fell due, and, where terms allowed, ringfence remaining ada.

The hybrid approach worked as intended. It kept the program solvent against fiat denominated vendor commitments without forcing a full conversion at the reference price, and locked all confirmed integrations for launch and Year 1 obligations.

Conversions occurred only as part of approved disbursements under signed Statements of Work, and only after the relevant ada had left the dedicated, auto abstain delegated administrator account, in line with Article IV.5.

Allocation by Category

The table below restates the original budget categories alongside indicative ranges of actual deployment. Vendor specific line items remain subject to confidentiality obligations agreed at contract signing, consistent with the disclosure framework the community ratified at proposal stage. The Steering Committee will continue to negotiate disclosure relaxations where partners permit and will publish updates as those terms allow.

 

All remaining ada not committed under V1 will be reconciled and returned directly to the Cardano Treasury, consistent with the program conclusion terms in the original proposal.

Governance and Oversight in Practice

Treasury funds entered a dedicated auditable address, were delegated to the auto abstain DRep, were not staked to any SPO, and did not influence on chain governance. Intersect maintains a neutral governance position by delegating all ada it holds or administers to the predefined abstain voting option, ensuring no Intersect-controlled ada influences any governance vote.

Drawdowns occurred only after signed agreements and Statements of Work were submitted and verified by the Oversight Committee. Bi annual reporting was published on the cadence committed at proposal stage, and the Steering Committee operated to its three quarters quorum on every allocation decision.

The hardest part of the program was contracting at speed in an environment where vendors required confidentiality and commercial terms varied substantially between integrations. To deliver four of the five target integrations within CCI V1, the working groups made pragmatic trade-offs, locking in launch timing and Year 1 commitments to maximise impact for the Cardano ecosystem. The Steering Committee’s working group structure, with dedicated commercial, legal, technical, and communications subgroups, was the operational answer. It allowed parallel negotiation across multiple vendors while keeping a single decision making body accountable.

Lessons Learned

Five lessons from V1 will shape how V2 and successor programs are structured.

First, hybrid ada conversion is the right default for any program with material fiat denominated vendor commitments. A full conversion at proposal time concentrates timing risk; a no conversion approach concentrates execution risk. The hybrid model, converting only what is contracted and due, on the timeline it is due, balanced both.

Second, confidentiality and transparency can coexist, but they require deliberate design. Aggregate category reporting, percentage based budget breakdowns, and category level deployment ranges (the format used in this report) gave the community auditable information without breaching commercial obligations. Vendor identity disclosure followed integration completion, in line with what was committed at proposal stage.

Third, ongoing maintenance and enhancements for contracted integrations are current obligations. Most integrations delivered under V1 carry multi-year operational costs that must be funded year over year for the integration to remain live and competitive. CCI V2 exists to fund that obligation. Treating maintenance as discretionary, or hoping for a one off renewal cycle, is how live infrastructure becomes degraded infrastructure.

Fourth, not every priority integration will land within a single program window. Fireblocks did not. The right response is to acknowledge it, document why, and bring the unmet need back to the community as its own governance action rather than rolling it into a maintenance budget where it does not belong.

Fifth, surplus capacity should be governed with the same discipline as the original allocation. Where V1 produced limited residual capacity (notably from the Fireblocks line and the contingency reserve), the Steering Committee’s default is to apply it within the original program scope where contractually permitted, and otherwise return it to the treasury for community redirection. That default avoids the slow scope drift that has eroded trust in treasury programs in other ecosystems.

From Phase 1 to Phase 2

CCI V2 is being submitted to the community as a focused, narrower follow on. It funds Year 2 contracted costs and a 12 month operational and enhancement program for the four integrations V1 delivered. It also includes institutional custody, bringing the full native L1 Fireblocks integration. It does not fund application layer work, liquidity programs, marketing, or events. Each of those, where the case warrants treasury funding, may be brought as its own governance action so the community can vote on priority and pace with full information.

Closing

The community trusted the Pentad with ₳70,000,000 to deliver the integrations Cardano needed to compete at the infrastructure layer of modern crypto. Four of the five priority integrations are live or in final implementation. The fifth, institutional custody, did not close under V1, the reasons are documented above, and the unmet institutional demand will be addressed through a dedicated governance action. The administrative framework held, the constitutional guardrails held, and the hybrid conversion strategy preserved program purchasing power without forcing the treasury to take a one off market hit.

The case for tier one infrastructure on Cardano is now demonstrable rather than theoretical. The work going forward is to keep what V1 delivered live, build the layers above it that turn infrastructure into economic activity, and bring the next slate of integrations forward when the case is ready. CCI V2 is the next step, and the broader strategic outlook will follow through the appropriate community governance channels.

We thank the community and ecosystem for approving CCI V1, the fastest treasury withdrawal to pass to date, and for the integrations now in service to Cardano as a result. Input Output Group, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Midnight Foundation, and Intersect are committed to continuing that work through CCI V2 toward a stronger and more connected ecosystem in 2026 and beyond.

Supporting Materials

CCI V1 Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action on Govtool
(gov_action13a2dqgwxum7d6kjfprcs57cf9733ek2dkt5qnuhqd4ll5ntcwu7sqluwkxd)

ipfs://bafkreicbxui5lbdrgcpjwhlti3rqkxfnd3vveiinkcu2zak5bny435w4yq

Cardano Constitution ipfs://bafkreieyuknozbtewyurfqoagvplvykadn6a4u6wglupavdz46bbsnnl6e

Treasury Reserve Smart Contract Framework (Sundae Labs repository): https://github.com/SundaeSwap-finance/treasury-contracts

Independent audit reports:

TxPipe (ipfs://bafybeiccnwejbgj43wo6hrlseckkkmprtoqc5cfuy2hesm6c6yealwho3e,

MLabs (ipfs://bafybeiah5fnjhda5hemj3qvaehc4mre3qllqzw2l7mkdsguytn4ftgafw4)

Bi annual program reports: published through Intersect’s reporting framework on the cadence committed at proposal stage.