Welcome to the first Intersect dev update of 2025! After a well-earned holiday break, we’re diving back into the exciting progress within Cardano governance and Intersect. This week, we’ll pick up where we left off with updates on Cardano’s constitution development, Cardano budget updates, Plomin hard fork progress, committee activities, open-source initiatives, delegated representatives (DReps), and community tooling. Let’s kick off the new year by looking at what’s ahead!

Plomin Upgrade
As we set foot into the new year, we also step into new territory as we progress in the age of Voltaire with the Plomin hard fork. 

Readiness page updates 
The hard fork readiness page on the Intersect knowledge base keeps the community updated on progress toward the mainnet hard fork.

Thank you to those who have contributed and communicated their readiness to date. Many stake pool operators (SPOs) and tooling have made the relevant upgrades and expressed their readiness. The emphasis now turns to exchanges and DApps.

The following exchanges were among the first to announce that they are ready for the Plomin hard fork: Bitrue, CEX.IO, Coinbase, Crypto.com,  Gate.io, Kraken, OKX, and Upbit.

Exchanges are encouraged to contact the Cardano Foundation through their contact form, selecting “Integrations & Ecosystem Collaborations.” The Cardano Foundation core integration team will set up a dedicated channel to offer support for their Cardano integrations and provide regular updates.

SPO Votes on the Plomin hardfork (data via Adastat - 2024-01-10)

• Yes votes by stake: 29.25% (ratification threshold of 51%)
• by numbers, 358 yes, four no, 2 abstain

with ~14 days left to cast votes.

Members of the Interim Constitutional Committee have not yet cast their votes.

A huge shout out to the first tranche of DApps that submitted pull requests to the knowledge base and attested their readiness for the Plomin hard fork: Danogo, Fluid Tokens, Genius Yield, Minswap, Snekdotfun, Splash, Summon, Tempo, and Wanchain.

To help facilitate the updates to this page, the community is encouraged to suggest readiness updates or attest to the readiness of their tooling and DApps via this new hf-wg-documentation Github repository. The repository readme provides details on how to do this. Please contribute and let the ecosystem know you are ready for the mainnet hard fork.

New release of Cardano node
All Cardano stake pools and relays should upgrade to Cardano node version 10.1.4 to mitigate a potential DoS attack following a hard fork to Protocol Version 10 (Plomin hard fork on mainnet). All other node users should upgrade to this version. Node users who do not upgrade put themselves at risk of a potential DoS attack following the hard fork.

Node 10.1.4 is a mainnet-ready release of the Cardano node capable of crossing the Chang #2 (Plomin) hard fork. It adds safeguards at the mempool level to block specific transactions that could lead to a DoS attack following the upgrade.

Mainnet hard fork governance action
The governance action for the Cardano mainnet hard fork was submitted on-chain on December 20, following the recommendation of the hard fork working group and supported by the technical steering committee at Intersect.

• GovTool
• Cardanoscan
• Cexplorer
• Adastat
• Tempo.vote
• Governance X Bot

This action represents the ending of the beginning for on-chain governance. If enacted, this action will enable full governance as described in CIP-1694 to mainnet, exiting the technical bootstrapping phase. The delegate-approved constitution will be submitted on-chain for community consideration soon after this upgrade, as suggested by the civics committee.

Possible hardfork enactment dates
Should the SPO and ICC ratify the governance action, these are the mainnet epoch boundary dates when the Plomin hard fork could occur.

• 2025-01-14
• 2025-01-19
• 2025-01-24 (expiry and deadline to submit votes)
• 2025-01-29

Staking Rewards
After the Plomin hard fork, you will continue accumulating staking rewards (if you are delegating to an SPO). However, as specified in CIP-1694, you will not be able to withdraw them unless you delegate your ada’s voting rights to a DRep or a predefined voting option such as auto-abstain. The community took this decision at the first CIP-1694 workshop in Longmont, CO, in March 2023.

Keep informed
Join the dedicated Plomin Upgrade Discord channel.

The Intersect knowledge base has been updated, and information about Plomin can be found in the refreshed Cardano Upgrades space. We recommend bookmarking and checking back often as the hard fork working group regularly updates details.

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.

Cardano Civics Committee recommends new Constitution for on-chain ratification.
The Cardano Civics Committee (CCC) has officially recommended a new Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution for on-chain ratification. The delegate-approved Constitution is available at this link with a blake2b-256 hash of:
2a61e2f4b63442978140c77a70daab3961b22b12b63b13949a390c097214d1c5. 

Voted on and approved by 95% of elected Constitutional Delegates, this version reflects extensive community input gathered between July and December 2024—spanning 1,400 participants across 63 in-person workshops in 52 countries. The CCC endorses this version of the Constitution for on-chain ratification.

At the Constitutional Convention, a special committee—led by a chair and vice-chair chosen by their peers—will finalize key definitions to aid in understanding the Constitution, compile the Voltaire Papers, and address a series of priority governance workstreams. These potential workstreams include refining the Constitution’s accessibility, expanding educational materials, defining an ethical code for Cardano, establishing a standard budget process, and more.

With an overwhelming majority of delegates in favor, this Constitution stands as a milestone for decentralized governance on Cardano—and a testament to the power of global community collaboration.

Learn more about the recommendation and future workstreams here. 

Intersect’s Open Source Office (OSO): Exciting updates for 2025
The Open Source Committee (OSC) is starting 2025 with a range of updates for the community. A new charter has been adopted to guide OSC activities throughout the year, which you can find here. The OSO has also published a draft roadmap that the OSC is reviewing. This roadmap is open to feedback and suggestions, and you can review it here.

To stay informed about recent developments, we encourage you to visit our YouTube channel, where all OSC meeting recordings are available. You can explore the playlist here.

Open source whitepaper
We’re also pleased to announce the publication of our whitepaper on open-source sustainability, which provides valuable insights into fostering a robust and sustainable ecosystem. You can read the full whitepaper here. In addition, the contribution ladder document is on the OSC’s agenda for review this week. Community feedback is highly encouraged, and we invite you to join OSC calls to participate in the discussion. Check out the explainer video for more information.

Looking ahead, the OSC will review the project incubation acceptance criteria. This critical document outlines the process for onboarding new projects and is part of the committee's broader lifecycle framework. As always, feedback is welcome, and we encourage you to engage in these discussions. You can access the lifecycle document and watch the related explainer video for more context.

Commercialization working group
The Commercialization working group has significantly progressed, completing a draft SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. This document is now open for community feedback, with discussions in their Discord channel. Open calls are scheduled every other Friday, starting January 10, for those interested in contributing. You can review the SWOT analysis here.

TODO Group Membership
We’re excited to share that Intersect’s Open Source Office has officially joined the TODO Group, a global network of open-source leaders dedicated to advancing best practices. This collaboration bridges the Web2 and Web3 communities, fostering innovation, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration across industries. By joining the TODO Group, we are strengthening connections between traditional open-source ecosystems and emerging blockchain technologies, including Cardano. This partnership positions Intersect as a leader in open-source governance, contributing to the sustainability and innovation of the broader tech community.

Let’s continue working together to talk openly, develop openly, and shape the future of open source here: TODO Group // Talk openly, develop openly

Budget Committee: Updates and Initiatives
The Budget Committee continues to engage with the community through open “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions. These sessions provide information on the timelines and processes for an annual budget proposal while addressing participants' questions. Held across various timezones and days, the sessions aim to gather broad input from the Cardano ecosystem and ensure transparency in Intersect’s budget process.

The first Budget Committee meeting of 2025 took place on January 6, where the committee approved the formation of three key working groups:

1. Budget Process Working Group – Focused on evolving the budget process for 2025 and beyond.
2. Audit Working Group – Tasked with defining audit procedures and identifying companies capable of conducting financial audits.
3. Treasury Working Group – Dedicated to managing ADA held within Cardano Development Holdings.

As we look to drive inclusion and participation in our budget process, these initiatives underscore Intersect’s commitment in proposing a budget for Cardano that delivers exciting new features with the necessary checks and balances.

Committees and working groups
We are pleased to announce a leap into the New Year with new working groups that arose near the end of 2024. In case you have missed out, here are a few of the new groups you may choose to help with: community hubs, community support, commercialization, and research (not new, but they have been making a splash!). 

We look forward to more updates from our committees in 2025. There is a lot of work to be done! We also look forward to better connecting each committee with joint work efforts as the year progresses.

Community hubs
We ended 2024 with six community hubs worldwide, which brought communities together to encourage representation and participation in Intersect and the broader Cardano ecosystem: LATAM, Japan, Sri Lanka, Africa, Europe, and North America. As we look into the New Year, we hope to expand the number of community hubs globally, so watch this space!

This week, the following events are taking place:

Japan hub

• X space held on January 10 with 24 attendees, where discussions focused on the Plomin Hard Fork.

Europe hub

• The Governance Workshop will be held in Amsterdam on January 10 from 14:00 to 17:00 GMT+1, with networking from 17:00 onwards. The focus will be on Cardano governance and how Intersect is steering Cardano’s future. The link to attend can be found here.

One to look out for is GM 2025, which will be held in Fort Myers, Florida, on January 25. The North American hub will host it. You can find the invitation here, which includes an optional fish charter! 

Additionally, the Sri Lanka hub will be hosting a series of workshops at the University of Kelaniya for university students to educate them on all things Cardano. Keep an eye out for more!

And here you can see the updated community hub stats: 

January Intersect town hall update
The new year will bring new opportunities. Over the last few months, Swarm has successfully delivered the Intersect Townhalls, and we’d like to thank them for completing their community grant. Watch out for future opportunities as we transition our Towhall sessions to community-run ones. More on this in the coming weeks! We would like all who have attended the town halls run by Swarm to put a big hand together and give heartfelt thanks for a job well done!

The next and last Intersect town hall by Swarm will occur on Thursday, January 23, at 15:00 UTC on Zoom. 

You can join the session via this link: Zoom Link. 

Grants
We welcome the New Year with 2024 grant milestones which continue to wrap up. 

SWARM who have been leading our Intersect town halls and after town halls, have completed Milestones 2 & 3, including a town hall survey analysis, participation statistics, and a summary of town halls from June to September. All the details can be found here.

MelloD Designs have also released four new exciting Governance Matters Cardano:

• Episode 13: MCC elections
• Episode 14: Cardano Constitution Draft Released
• Episode 15: 120+ participants, 63 delegates, 50 countries, 95% consensus
• Episode 16: Learn how to delegate your ADA and shape Cardano's future

Governance tooling
After the holiday break, we have great news from Lido Nation, including the team’s first contribution to GovTool. Late last year, the Lido Nation team applied for and was selected by a working group for the Governance Outcomes GovTool grant. For this effort, the team added historical views to GovTool.

Whilst work has been taking place within the govtool-outcomes-pillar repository, the first integration back to the core GovTool code has been made via GovTool/pull/2614. This is a key milestone for the project as it will be the first time outcomes functionality can be tested within GovTool. Look for this functionality in the coming weeks of GovTool releases.

Governance tools working group
GovTool is fully open source and maintained by Intersect members. 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 the wg-governance-tools Discord channel, where new feature ideas are regularly triaged and implemented.

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. 

Delivery assurance
As we close out 2024, we’re pleased to report that the majority of the work planned for the year has been completed. A small amount of work remains under current contracts, and the remaining deliverables are on track for completion in 2025, as anticipated.

Looking ahead to 2025, we will continue supporting the contracting of work to maintain and enhance the blockchain by collaborating closely with our committees and listening to the community’s needs. The Delivery Assurance team has developed processes to simplify the administrative aspects of contracting and contract management, ensuring the community supports the technical delivery of various work-streams for the Cardano’s ecosystem

To enhance transparency and engagement, we plan to offer more accessible and real-time project updates. We will also continue to provide the community with live updates on ongoing work across all committees.

YouTube
As 2024 came to a close, our YouTube channel has been busy, with a range of content captured at the Cardano Summit having gone live!

From discussing various aspects of Cardano's development with our Enterprise members, such as implementing smart contracts and the MBO’s plans and roadmap!

With a commitment to innovation and community involvement, look here: https://www.youtube.com/@Intersectmbo/videos to learn more about Intersect’s mission and the exciting times ahead in 2025.

Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading!

Finally, we’d like to hear 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.