Welcome to Intersect’s Development Update #58! This week, voting opens for the Intersect committee elections—an important step in shaping Cardano’s governance. We also cover the ongoing governance action on the Cardano budget’s net change limit, new smart contract tooling for treasury management, and continued support for DReps through weekly sessions. Additionally, we share highlights from Intersect’s presence at TEAMZ in Japan, and conclude with the latest governance statistics, tool updates, and community resources. - Let’s dive in!

The Intersect committee elections voting period is officially open!

It’s time to make your voice heard and shape the future of Cardano governance.  For those of you who signed up as a member before noon on April 11, head over to the Intersect member portal and cast your vote. If you need help, we’ve covered you with a simple step-by-step guide in our latest blog: https://bit.ly/4lsLHlv. We strongly encourage all members to participate!

Voting period:

• Open: April 16 at noon UTC
• Closes: May 7 at noon UTC

As voting begins, we want to highlight the importance of Intersect committees. Intersect committees specialize in their respective areas to offer precise and valuable advice.

The official numbers as of 16:00 UTC April 17 are as follows: 

Join the conversation — meet the candidates.
Intersect hosts a series of X Spaces to help voters connect with applicants. These sessions provide an opportunity for you to hear directly from the candidates and engage in the discussion.

Event Schedule:

🟣April 21, 7 pm UTC  -  AMA/Applicants Spotlight
🟣 April 23, 11 am UTC - AMA/Applicants Spotlight
🟣 April 29, 4 pm UTC - AMA/Applicants Spotlight
🟣 May 1, noon UTC - AMA/Applicants Spotlight
🟣 May 6, 4 pm UTC - AMA/Applicants Spotlight 

(Each link shows the event in your local time zone and includes a registration button — bookmark them!)

Let’s make this a strong and inclusive election — get involved, ask questions, and, most importantly, vote! Also, if you've voted, why not share your experience with the rest of the community by posting our badge and tagging us on X? 

Download your “I Voted in the Intersect Election 2025” badge here

Candidate campaigning
If you are a candidate, we would like to thank you for standing and offer the following advice on achieving the best possible result. These tips should help you. We wish you the best of luck!

Boost your visibility

• Introduce yourself clearly: Share who you are, your background, and why you're standing. Keep it concise and authentic.
• Explain your vision: If elected, outline what you aim to accomplish. Be clear on the values and goals you will represent.
• Engage on intersecting channels: Post your message in the Intersect member forums, Discord, and relevant town hall chats.
• Create short videos or graphics: Visual content helps people remember you. A 30—to 60-second video introducing yourself can go a long way.
• Be available for dialogue: Attend the virtual town halls or AMAs, and be open to questions and discussion.
• Use your networks: If you’re part of any working groups or are known in the community, ask people to share your message.
• Keep it positive: Focus on what you bring to the table and avoid negative campaigning. The goal is collaboration.
• Consistency is key: Reinforce your message across different platforms. Repetition helps people remember your candidacy.
• Encourage voting: Remind members how and when to vote and that their voices matter.

We’ve also released a new feature in the Members Area: candidates can now share their application forms directly. This is especially useful if you're actively campaigning. Just look for the share icon at the top right of your application.

For those running for multiple committees, please review our updated policy regarding dual nominations. Candidates elected or nominated to the ISC and another committee are encouraged to prioritize their seat on the ISC. This helps ensure precise and focused representation across all groups. You can find the complete guidance in our FAQ here.

Budget Reconciliation Workshop Series for DReps (April 26–28)

As part of the continued evolution of Cardano governance, Intersect is hosting a 3-day Budget Reconciliation Workshop Series tailored specifically for DReps.

These interactive workshops aim to align participants on priorities, funding principles, and practical mechanisms that will help shape the budgetary process moving forward. DReps will collaborate, debate, and explore the frameworks that could underpin budget allocation in a decentralized system — all while contributing directly to the governance tooling design.

📆 Schedule & Registration:

• Day 1 – Friday, April 26 at 4 PM UTC
  👉 Register here
• Day 2 – Saturday, April 27 at 4 PM–7 PM UTC
  👉 Register here
• Day 3 – Sunday, April 28 at 4 PM–7 PM UTC
  👉 Register here

This is a unique opportunity to help build and validate the governance processes from the ground up. Whether you're an active DRep or just getting started, your participation matters.

NetChange limit governance action
In other budget-related news, we highlight the governance action (GA) on the net change limit for the Cardano budget, which is open until April 24th.

The Cardano Constitution requires the establishment of a Net Change Limit, which defines the maximum amount of ada (the native token of Cardano) that can be withdrawn from the treasury within a specified period. This governance action enables all stakeholders to formally express their views on the proposed Net Change Limit, ensuring transparency, accountability, and alignment throughout the ecosystem.

This threshold helps define the maximum amount the Treasury can spend this year—it's a ceiling, not a target. It's a necessary step before any Budget Info Actions can move forward!

Decentralised governance only works if the community engages with the process. We encourage all members to participate in this important General Assembly.

Place your vote here. 

Advancing Treasury management with smart contracts

Intersect is enhancing the transparency and security of Cardano's treasury management by integrating smart contracts into its budgeting processes. This initiative aligns with Article IV, Section 2 of the Cardano Constitution, which advocates for the use of blockchain-based tools to facilitate decision-making and ensure transparency.​

Key developments:

• Smart contract implementation: Utilizing Cardano's EUTXO model, smart contracts are being developed to manage treasury funds. These contracts ensure that funds are only released when predefined conditions are met, reducing reliance on intermediaries and enhancing trustlessness.
• Collaborative tooling efforts: The Treasury Management Tooling Working Group, in collaboration with IO Engineering, Sundae Labs, and Xerberous, is spearheading the development of these tools.
• Design architecture: The proposed system comprises two primary smart contract types: Treasury Reserve contracts, which serve as holding areas for funds, and Vendor contracts, which manage disbursements to service providers. This structure aims to provide a transparent and flexible mechanism for fund allocation.​

Next steps:

The development team invites feedback from the community to further refine these tools. Stakeholders are encouraged to engage with ongoing development to ensure the tools effectively meet the ecosystem's needs.​

For more detailed information, please refer to the full blog post.

Membership and community

This week Intersect at TEAMZ 2025 in Tokyo, Japan

Our booth saw incredible engagement throughout the summit. We had the chance to speak with developers, enterprise leaders, and ecosystem builders about Cardano’s member-led governance, open-source initiatives, and funding opportunities through Intersect. Our Intersect t-shirts were a crowd favorite, and we also offered exclusive NFT and token airdrops, drawing in curious attendees and creating a buzz around our community initiatives.

 

We were proud to have Intersect’s global community hubs represented, with Kavinda from our Sri Lanka Hub and Josh from WADA representing the Africa Hub. Their presence highlighted our commitment to regional inclusion and grassroots developer support.

A special thanks goes out to Yuta, Toshiaki, and the Japanese Hub members who were instrumental in supporting us at the booth and engaging with local attendees. Their help made a big difference in creating meaningful connections on the ground.

 

One of the standout moments was onboarding dozens of new users onto VESPR Wallet, developed by one of our enterprise members. Those who signed up were eligible for Mithril-powered airdrops, giving them a firsthand experience of decentralized identity and wallet infrastructure on Cardano.

 

Japan’s growing interest in community-led governance made this summit a timely and strategic opportunity to strengthen Intersect’s presence in APAC and engage directly with the next wave of builders and members.

Enterprise membership spotlight: zkFold

zkFold is a Swiss-based infrastructure project building open-source tools that bring zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to the Cardano ecosystem. Their key innovations include zkFold Symbolic, a high-level functional programming language for writing ZK circuits, and zkFold Rollup, a Layer 2 zk-rollup solution designed to enhance scalability and transaction efficiency. They have also developed a smart wallet API and a UPLC converter to bridge existing Cardano smart contracts with zero-knowledge (ZK) applications. With active contributions to Project Catalyst and strategic partnerships across the ecosystem, zkFold is playing a pivotal role in advancing privacy and scalability within the Cardano ecosystem.

Community hubs

This week, our community hubs are focusing on planning their Budget Proposal Review events. These events will be posted on the Intersect Cardano Budget Process Luma page, so please check regularly for updates. Additionally, some of our hubs are busy attending TEAMZ in Japan.

This week, our community hubs are hosting the following events:

Japan hub

• Our Japan hub, alongside TEAMZ, will hold a Budget Proposal Review event on April 17 from 10 to 13:00 UTC in Tokyo. To view the invite, click here.

Africa hub, led by WADA

• Held an online Budget Proposal Review event on April 15 with 11 attendees.

Special Board of Directors Session with Petitioners – Minutes Published

On April 14, 2025, Intersect’s Board of Directors held a special session with community petitioners to address proposals and concerns raised through the Intersect petition process. This session represents a key moment in Intersect’s journey toward more transparent and participatory governance.

Topics covered included:

• The petition process and how it integrates into Intersect’s formal governance pathways
• Community expectations around responsiveness and transparency
• The evolving role of the Board in relation to decentralized decision-making

 Read the full minutes here

This engagement demonstrates a growing commitment to direct dialogue between governance participants and leadership bodies. Follow-up actions and ongoing conversations will be tracked through upcoming community updates.

Governance tooling

This week, GovTool development focused on refining the budget proposal feature, resolving key bugs, and enhancing the user experience. Notable improvements include fixes for duplicate and incomplete proposals, as well as proactive security enhancements; however, full details will be shared post-deployment. The team also began addressing limited search functionality, with plans to expand searchability across fields and add sortable tables. Backend documentation is being finalized for external tool integration, and ongoing discussions aim to improve coordination between teams contributing to GovTool’s rapid development.

Governance in numbers

As we press ahead following Plomin, follow the progress of governance actions on-chain here every week. Since Friday, April 11, 2025: 

• We've advanced from epoch 551 to epoch 552
• Unique delegators increased by 2927 (152,169 -> 155,096)
• The total number of vote delegations increased by 3685 (171,509 -> 175,194)
• Total DRep votes increased by 114 (2128 -> 2242)
• The total number of DRep registrations increased by 10 (1214 -> 1224)
• DReps who have attached metadata increased by 6 (752 -> 758)

To learn how to start using Cardano GovTool, explore the 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. 

Governance tools working group

The working group discussed the evolution of GovTool, including its architecture, funding model, and relationship to other tools in the ecosystem. The group agreed to improve search functionality, link to external tools, and prioritize issues through structured triage and community feedback. A community workshop was proposed to gather UX insights and feature ideas, while bug bounty funding and task grouping were also discussed to streamline the development process. Additional topics included the impact of architectural complexity, funding ownership clarification, and collaboration opportunities with Gimbalabs. A follow-up meeting will define the structure and focus of the proposed workshop.

GovTool is fully open source and maintained by Intersect members. The working group continues to invite community members to participate in discussions and contribute to the development of 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.

Important member resources

• Do you want to catch up with the latest happenings with the Cardano budget, constitution, and hard forks? This page is for you!
• Intersect knowledge base - our frequently updated knowledge base provides granular detail on our internal governance structure, committees and working groups, funding opportunities, and other topics.
• Intersect website - the latest news, roadmap, and more.
• GovTool - take part in testing governance actions on the SanchoNet testnet.
• Intersect events calendar - keep up-to-date with all events Intersect hosts, such as working group and committee meetings, X Spaces, and more.
• Support - Please always use your membership email address and contact Intersect for support with any application errors, login issues, or questions without answers.
• Social: Join our lively community and interact with committees, working groups, and other members on Discord. We are also continually active on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn, 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! 

Finally, we would like to hear more from you about subjects that are important to you. Your ideas and suggestions are crucial to us. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please contact us via email, X, or LinkedIn.