Intersect Development Update #62 - May 16

18 min

Welcome to Intersect’s Development Update #62. This week, Intersect submitted its ₳275m Budget Info Action to the chain, marking a significant milestone. Committee election results are in, with 36 new members elected across eight committees, and an independent audit confirming the results! Meanwhile, candidate registration remains open for the Constitutional Committee until May 31; there’s still time to get involved!

Making sense of the ₳275m Budget Info Action

Over the past month (early April through early May), Intersect shepherded a community-driven process culminating in a ₳275,269,340 Budget Info Action for Cardano. This twelve-month funding envelope isn’t a standalone ask - it reflects input from 39 distinct proposals, after being whittled down from 194. Over ₳3.8bn in live stake participated, and the explicit endorsement of 40 proposals that each secured more than 50% approval from delegated representatives (DReps). Of the 40 successful proposals, 39 specified Intersect as their Administrator, making up the total Budget Info Action. 

At its core, this submission demonstrates the community’s priorities across Cardano’s ecosystem. Rather than a “wishlist,” it is a distilled outcome. DReps have already signaled each line item via the Ekklesia platform and aligned it against the roadmap approved earlier this year.

The ₳275m would fuel six strategic pillars over the next year if ratified on-chain. Funds will:

  • Sustain core development and research (Cardano Haskell node, new governance features, research and development aligned to the Cardano Vision roadmap planning)
  • Bolster Catalyst to further drive innovation in treasury allocation
  • Enhance open-source tooling (Lucid, PyCardano, OpShin, Blockfrost, MLabs projects)
  • Strengthen governance infrastructure (DRep tools, quadratic-voting frameworks, structured community feedback)
  • Amplify ecosystem visibility (2025 Cardano Summit, global exhibitions, regional events, foundational marketing)
  • Advanced emerging technologies (rollups, zero-knowledge, next-gen wallets, bridges for scalability/interoperability)

As the designated Administrator for these 39 proposals, Intersect’s responsibilities will include completing due diligence, negotiating agreements where needed, and providing oversight by reporting progress in a new smart contract framework currently in development by Sundae Labs. 

Xerberus is developing a public dashboard displaying real-time delivery status, spending, and performance metrics to inform the community. You can also explore a detailed FAQ covering funding mechanics, risk management, and process milestones.

If approved, Treasury Withdrawals are the next step

The Budget Info Action currently being considered by the community outlines an aggregate allocation that spans more than 12 months. However, if approved, it will not result in any immediate movement of funds. 

Treasury Withdrawals must follow to enable disbursements, and each withdrawal must meet a higher approval threshold of over 67% of active delegated DRep stake. These withdrawals must remain within the approved and active Net Change Limit (NCL) at submission and be tied to appropriate due diligence, contracts, and oversight mechanisms.

We're currently evaluating multiple options for how best to structure Treasury Withdrawals to balance clarity and overhead, delivery assurance for vendors, and governance integrity. One approach under consideration is to limit initial Treasury Withdrawals to the portion of the budget required for 2025 delivery, which may represent 60-65% of the total currently in the Budget Info Action, with the remaining funding to be requested at a later point in the year. We're also assessing how to introduce an appropriate level of granularity that gives DReps more discretion over what projects to approve and fund, aligned to the signals already provided.

Vote!

Review the full proposal and vote by heading to Gov.Tools. For an in-depth explanation of how this ₳275m package was assembled, see our blog post “Making Sense of the ₳275m Budget Info Action.”

2025 Committee Elections – Results & Reflections

The first committee elections of 2025 are now complete, with 522 members (27% of eligible voters) casting 11,839 ballots to select 36 members across eight Intersect committees. A heartfelt thank you to all candidates and voters who helped make this a success.

Intersect hosted 16 X Spaces during the election period to support informed participation, providing a forum for candidates to present their views and for voters to engage directly. The strong turnout highlights growing momentum behind Cardano’s governance journey and the collective commitment to strengthening decentralized structures.

Welcoming New Members

Congratulations to the newly elected committee members. Each has received onboarding materials and a welcome message from Intersect on behalf of the community. You can view the complete list of elected members on our knowledge base and our blog ‘Intersect committee election results’.

The official final numbers are as follows: 

Independent Audit

To ensure trust and transparency, Intersect commissioned an independent audit of the election results by Enterprise Member, Dquadrant, a Netherlands-based Web3 and enterprise software firm active in the Cardano ecosystem since 2017. Dquadrant fully reconciled valid ballots and confirmed that vote counts aligned with Intersect’s internal records. The results were officially announced on May 12.

Thanking Our Outgoing Members

We also extend our deepest gratitude to the outgoing committee members, who helped lay the foundation for Cardano’s evolving governance. These individuals offered strategic guidance, built working group infrastructure, and helped shape committee operations during a pivotal stage of decentralization.

Alexandre Maaza, Ben Hart, Danielle Stanko (Secretary), Eystein Magnus Hansen, Vaibhav S. (Gintama), J.J. Siler, Jose de Gamboa, Katarina Ciric, Martin Marinov, Mercy Fordwoo, Michael Madoff, Mike Ward, Moritz Angermann, Nicholas Clarke, Nicolas Henin, Nori Nishigaya, Robin Boening, Romain Pellerin, Saman Farr, Sandip Pandey, Shunsuke Murasaki, Simon Fleck, Thiago Nunes, Yuki Oishi, and Zachary Soesbee.

Their contributions have been invaluable, and we are grateful for their service.

Looking Ahead

Intersect thanks everyone who stood for election, participated in debates, and cast votes. This election cycle marks a significant milestone in Cardano’s governance evolution, and with experience gained, the next round, set for Q4 2025, promises to be even stronger.

Let’s keep the momentum going.

Constitutional Committee Election Update

Candidate registration for Cardano’s Constitutional Committee (CC) is still open until noon UTC on May 31, 2025.

Any ada holder can declare their candidacy by visiting the election portal, connecting their wallet, and completing the application. 

As a reminder, the CC safeguards and interprets the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution, voting on whether or not a governance action adheres to the Constitution. Interim CC members are also welcome to stand again, but every new or incumbent candidate must secure sufficient votes to win a seat.

Upcoming Milestones

  • May 31, noon UTC: Candidate registration closes
  • June 5–30: Community voting period
  • July 5: Audited results announced
  • September 1: The newly elected Constitutional Committee is ratified

Support & Engagement
We’ll soon publish the schedule for dedicated X Spaces, where candidates can present their platforms and field questions from the community. In the meantime, register at https://lu.ma/ccelection to join our twice-weekly AMAs with the election working group.

For full eligibility, seat allocation, and registration details, see the applicant guide on the election portal. If you care about Cardano’s future, now is the moment to step forward!

The Intersect Steering Committee has voted for Intersect, as an organization, not to stand for re-election to the Constitutional Committee. This allows the community to take complete charge of the CC. While Intersect still intends to facilitate the CC if requested, this decision underscores a shift towards greater community leadership.

Membership and community

We launched our first paid memberships here at Intersect in May last year. Some of you will be asked to renew and join us for another year of advancing Cardano together.

If you haven’t already, please login to the Members Area and check your status.

We’ve got some exciting new benefits this year, so don’t miss out. Thank you if you’ve already renewed!

Our membership numbers to date are:

Enterprise membership spotlight: Summon Platform

We’re thrilled to shine this week’s Enterprise Member Spotlight on Summon Platform — a no-code DAO creation and governance suite purpose-built for Cardano.

Summon empowers communities to launch and manage their DAOs with ease. With robust features like multi-signature wallets, fee-free token voting, and optional on-chain governance via the Agora smart contract module, Summon offers an intuitive and powerful toolkit to unlock decentralized coordination.

Their off-chain Snapshot-style voting ensures efficient and inclusive decisions, while DeFi integrations allow DAOs to manage treasuries and staking activities confidently. Summon’s work is helping to lower participation barriers in on-chain governance and aligns perfectly with Intersect’s mission to support a decentralized, governed future for Cardano.

Built by the Summon Association (Switzerland) and developed by Summon Labs LLC (USA), their foundation and vision are solid. The native $SUMMON token fuels community governance, aligning platform development with user interests.

We’re proud to have Summon as an Enterprise Member at Intersect and look forward to continuing to build the future of governance together.

Community hubs

Last week, our Japan community hub held its first SPO study group meeting, with 36 attendees, titled ‘What Are Validators Supporting the Future of Web3? Learning Node Operation and Blockchain Technology through Cardano. You can read more about the event on the Japan hub’s X page here.

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

Japan hub

  • X Space is to be held on May 16 at 12:00 UTC. The link to join is here.

Africa hub, led by WADA

  • The WADA hub meeting will be held on May 16 at 17:00 UTC. The link to join is here.

North America hub, led by AWEN

Our community hubs have also been supporting the New Dawn campaign, with some hubs sharing content on X:

Delivery assurance

Lido Nation completed their Governance Action Outcomes grant. You can find links to their work here:

Across other contracts, the following work has recently been completed:

  • Bloxico completed its maintenance for the CC Portal in April.
  • Byron completed the GovTool Pillar maintenance for April. 
  • DQuadrant completed the GovTool Testing maintenance for April. 
  • WeDeliver IT completed the GovTool Proposal Discussion Pillar maintenance for April. 

You can find further information on our Knowledge Base.

Governance tooling

GovTool continues to evolve with recent updates, including bug fixes related to validation hashes, improvements in metadata handling, and backend support for features like co-sponsor integration and Sync AI. These enhancements streamline proposal submissions, improve discoverability, and support crowdfunding efforts. Builders are currently documenting features and preparing potential handover strategies.

Governance in numbers

Since Friday, May 9, 2025: 

  • We've advanced from epoch 556 to epoch 558
  • Unique delegators increased by 5954 (165,431 -> 171,385)
  • The total number of vote delegations increased by 7168 (188,236 -> 195,404)
  • Total DRep votes increased by 247 (2817 -> 3064)
  • The total number of DRep registrations increased by 12 (1267 -> 1279)
  • DReps who have attached metadata increased by 1 (800 -> 801)

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 held two intense strategy sessions focused on the viability, funding, and long-term roadmap of GovTool. With its recent funding proposal failing to gain traction, participants debated the merits of decentralizing governance tooling, forming community-maintained alternatives, and establishing interoperability standards and certifications. While some proposed winding down or reducing GovTool's scope, others argued for its critical role in maintaining inclusive governance participation. Ideas included launching a limited-term info action, leveraging community workshops for technical onboarding, and repackaging the tool as infrastructure to be sustained collectively. The sessions underscored the urgency of clearer communication, broader community engagement, and reprioritization of governance tooling within Intersect’s roadmap.

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.