This week’s development update comes slightly later than usual, as the Intersect team has been focused on supporting coordinated communications around the recent mainnet incident. With that work now stabilised, we’re turning back to the busy end-of-month schedule.

Preparations for the Annual Members Meeting on 29 November are well underway, alongside updates across governance, open source, security, and ecosystem activity, including the Bug Bounty Program launch, the Hard Fork Working Group invite, and highlights from the Cardano Summit.

Let’s dive into what’s been happening across Intersect and the wider Cardano community.

The Cardano mainnet experienced a temporary chain partition on November 21, caused by a malformed delegation transaction that exploited a legacy deserialization bug present only in specific recent node versions. While this created a short-lived divergence between a “poisoned” chain and a “healthy” chain, block production continued on both, and no user funds were ever at risk. Engineering teams from across the ecosystem, including Input Output Global, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Intersect, and hundreds of SPOs, collaborated in a coordinated incident response to fast-track patched node releases and stabilise the network. Read the full initial incident report for a complete understanding. 

As stakeholders upgraded to node versions 10.5.2 and 10.5.3, the healthy chain rapidly gained density, leading to full network convergence in approximately 14.5 hours. Intersect established a data reconciliation working group to review and manage any transactions affected by the partition, while exchanges and service providers temporarily paused operations as a standard precaution. The incident also demonstrated the strength of decentralised recovery: SPOs, exchanges, and relay operators independently upgraded their nodes, enabling the healthy chain to outweigh the poisoned chain without any central rollback mechanism.

Given the wave of speculation surrounding the incident, Intersect also published a facts-at-a-glance clarification addressing the most common misunderstandings.

The Intersect Annual Members Meeting (AMM) will take place on 29 November, featuring 12 regional sessions inside the Intersect Virtual Hub, each running from 11:00–17:00 local time. While sessions are organized by region to support time-zone convenience and local engagement, they are not exclusive; members are free to join any regional session that best fits their schedule.

All regional sessions and registration links are available on the official Luma event page. Members are encouraged to register for their respective region in advance.

A short guide to accessing the Virtual Hub can be found here: 

Regional Sessions (all 11:00–17:00 local time):

• Australia (UTC+11)
• Vietnam (UTC+7)
• Sri Lanka & India (UTC+5:30)
• Kenya (UTC+3)
• Central Europe (UTC+1)
• UK, Portugal, Ghana, DRC (UTC+0)
• Brazil & Argentina (UTC–3)
• Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, Guyana (UTC–4)
• US, Canada, Colombia (UTC–5)
• Mexico (UTC–6)
• Tokyo, Japan (UTC+9)
• Singapore & China (UTC+8)

These sessions help ensure global participation and inclusive representation across the Intersect membership ahead of the main AMM.

Member Clay Avatar - Get yours now!

Intersect members can now create their very own Claymate avatar and mint it as an NFT. You can use these avatars in the Intersect Virtual Hub at the AMM! So what are you waiting for? Get creative!!

How to get started:

1. Go to your account in the members area and click “Create your own avatar.”
2. Choose carefully from the available options; once your avatar is created, it can’t be changed.
3. Head to the Badges section to download the image or mint it as an NFT.

We can’t wait to see the avatars you create, and to come together, virtually and in person, to celebrate another great year with the community!

The special election for the vacant seat on the Constitutional Committee is currently underway. For details, check the Intersect knowledge base. 

There is still time to register as a candidate; see the overview in the knowledge base.

Key dates

• Monday, November 24:  Candidate registration closes; campaign week begins
• Monday, December 1:  Voting opens on Ekklesia
• Friday, December 5: Voting closes; results audited
• Monday, December 8: Governance Action submitted on-chain

This election is necessary because one member, the Cardano Atlantic Council, announced their retirement effective November 25th, 2025. To uphold the Cardano constitution and safeguard the protocol, the minimum number of members is set by the protocol parameter committeeMinSize (currently 7). The departure of the Cardano Atlantic council will reduce the membership below the required quorum. Read more here: bit.ly/CCSNAPELEC

This week, our vendor spotlight goes to Go Maestro, who have a project being administered by Intersect: Complete Web3 developer stack. 

Maestro will deliver a comprehensive infrastructure solution that positions Cardano as Bitcoin’s primary smart contract and DeFi execution layer. Leveraging Maestro’s enterprise-grade UXO infrastructure platform, this integration will bridge Bitcoin's substantial liquidity and large user base directly into the Cardano ecosystem.

When we spoke with Marvin Bertim, Gomaestro, the ceo of Go maestro, he had this to say "I vividly recall a time when Cardano had neither smart contracts nor native assets, yet, even from those early days, it possessed an ambitious vision to build a blockchain economy that could bring greater trust, inclusivity, and fairness to our overburdened financial system."

Interviews for the Maintainer Retainer Program (MRP) begin next week, with applications still open for both community projects and developers interested in becoming community maintainers. We’re also pleased to confirm that Mesh SDK and Andamio have been added to the list of eligible projects. Applications will remain open throughout 2026 until the 2025 proposal budget is fully allocated.

Following the Open Source Committee meeting on 11 November, a clarification was issued regarding program scope. The MRP will include participation from both founding project teams and community maintainers, ensuring a balanced model that supports strong open-source practices. This direction, highlighted by Adam Dean during the session, strengthens continuity and governance for participating projects. Full details are available in the OSC meeting minutes.

Intersect launched its new Bug Bounty Program this week, strengthening Cardano’s open-source security through structured, community-driven vulnerability reporting. Developed in alignment with the Paid Open Source Model (POSM), the program provides ethical hackers and security researchers with a formal, responsible disclosure pathway and clear reward guidance, with bounties ranging from USD 1,000 for low-impact issues to USD 20,000 for critical vulnerabilities.

The program covers infrastructure managed or stewarded by Intersect, including validator-adjacent services, public-facing APIs, backend systems, developer tools, and open-source repositories. Each valid report is acknowledged within 24 hours, triaged within 7–14 days, and rewarded within 30 days of validation. Oversight is shared among the Security Council, the Open Source Committee, and the Open Source Office to ensure transparency and reliable turnaround times.

By inviting the community to participate, Intersect is turning security into an open, collaborative practice rooted in Cardano's decentralised values. Full details are available in the Bug Bounty Program announcement.

 

A new Cardano hard fork proposal has been announced, and Intersect is establishing an open Hard Fork Working Group to evaluate its impact, assess ecosystem readiness, and ensure a smooth transition across all affected stakeholders. This group will play a key role in identifying technical, operational, and governance considerations ahead of the upgrade.

Hard Fork Readiness Working Group

We’re inviting ecosystem contributors, developers, integrators, SPOs, partners, and community members with relevant expertise to apply. If you work with infrastructure, tooling, wallets, dApps, or services that may be affected, your input will be especially valuable.

Full details and the application link can be found in the hard fork announcement and the working group invite.

The November Town Hall will be held on 26 November at 12:00 UTC. This session serves as a key pre-AMM touchpoint for the community and will cover several important updates, including the Annual Members Meeting, Cardano Summit Berlin 2025, the ongoing Budget Process, Cardano Hackathon Asia 2025, and India Blockchain Week, as well as committee updates from MCC and OSC. Community members can join the event live via: https://buff.ly/KT1Ots0.


The Cardano Hackathon Asia, hosted by EMURGO in Bangalore, is approaching. This two-day event is designed to accelerate building and talent development within the Indian blockchain ecosystem. Day One, the “Build Day,” will focus on hands-on hacking with workshops, mentorship, and team collaboration. 

At the same time, Day Two, the “Showcase & Talks” day, will feature finalist demos, technical keynotes, panel discussions, and the awards ceremony. Intersect will also be represented at the event, with Abhik Nag, Community Manager, delivering a talk on “How Intersect is Shaping the Future of Governance on Cardano,” highlighting Intersect’s commitment to transparent, community-driven governance and its growing role across the ecosystem.

Enterprise Spotlight: ChainApp-Tech

This week, we explored ChainApp-Tech as a potential engineering partner to support upcoming development initiatives. Their capabilities span serverless architecture, API design, full-stack engineering, and blockchain development, covering DApps, smart contract audits, and decentralized platform design. The team brings 15+ years of engineering experience and a strong portfolio across enterprise systems and modern web stacks. 

While we are still evaluating alignment with Cardano-specific tooling and open-source workflows, their breadth of technical expertise positions them as a promising candidate for future collaborations, particularly across governance tooling, infrastructure support, and ecosystem-facing developer solutions.

Cardano Summit 2025 concluded successfully, bringing together developers, enterprises, community contributors, and ecosystem partners for two days of technical updates, collaboration, and strategic discussions. Intersect’s presence at the event enabled productive engagement across multiple stakeholder groups, including enterprise members, regional communities, and developer teams. 

The booth served as a central hub for conversations on governance, open-source participation, and upcoming initiatives, including the Annual Members Meeting, Cardano Hackathon Asia 2025, and India Blockchain Week.

The Summit demonstrated continued progress across the ecosystem, with teams showcasing live infrastructure, developer tools, and applied use cases. Intersect’s interactions throughout the event reinforced growing interest in governance tooling, membership programs, and the broader 2025–2026 roadmap. Key takeaways will inform upcoming work across the OSO, MCC, and enterprise engagement streams.

A special thanks goes to the Cardano Foundation for organizing and delivering a well-structured global event that continues to provide a valuable platform for knowledge sharing, networking, and ecosystem growth. Their coordination helped ensure that this year’s summit supported meaningful connections across both the technical and community layers of Cardano.

As we close out this year's event, Intersect looks ahead to continued collaboration and deeper engagement opportunities throughout 2026. We are already preparing for the next gathering at Cardano Summit 2026 in Singapore, where we expect even greater developer participation, regional representation, and community-driven progress.

That’s it for this week’s update. Thank you for reading. To learn more about Intersect’s work, explore our Knowledge Base, which provides detailed information on governance structures, committees, and funding. Additionally, visit the Intersect website for the latest news, updates, and roadmap information.

Join the conversation on Discord, and follow us on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn to engage with fellow members, working groups, and the broader community.

Your voice helps shape the future of Cardano governance.