Welcome to Intersect’s Development Update #91! This week saw coordination across governance, infrastructure, and community engagement within the central ecosystem. Midnight Network joined as an Enterprise member, the CC snap election concluded, and the 2025 Annual Member Meeting delivered our first fully virtual, global gathering.

We also advanced work on the upcoming protocol upgrade, published a proposal to extend the Net Change Limit, launched the Chain Partition Incident Analysis Working Group, enacted key treasury smart contracts, and saw substantial progress across Civics and community developer initiatives. Let’s dive into the details!

Midnight Network joins Intersect as an Enterprise Member

Midnight Network, a fourth-generation blockchain bringing rational privacy to Web3, has officially joined Intersect as a new Enterprise-level member. Midnight is set to become the first Cardano partner chain, introducing privacy-enhancing smart contracts, selective disclosure, and predictable operating costs as it approaches the launch of its NIGHT token.

By joining Intersect, Midnight gains early visibility into ecosystem initiatives and dedicated collaboration channels connecting infrastructure providers, tooling teams, and specialist committees. For Intersect members, Midnight brings deep expertise in privacy and compliance-ready design, strengthening technical coordination across Cardano’s governance environment.

This expansion of our Enterprise tier reflects growing confidence in Intersect as the organisational home for Cardano’s decentralised governance. Midnight’s participation enhances ecosystem feedback loops, aligns key infrastructure providers with governance processes, and opens new pathways for collaboration as Cardano moves deeper into the Chang era - More here.

The snap election for the vacant Constitutional Committee seat concluded at 12:00 Noon UTC today, 5 December. At the epoch boundary at 9:45 PM UTC, votes were tallied, and preliminary results indicate Cardano Curia as the leading candidate with 1,786,611,786 ada votes.

The voting window ran from 27 November to 5 December, during which 93 votes were cast, totaling 3,501,690,048 ada delegated to DReps’ preferred candidates.

The next step is a full third-party audit of the voting records performed by DQuadrant, with final results scheduled for release on Monday, 8 December. On the same day, Intersect aims to submit a governance action to update the Constitutional Committee with Cardano Curia’s credentials. This governance action will require approval by both a majority "yes" vote from SPOs and 65% "yes" support from DReps to pass. Once ratified and enacted, the CC will be restored to its full capacity. 

Full voting record and preliminary results can be viewed on Ekklesia
The full list of candidates can be viewed on the CC Snap election Portal
More information can be found on the Intersect Knowledge Base.

Annual Member Meeting 2025: A Global Virtual Pilot

This week, we published a full recap of the 2025 Annual Members’ Meeting (AMM), which for the first time ran as a 23-hour continuous virtual event spanning 12 time zones.

Hosted within an interactive Virtual Hub developed in collaboration with Clay Nation, the AMM brought together members from across the world for committee sessions, breakout discussions, and document reviews. The entire event was livestreamed on YouTube for the full 23 hours, drawing over 200 live views throughout the day.

With six dedicated breakout rooms and a flexible, always-open meeting space, participants were able to move freely between sessions, review the 2025 Report and 2026 Proposal, and contribute feedback that will now shape the final versions of both documents. Over 100 members joined throughout the day, supported by regional meetups in Tokyo, London, Buenos Aires, Sri Lanka, and Nairobi.

As a pilot, the virtual AMM came with expected bugs and learnings. Still, it achieved something important: it created a shared, accessible environment where members across regions could connect, participate, and help guide Intersect’s direction. The Virtual Hub will remain open through the members’ area and will continue evolving into a permanent space for gatherings, streamed town halls, and committee interactions.

The AMM also included a community challenge inside the Hub, with seven members completing all tasks to win a limited-edition Intersect T-shirt:
@Sages_and_Pages, @iamwilco, @888Kevin, @jonahkoch, @HephyPool, @Akheelfouze, @NicolasC3rny.



Winners should watch for an email with instructions on how to claim your T-shirt!

This year’s AMM establishes a strong foundation for future virtual events and marks a significant step forward in how we bring our global membership together.

We want to thank everyone who participated in the physical events in the run-up to the AMM and during the event itself. We’d also like to remind everyone who attended the AMM to visit the Members Area. Next week, we’ll be issuing special attendance badges to recognise your participation. Make sure to check in so you don’t miss yours!

Intersect has been informed of a brief proposal for the next Cardano mainnet upgrade. It will host and facilitate the Hard Fork Working Group (HFWG) to coordinate and navigate ecosystem feedback and potential readiness before formal Cardano governance actions are raised for broader community consensus and approval. In essence, the working group follows much of the same processes and purpose as it did for the Chang and Plomin hard forks not so long ago.

The hard fork working group has been formed and will meet fortnightly initially to discuss and coordinate matters related to the proposed hard fork.

This is an open Intersect working group, and anyone is welcome to join. A successful mainnet upgrade requires more than just Intersect members; it requires a whole ecosystem. The first meeting was held on December 2, and the next session will be on December 16, 2025.

Proposed intra-era upgrade to protocol version 11

Cardano's following protocol upgrade proposal outlines an Intra-Era hard fork to Protocol Version 11, introducing targeted improvements across Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node-level security without changing Transaction shape or transitioning to a new ledger era. 

These refinements represent the latest round of treasury-funded development nearing completion, and the ecosystem is now invited to assess, discuss, and contribute feedback as Intersect convenes the Hard Fork Working Group to coordinate readiness and ensure broad alignment.

More details on the upcoming changes can be found at Proposed Intra-Era Upgrade Fork to Protocol Version 11.

Net Change Limit Extension Proposal Published

This week, a new blog post was released outlining a proposed short-term extension to Cardano’s current Net Change Limit (NCL). This treasury guardrail caps total ada withdrawals over a defined period.

The current NCL is set to expire at the end of epoch 604 in early January. A new proposal from several Constitutional Committee members recommends extending it to epoch 612, ensuring continuity during a period of high governance activity, including the Critical Integrations Budget Info Action and the update to restore the minimum committee size.

Alongside the extension, committees are now preparing guidance for a new 2026/27 NCL that better aligns with expected treasury inflows and the ecosystem’s strategic goals. This will be informed by upcoming work on the Cardano Vision 2030 framework, which aims to introduce ecosystem-level KPIs to support long-term decision-making.

DReps are encouraged to review and vote on the extension proposal, helping maintain predictable, sustainable treasury management as the community works toward a new long-term NCL in early 2026 - More here.

Following November’s chain partition incident, Intersect’s Technical Steering Committee and Security Council have formally authorised the creation of the Chain Partition Incident Analysis Working Group.

The group first convened on 26 November, evolving directly from the incident response “War Room” and bringing together experts from across the ecosystem, including Input Output, the Cardano Foundation, Intersect, and community specialists.

Its remit is clear: produce a factual, transparent incident report outlining what happened, why it happened, and recommendations for future resilience. The group will not assign blame or speculate on culpability, but instead establish an accurate account of the event to support public confidence in Cardano.

A draft charter is now being finalised, and as of 1 December, the group has committed to releasing an initial version of the incident report by 19 December. Weekly communications will provide progress updates, and all meeting recordings and working materials will be made accessible through the group’s GitBook to ensure complete transparency.

Members of the community who wish to contribute are invited to contact: technical-steering-committee@intersectmbo.org

This week, almost all Input Output Global (IO) related treasury smart contracts were enacted on-chain, and you can now view them on the  Smart Contract Treasury Dashboard. The IO teams are working quickly to upload all milestone evidence demonstrating that the contracted work has been delivered. Delivery Assurance has been working closely with the IO teams to ensure all milestone evidence was captured off-chain in advance, so that once each smart contract was enacted, the Milestone Acceptance Forms could be uploaded retrospectively without delay.

For more information, you can read the November Milestone Progress Report that was published this week.

The committee opened with a status check on the off-chain phase of the Constitutional Committee snap election, which closed today. Members agreed to give the final day of off-chain DRep voting additional visibility before attention shifts to the on-chain governance action.

Governance Health Working Group: KPI report

The Governance Health Working Group completed its KPI report, consolidating months of research and community input into indicators across six areas. Civics members endorsed the report in principle and will carry out a final review ahead of publication on 11 December. The committee also highlighted the need to move from what we measure to how we measure it, establishing shared standards and example queries to ensure consistent reporting across explorers and tooling teams.

CAP Working Group: Phase 1 requirements approved

The Constitutional Amendment Process Working Group delivered its Phase 1 requirements document, outlining what the amendment process must support and the principles guiding it. Civics approved the milestone, enabling the group to proceed to Phase 2: designing the amendment process. This keeps the CAP timeline on track.

Virtual AMM: new engagement opportunities

Civics reflected on the first virtual Annual Members’ Meeting in the Interverse. Despite early technical issues, the recorded Civics presentation played smoothly in the Virtual Hub. It sparked new interest in committee work, with additional participants joining the CAP and Gov Health Working Groups. Members see the Hub as a space for explainers, informal meet-ups, Q&A sessions, and creative formats for governance education.

Constitution discussion

The committee held an initial discussion on constitutional authority, accountability, and governance in a permissionless ecosystem. Members agreed to continue the conversation in the next open session inside the Virtual Hub.

Follow us on X for ongoing updates, including next Thursday’s Civics X Space on the CC snap election and the transition to the on-chain phase.

Our Developer Advocates are working within the community. Check out some more from recent local events, as well as an upcoming mentorship opportunity. 

The Launching Contributors Workshop, hosted by Dan Baruka, took place on November 19-20, 2025, to onboard new developers into the Cardano open-source ecosystem. The bilingual event included an English Day 1 session on ecosystem foundations, Git/GitHub workflows, repository navigation, and setup, followed by a French Day 2 focused on practical contributions and live coding challenges for submitting pull requests. Attracting over 102 attendees via Google Meet, it fostered mentor-led engagement and inclusivity.

The Introduction to Cardano physical event, organized by Uche Obasi, was successfully held in Enugu, Nigeria. This event brought together blockchain enthusiasts, students, developers, and professionals interested in learning about the Cardano ecosystem. The session aimed to introduce the fundamentals of Cardano, its unique architecture, real-world applications, and opportunities within the ecosystem. The event had over 25 attendees. The event helped raise awareness about Cardano in the South-East region and motivated several attendees to explore further learning paths, developer tools, and community involvement.

Advocates Harun Mwangi and Emmanuel Titi were formally invited to facilitate training and mentorship for the hackathon applicants at the Cardano Africa Tech Summit(CATS). This mentorship program runs every Thursday evening until February, leading up to the summit.

CATS will be organized by Blockchain Centre NBO, an initiative of WADA and 2lovelaces that aims to build and grow a blockchain community in Nairobi. CATS will be held in February. Among the events planned for the summit is the CATS Hackathon.

Developer advocates will serve as mentors during weekly sessions at the Blockchain Centre NBO, answering questions and helping applicants understand the course content. They will also guide applicants in preparing for the hackathon and learning the tools needed to build their projects.

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.