Welcome to Intersect’s Development Update #95! This week, Cardano governance saw two significant milestones: DReps signalled support for the Cardano 2030 Vision framework and ratified an updated Cardano Constitution that comes into force at the next epoch boundary. We also take a look at the latest from the hard fork working group, Intersect's delivery of administered budgeted projects, updates from the civics and open source committees, and the most current governance actions live! Plus more! Let’s dive in!

In 2025, more than 700 community members took part in the first ecosystem-wide effort to define a shared Vision, Mission, and Strategy Framework for where Cardano should be by 2030. This work was led by the Intersect Product Committee under delegated authority and funding approved by DReps as part of the 2025 budget cycle, and was designed to collect, synthesise, and reflect community input rather than prescribe outcomes.

A recent Cardano Info Action asked DReps to signal whether this work is moving in the right direction. The proposal did not seek to mandate a roadmap or enforce adoption. Instead, it served as a checkpoint, validating progress to date and inviting on-chain feedback on where to focus and refine next.

The Info Action received 67.80% Yes votes, representing 3.77 billion ada in voting power. In total, 200 DReps voted Yes, 26 voted No, and 19 abstained. The outcome indicates broad support for the direction and approach taken so far, while reinforcing that the work remains iterative and community-driven.

Further details on the process, rationale, and next steps are available in the published blog post.

A new version of the Cardano Constitution has been ratified on-chain, with 79% of active DRep voting stake voting in favour. The updated Constitution takes effect at the epoch boundary on January 24, after which all new governance actions will be evaluated under the revised constitutional rules.

The Constitution is Cardano’s highest-level governance document, defining the principles, roles, constraints, and compliance requirements governing on-chain decision-making. While governance actions may receive strong voting support, they must also meet constitutional requirements to be considered valid.

The update reflects the continued evolution of Cardano’s decentralised governance framework, following global consultation, the Constitutional Convention, and iterative refinements since initial ratification in early 2025. Key changes clarify how governance actions are structured and assessed, including the removal of Budget Info Actions as constitutionally recognised budgets, clearer requirements for Treasury Withdrawals to be fully self-contained, and stricter standards for referencing immutable off-chain documentation.

Once the updated Constitution takes effect, new governance actions will be evaluated under the revised framework. Existing actions will remain on-chain, but concepts removed from the Constitution will no longer carry constitutional relevance.

Further detail on the ratification outcome, constitutional changes, and their impact on governance actions are available in the published blog post.

The community-led initiative to name the upcoming protocol upgrade after Max van Rossem is seeing significant early momentum. The Info Action has already secured 32% support from active DReps within the first ten days of the voting period. With three weeks remaining before the February 13 deadline, the group is optimistic about reaching a strong consensus for the official naming. To improve alignment and decision-making, the group will be coordinating with Input Output Engineering (IOE) to move future meetings later in the week. This change will allow members more time to review updates from Tuesday’s Release Management meetings before discussions take place.

The protocol scope has now been finalized for the current cycle. As no further feedback was received from the working group or the broader community during the consultation period, the list of proposed changes will be used as the baseline for the upgrade. The definitive list will be within the final node release notes, which, when available, can be found here via the Cardano Node Release repository. 

Stakeholders are encouraged to review these requirements as the focus shifts toward benchmarking and integration. The next Hard Fork Working Group meeting is scheduled for next week. To stay informed about meeting times and access the latest call links, members should subscribe to the official calendar.

How can you view progress across all contracts currently administered by Intersect?

The Cardano treasury / Intersect Treasury Contracts dashboard is the primary interface between Intersect and Vendors, so you can see live contract updates and all previous project updates as Vendors are required to submit evidence each time a milestone is delivered.

We will shortly re-publish material with updated definitions and an explanation of the status and terminology you will find on the dashboard, following recent feedback.

Detailed information on the process Intersect’s administration team undertakes, and smart contracts, is always available via the Intersect knowledge base.   

It is the Vendor’s responsibility to provide regular updates to the community on the progress of their project. While Intersect is not responsible for creating or sharing this information, we actively encourage Vendors to share it with the community and ask for it as part of their milestone review. You can find all the information in the following places:

• Intersect Administered Contracts - Progress reports
• You will find more regular updates on our X account regarding Vendor progress.

Civics Weekly Articles now on X! Civics has launched a fresh new weekly article format on X to share deeper updates on committee work, follow active working groups, and current governance topics across the Cardano ecosystem.

The articles provide:

• Expanded Working Group updates
• Ways for community members to participate
• Links to resources, reports, surveys, full meeting minutes, and upcoming X Spaces
• Ongoing coverage of Civics priorities and governance developments

Community members are encouraged to follow Civics on X, read the weekly articles,  join upcoming spaces and discussions to participate in Cardano governance through Intersect.

Committee Meeting Round-Up

At this week’s Civics Committee meeting, members reviewed election operations, working group updates, and committee operations.

The Vice Chair election was extended until Monday, and the Committee confirmed the merger of the Process and Tooling phases within the Constitutional Amendment Process (CAP) Working Group. 

Governance Education discussions focused on mapping existing materials and identifying gaps, with members asked to contribute to a short survey to support this work.

The Open Source Committee (OSC) has just approved the first Tooling Project, Cicerium. Cicerium is a peer-review document management system, integrated with Ekklesia, designed to assist with Budget proposals for 2026 and beyond. Additionally, the OSC approved numerous pieces of documentation to support milestones advancing to advanced stages across multiple programs within the Paid Open Source Model (POSM).  Did you miss the meeting? You can catch up on the Meeting Minutes in our GitBook, or rewatch the meeting at your convenience on YouTube @osointersectmbo.

As part of the Open Source Office’s operating model, we’ve continued to formalize how incident response functions across the ecosystem. Under the Paid Open Source Model, incident coordination is treated as shared infrastructure rather than an ad hoc or vendor-specific responsibility. To support this, we have onboarded Mike Hornan as a dedicated Security Incident Officer embedded alongside the Open Source Office to strengthen coordination, escalation, and execution during security events. This role reinforces clear decision rights, faster response, and tighter alignment between maintainers, vendors, and governance bodies, ensuring incidents are handled consistently, transparently, and with accountability across the ecosystem.

Developer Advocates

The State of Developer Experience Survey for 2026 launched on Monday, in five languages. If you are a developer, regardless of skill level, please be sure to respond. Stay tuned with the Developer Experience working group, where our Developer Advocates will review and address survey topics in Q2 2026. Take the survey here: English / French / Japanese / Chinese / Portuguese.

January has been quite a busy start for Intersect. Just a reminder of several upcoming touchpoints for our members to get involved.

Our first Intersect Town Hall of the year is happening on January 29, 2026, at 12:00 PM UTC, and will be streamed live on YouTube, X, and LinkedIn. 

Our first community Town Square is taking place on February 17, 2026, with two sessions scheduled: 

• USA & Europe–friendly session at 10:00 AM EST / 3:00 PM UTC
• APAC-friendly session at 10:00 AM UTC / 3:30 PM IST / 7:00 PM JST

Further details and access links will be shared in the coming weeks.

Finally, don’t miss the Intersect Membership & Community Committee (MCC) open office hour happening next week. To ask questions, share feedback, and get the latest MCC updates - Join the X 

Andamio is an Intersect enterprise member focused on strengthening open, transparent, and decentralized collaboration across the Cardano ecosystem. Through its platform, Andamio enables communities, builders, and contributors to coordinate work, fund initiatives, and track progress in a structured and accountable way – helping turn ideas into measurable outcomes. By aligning tooling with governance and participation, Andamio plays a key role in supporting sustainable ecosystem growth and empowering contributors to engage more effectively within Cardano.

On Monday, January 19, two governance actions concluded at the Epoch boundary. 

The Cardano 2030: Vision, Mission, Strategy Framework, and KPIs info action ended with 67.80% of DRep votes in favor. As an info action, this was a signaling exercise and did not require formal ratification.

The Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution v2.4 governance action was ratified, receiving 79.85% support from DReps and 6 of 7 votes from the Constitutional Committee. Because it exceeded both required thresholds, the new Constitution will take effect at the Epoch boundary on January 24.

Full details on the changes from version 1.0 to version 2.4 are available in DiffChecker.

DeltaDeFi: Hydra Trading Infrastructure Budget (₳1,500,000):  This Budget Info Action expires on January 29, and asks the community to signal support for a ₳1,500,000, six-month budget to harden and scale DeltaDeFi into a production-grade, Hydra-based, low-latency order-book exchange focused on ADA and Cardano native tokens. The proposal aims to move the existing beta to a robust trading venue suitable for API traders, market makers, and everyday users, while also delivering a Vision 2030 KPI Measurement Programme consisting of a baseline report, a public dashboard, and a final progress report to make DeFi infrastructure performance measurable against ecosystem goals.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

• Constitutional Committee: 2 out of 7 members have voted constitutional/ No votes recorded 
• DReps: 7.73%% Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional Committee: Approval from four of seven members
• DReps: 50% approval

Net Change Limit (Epoch 613 to Epoch 713): This Net Change Limit info action expires on February 8, and proposes setting a maximum treasury withdrawal cap of 350 million ada for the period from the beginning of Epoch 613 (February 13, 2026) to the conclusion of Epoch 713 (July 3, 2027). Establishing this limit is constitutionally required before any treasury withdrawal actions can be submitted and serves as a guardrail to ensure fiscal discipline, transparency, and compliance with Article IV of the Cardano Constitution.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

• Constitutional Committee: 1 out of seven members have voted constitutional/ No votes recorded 
• DReps: 43.94% Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• DReps: Greater than 50% of active voting stake

Name Protocol Version 11 Hard Fork – van Rossem: This info action expiring on February 13 proposes naming the Protocol Version 11 hard fork the “van Rossem Hard Fork” in memory of Max van Rossem, honoring his significant contributions to Cardano’s governance, constitutional development, and community building. The proposal continues Cardano’s tradition of naming hard forks after impactful contributors whose work helped shape the ecosystem.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

• Constitutional Committee: none of the seven members has voted yet.
• DReps: 31.74% Yes  votes

This is an info action and does not require specific approval thresholds.

Increase Transaction and Block Memory Units (Part 1 of 2): This parameter update governance action expires on February 13, and proposes increasing Plutus script memory unit limits per transaction and per block by 25%, enabling more work to be performed by Plutus scripts within a single block while maintaining network security, performance, and consistency with constitutional guardrails. The change is intended to reduce friction for DApp developers, improve scalability, and increase Plutus throughput with minimal risk. This action represents the first of two linked updates required under the current guardrails.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

• Constitutional Committee: 1 out of seven members have voted constitutional/ No votes recorded 
• DReps: 21.55% Yes votes
• SPOs: 2.41% Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional Committee: Approval from five of seven members
• DReps: 67% approval
• SPOs: Majority approval by active block production stake

We strongly encourage all members to engage with the governance process, whether that is being involved directly through a committee/working group, actively voting, letting your representatives know how you’d like to vote, or simply engaging in discussion! We thank each and every member for their constant drive!

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.