Welcome to Intersect’s update #130

Access is the thread running through this one. From Cardano Native Tokens heading to Fireblocks, the Civics Committee's three years of work now more findable, a CAP Portal with wallet connect and the 2026 Board Election closes, with results due on Monday.

Contributors: Larisa Mcfarlane, Ian Hartwell, Abhik Nag, Simo S, Bosko M

Latest on Cardano upgrades

Node releases

For SPOs and node operators, the priority remains with updating to Node version 11.1.2, while Dijkstra integration continues. Cardano Node 11.1.2 was released on September 17, as an essential fix for an issue discovered on testnet. Downstream tooling teams should begin preparing for 11.2: it is expected to include most of the Dijkstra feature set, including the new block format and Plutus V4 context, but not Leios. While 11.2 is not a hard fork-ready release, it represents an important point for early impact assessment and integration work, so tooling teams should use the upcoming major release notes and Dijkstra scope documentation to identify core semantic changes, breaking APIs, and new features relevant to their products.

Dijkstra upgrade readiness

For wallet teams, particularly hardware wallet providers, preparation for Leios should begin around the BLS key changes required for stake pool registration, with the Hard Fork Working Group establishing direct liaison with vendors to reduce the risk of wallet support becoming a critical-path dependency. Protocol and governance contributors also have substantial work ahead: the Parameter Committee has begun assessing the updated Dijkstra parameters, with current estimates indicating around 100 new Dijkstra guardrails and approximately 50 additional ones for Peras. The Amaru node team has already offered to participate in testing and validating guardrails.

Node diversity

For alternative node teams and other infrastructure builders, the emphasis is increasingly on conformance and shared readiness rather than implementation against the Haskell node alone. Haskell and Dingo are already producing Mainnet blocks, while Amaru and Gerolamo are progressing toward Mainnet block production; conformance across implementations will be a central topic at the November Node Diversity Workshop. Across all ecosystem teams, the request is increasingly the same: review the documented Dijkstra impact relevant to your component, identify missing dependencies or risks, and contribute them through the shared dependency, risk, and scope-review processes early enough for them to be addressed before hard fork readiness becomes time-critical.

Civics Committee, Committee Pages refresh!

Until recently, the Civics committee section of the knowledge base was mostly meeting minutes. Everything the committee had done was in there somewhere, but you had to dig for it. We’ve given these pages a touch up, so now they now open on a front page that shows what the committee is working on at the moment and what it has delivered since its first meeting in October 2023.

Completed Committee objectives each have a page of their own now, rather than a line in a transcript somewhere: the reduction of the Constitutional Committee to five seats, the constitution consultation that ran in more than fifty countries, the governance health reporting, the education work, the CIP endorsements, and the 2026 Constitutional Committee election. Where a page states something, it links to the meeting where it was decided, so you can check it against the record. A few things are there that were never published before, including a guide for anyone thinking of standing for the Constitutional Committee, a record of everyone who has served on the committee, and a report on the parts of the Constitution the community has not finished yet.

None of this changes what the committee does. It only changes how you can access it.

Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAP) updates

We wanted to focus on something simple this week: how to take part, because the process works better when people show up.

A CAP, or Constitutional Amendment Proposal, is how anyone can propose a change to the Cardano Constitution or raise an issue for the community to work through. It is the place where these ideas are discussed in the open, long before anything reaches an on-chain vote. That early discussion is where proposals get shaped and improved, and it is open to everyone, not just the authors.

You don’t need to be a developer or a governance expert to be useful here. If you can read a proposal and point out where it is unclear, where it might have knock-on effects, or simply whether you agree, that’s valuable input. Some of the best improvements to live proposals come from a single well-placed comment.

Taking part is designed to be easy. Go to cap.intersectmbo.org and connect any Cardano wallet. No ada needed, so you can make a fresh wallet just for this if you like. From there you can read the live proposals and the issue statements, leave a comment on anything you have a view on, ask questions, or submit a proposal of your own. You can also join the CAP review call to follow the discussion live.

Proposals have a recommended review period, so there’s always a window where your input can change the outcome. The process is still young, which is exactly why now is a good time to get involved. The tone and the habits we set early are likely the ones that stick.

If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, consider this your nudge. Come and leave your first comment.

Where things stand today: Seven proposals are in consultation, none yet at the ready stage.
CAP-3, Evolving the Net Change Limit into a Strategic Spending Plan, is still the busiest thread on the portal with eighteen comments and new activity today.

The next CAP review session is on October 1 at 2PM UTC. Sign up on the Intersect Luma calendar.

Get started: head to cap.intersectmbo.org

Live governance actions*

Nothing closed this week, but three actions are live with the minPoolCost moving the most, (6.39% to 11.91%) from last week to this, of the required 67% by October 11.

*data from 2026-09-25 at 11:30 UTC
** SPO votes on Info Actions are not mandatory, however this action requests SPO inputFollow vote progress with your favorite Cardano explorers:

GovTool | Tempo | Cexplorer | AdaStat | CardanoScan | CGov | Civitas

Connecting with the community

The Cardano Foundation confirmed the week's biggest news - Cardano NativeTokens will be supported on Fireblocks, so every exchange, bank and fintech already using it can custody, send and receive them with the same controls they apply to everything else. It was a true community effort with Emurgo, the Pentad and Iagon all part of helping to get it there. For members building token products, institutional custody stops being the blocker.

Closer to home, the debate about how Cardano spends its treasury kept moving with a live session on September 21 discussing the case for reform, which is the same question CAP-3 is asking on the CAP Portal, (its busiest thread). Related work is heading for a CIP: at the Governance Technical Workshop hosted by Fergie Miller of IOG, Paolo Penna presented a Governance Incentive Model funded by the Cardano Treasury this year, with a paper to follow.

And, putting a smile on community faces, JamOnBread relaunched its marketplace on September 22 after a full rebuild, aimed at Cardano traders, collectors and projects. Welcome back!

Intersect Board Elections 2026 – Voting Closed

Voting in the 2026 Intersect Board Elections officially closed today at 12:00 UTC.

139 members cast a vote to help elect two member-elected Directors to the Intersect Board. The results now go to an independent third-party audit before the final results are confirmed and published on Monday, September 28 at 12:00 UTC.

Thank you to everyone who voted, and to the 11 candidates who stood for the 2 seats. Each of them attended X spaces, took the podium in the Virtual Hub, and campaigned through their own networks, bringing their different backgrounds and skills to the same short list.

Nine of them won't be elected this term, but two more seats open next year, and we hope to see them stand again.

Results on Monday.

139 votes is a number worth sitting with. Intersect has many members, and member-led governance means something when members turn up. This is a question for us about how we make voting feel worth the ten minutes it takes - If you didn’t vote this time, we would genuinely like to know why.

Tell us at: members@intersectmbo.org.

Membership area updates - The Virtual Hub keeps growing

The Virtual Hub has had a busy month, and the candidate sessions during the Intersect Board Elections gave it a real workout.
New this month: mini games are now dotted around the space, chess among them, and members who have created their own Clay avatar can now appear in the Hub as their clay character, which means your identity in there is yours rather than a default.

What the Hub already does, in case you have not been in:

Open 24 hours a day, every day, straight from the Member Area

• Proximity voice chat, so side conversations happen naturally, meaning you can drift between groups without leaving the room
• A main stage with a podium, big screen presenting for slides and video, and the ability to watch videos together
• Private breakout rooms for smaller sessions
• Speaker opportunities on the podium at community sessions

Members can book the space for their own events, and the Intersect team will help you run it. Working group session, workshop, community meetup, office hours, all of it works better in a room than in a thread.

Email: members@intersectmbo.org and we can help set it up with you.

Enterprise member spotlight: Serviceplan Group.

This week, we're spotlighting Intersect Enterprise Member Serviceplan Group.

Serviceplan Group describes its approach as bringing together integrated expertise across creative and content, media and data, digital experience and technology, and consulting and implementation.

According to Serviceplan Group, its Houses of Communication are designed to combine these different disciplines in one integrated model, providing solutions tailored to the individual needs of brands and organizations.

The group brings together specialist agencies including Serviceplan, focused on communication and content; Mediaplus, focused on media and data; and Plan.Net, focused on digital experience and technology.

Serviceplan Group has worked closely with Cardano ecosystem project Masumi, in creating Sokosumi - an AI agent marketplace with a specific focus on marketing. This partnership has helped make Masumi one of the top 20 applications on the Cardano network when measured by transaction count over both 30 day and 1 year periods. This is trackable on both the Cardano Transaction Leaderboard and on Masumi’s own Dune dashboard, available following the Pentad integration of Cardano data on the Dune analytics platform. It is particularly relevant given headline news this week with Cardano being added to the official x402 SDK for agentic payments.

Serviceplan describes its Agents as “AI-Coworkers for market research, project management, and strategy – built for companies, start-ups, and solopreneurs”. You can find out more about Serviceplan Agents available on Sokosumi from the official press release and on the dedicated website here.

Serviceplan Group also highlights areas including brand strategy, performance marketing, public relations, social media marketing, artificial intelligence, cultural marketing and sustainability as part of its wider offering.

As part of our Enterprise Member Spotlight series, we're pleased to introduce Serviceplan Group to the wider Intersect community and provide an opportunity for members to learn more about its work across communication, media, data and digital experiences.

🔗 Learn more about Serviceplan Group:
https://www.house-of-communication.com/de/en.html

*Enterprise Member Spotlights are intended to showcase the work and activities of Intersect members. Information about products, services, capabilities and activities is provided by, or based on information published by, the featured member and does not constitute an endorsement by Intersect.

Events

What’s on next week - in brief:

1. September 28 (Mon) · 12:00 UTC · Board Election results published

2. September 28 (Mon) · 12:00 UTC · MCC Open Office Hours, on X Spaces

3. September 30 (Wed) · 11:00 UTC · Q3 Intersect Insight, then Connect in the Virtual Hub

4. September 30 (Wed) · 15:00 UTC · Cardano DRep Monthly Call

5. October 1 (Thu) · 14:00 UTC · CAP review session

Coming up

1. October 6 (Tue) · Node Diversity Celebration Day, Singapore and online 🇸🇬 💻

2. October 7-8 (Wed/Thu) · TOKEN2049 Singapore, Marina Bay Sands 🇸🇬

3. November 12-13 (Wed/Thu) · Node Diversity Workshop, London 🇬🇧

More Details:

MCC Open Office Hours, Monday, September 28, 12:00 UTC, on X Spaces
The Membership and Community Committee's open check-in. Bring questions, feedback, or a community topic you want raised, and hear what the committee is working on. Join here

Watch live: Q3 Intersect Insight, and Intersect Connect: Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 UTC, on YouTube and in the Virtual hub

The quarterly update from Intersect Board members and leadership on Q3, with each committee covering what it delivered and what is coming in Q4. Straight afterwards, Intersect Connect opens in the Virtual Hub for open discussion: the Board Elections and the incoming Board, TOKEN2049, the Dijkstra hard fork, Q4 priorities, and whatever members want to discuss or focus on in the session.

Cardano DRep Monthly Call: Wednesday: September 30, 15:00 UTC, on Luma

Hosted by Tweag by Modus Create and Intersect, on the last Wednesday of every month. Active governance actions, upcoming votes, treasury and budget discussion, tooling, and open Q&A. This month James Medinger joins to give updates from the DRepCouncil, where Cardano governance is discussed, voted on and explained.

Open to anyone interested in governance, whether or not you are a DRep.

Register to receive reminders and updates.

CAP review session: Thursday, October 1, 14:00 UTC

Open to editors, authors, and anyone who wants to follow the live proposals. Sessions run every two weeks, alternating between 7:00 and 14:00 UTC. Sign up on the Intersect Luma calendar

Ecosystem events

Node Diversity Celebration Day: Tuesday, October 6, Singapore and online. The day before TOKEN2049 opens, node implementation teams gather to mark how far implementation diversity has come. Haskell and Dingo are both producing mainnet blocks, with Amaru and Gerolamo working toward it. Open to attend, in person or online.

TOKEN2049 Singapore Wednesday 7 to Thursday 8 October, Marina Bay Sands 🇸🇬

Intersect will be on the Cardano booth! Jack Briggs, Abhik Nag and Fred Tanaka are there from the team, and full details of the Enterprise member merch opportunity are in last week's update.

If you are coming, tell us, so we can make sure the right person is on the stand when you are.

📍 Marina Bay Sands, Singapore | 🗓️ Oct 7-8 2026 | 🤝 Find Intersect at the Cardano booth | 🎟️ Get Tickets | ✉️ Coming? Let us know

Node Diversity Workshop: November 12-13, London 🇬🇧

The working session rather than the celebration. Conformance across implementations is the central topic, which is what decides whether multiple node implementations are a strength or a risk when Dijkstra enacts. More details to follow.

One more thing... Happy Birthday Cardano! 🎂

On September 23, 2017 at 17:44:51 UTC the Cardano blockchain was born with the Genesis block. This week marked the ninth anniversary of the origin of the Cardano blockchain. A history that has witnessed the Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire eras of development, with the future now shaped by ada holders themselves in the era of on-chain governance.

Cardano in numbers:

• Circulating supply: 38.89 billion ada (86.43%)
• Staked supply: 21.29 billion ada (57.8%)
• Treasury: 11.36 billion ada
• Over 124 million transactions
• Almost 14 million blocks
• 2,672 registered Stake Pools with stake
• 328 registered and active DReps
• 158 on-chain governance actions
• 9 major hard forks (Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Vasil, Valentine, Chang, Plomin, van Rossem)
• 5 eras (Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, Voltaire)
• 1 Cardano Community

View this great video created to mark this milestone on the official Cardano Community X account. See you at 10 years!

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

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