With 2026 now underway, Cardano’s governance framework is no longer theoretical. The ecosystem enters the year with its foundations firmly in place and a clear shift toward execution, coordination, and delivery. What was designed and debated in earlier phases is now being put into practice across real decisions, budgets, and technical change.

For Intersect, this moment reinforces a clear responsibility: to support Cardano’s community as decentralized governance scales, complexity increases, and expectations around reliability and transparency continue to rise. The year ahead builds directly on the lessons and momentum of 2025, with a continued focus on clarity, consistency, and service to members.

This post sets the context for the year ahead, explains where Intersect fits within Cardano’s governance model, reflects on the progress made in 2025, and outlines the goals guiding coordination and delivery throughout 2026.

Where Intersect fits in Cardano’s governance

Cardano’s governance is grounded in its Constitution, which establishes that all ada holders are entitled to participate in decision-making, that the ecosystem must be governed fairly and impartially, and that the community shares responsibility for maintaining the integrity and long-term sustainability of the network. The Constitution also makes clear that off-chain governance processes are necessary to give effect to these principles and to ensure broad awareness, debate, and participation.

While on-chain voting and the Constitution provide the formal structure for governance, they are not sufficient on their own. Decentralized decision-making at a global scale requires a third element to function effectively: voluntary, community-aligned coordination.

Intersect exists to support this need

As governance moved from a small number of organizations to the broader Cardano community, it became clear that many critical processes require shared standards, continuity, and structured collaboration. Budgeting, roadmap development, constitutional refinement, hard fork coordination, and open-source contributions all depend on distributed effort, but they also require alignment to produce reliable outcomes.

Intersect provides an impartial coordination layer for these processes. It does not govern on behalf of the community, nor does it act as a gatekeeper. Instead, it helps create shared understanding, reduce fragmentation, and channel member expertise toward tangible outcomes, while operating under an explicit community mandate and transparency. In doing so, Intersect helps operationalize Cardano’s constitutional principles off-chain, enabling the community to govern effectively rather than centrally.

Intersect’s three-year vision

Over the next three years, Intersect aims to establish itself as a trusted coordination layer for Cardano, supporting the ecosystem as decentralized governance continues to mature.

In this future state, critical Cardano processes are standardised, clearly coordinated, open to participation, and supported by a strong community mandate. This includes processes Intersect already supports today, such as budget cycles, long-term vision and annual roadmap development, constitutional refinement, hard fork coordination, and open-source contribution.

Intersect increasingly acts as a trusted coordination point between specialised, member-driven groups, both within and beyond the organization. New and existing members use Intersect to understand how to contribute, where to engage, and how value flows across the ecosystem, whether directly through Intersect or through the organizations it helps coordinate.

Through transparent administration and strong delivery assurance across successive Cardano budgets, Intersect enables effective treasury management while safeguarding community trust.

2025 in review: Intersect and Cardano

2025 marked a defining shift in Cardano’s governance and in Intersect’s role as its member-based organization. As the ecosystem moved into full operational governance, Intersect supported key milestones, including the Plomin upgrade, the submission of the delegate-approved Constitution, and the delivery of Cardano’s first community-led Treasury budget.

Throughout the year, Intersect focused on translating community intent into transparent and accountable action. This included administering an ecosystem-wide budget, coordinating 39 Treasury withdrawals, and establishing smart contract–based payment and delivery assurance frameworks that now underpin future funding rounds.

Intersect also advanced its own governance maturity. Committees became fully elected bodies, the Board transitioned to a member-elected majority, and continued improvements were made across election processes, reward structures, and decision-making frameworks. Participation deepened across working groups, committees, town halls, and in-person events, reinforcing the importance of transparent and inclusive coordination as governance scaled.

The year also demonstrated Cardano’s growing operational resilience. During a temporary chain fork incident, Intersect coordinated the incident response helping maintain stability and alignment. These experiences helped shape the operational foundations and priorities now carrying into 2026.

Members can download and explore a complete summary of the year in the Intersect 2025 Development update report, including reflections in the Letter from the Board.

2026 goals: focused coordination and predictable delivery

In 2026, Intersect’s goals focus on where it provides the most essential value to Cardano: coordinating governance and technical processes, enabling member-led delivery, and acting as a transparent and reliable administrator of community funds.

This includes supporting an evolved standardised 2026 budget cycle while preparing for 2027, coordinating the refinement of Cardano’s long-term strategy and tactical roadmap through committee-led processes, and continuing to administer budget information actions and treasury withdrawals with consistent reporting and delivery assurance.

On the technical side, Intersect will facilitate coordination for critical network upgrades, strengthen collaboration across node implementations, maintain robust incident response and disaster recovery processes, and expand support for open-source contribution and shared standards.

To further strengthen member-led delivery, Intersect will enhance and clarify membership offerings, refresh onboarding pathways, improve governance documentation for committees, working groups, and elections, and maintain a predictable cadence of member events and open coordination sessions. Increased transparency through public roadmaps and quarterly KPIs will support engagement and accountability.

Internally, Intersect will remain lean and focused, strengthening Delivery Assurance, improving milestone verification and risk escalation, and maintaining a clear funding runway aligned to the 2026 budget.

For readers who would like to explore these priorities in more depth, further detail is available in the Intersect purpose, mission, vision, and 2026 goals documentation.

We extend our sincere thanks to all members for your engagement, feedback, and collaboration. Your participation continues to strengthen Cardano’s governance and ensures that Intersect remains an effective, transparent, and responsive organization.