Withdraw 25,400,000 ada for Intersect: Governance coordination and technical ...

This Treasury Withdrawal funds Intersect: Governance coordination and technical stewardship for the Cardano ecosystem.

This Treasury Withdrawal is submitted by Intersect. The content for the following sections; Abstract, Motivation and Rationale have been sourced from the approved proposal submitted by the Vendor as part of the Intersect budget process.

This proposal funds Intersect’s core operating model for June 2026 to June 2027: the Member Based Organization that supports open ecosystem coordination, a reserved capacity to address critical unowned processes, and critically technical stewardship, incident response, and release coordination required to help keep Cardano secure, reliable, and operationally resilient.

This proposal reflects how Intersect has evolved to better match the needs of the ecosystem. Over the past two years, Intersect has matured from a new coordination body into a more focused operational layer for Cardano. That includes supporting committees and working groups, stewarding the core Haskell repositories, coordinating upgrades and incident response, and administering community-approved initiatives through a distinct and more scalable model.

Our proposal is more focused than last year’s. Compared to last year, the overall ask has reduced from $7.875M to $6.35M, while preserving the functions that are most critical to Cardano’s continuity and maturity.

That technical remit should not be underestimated. Intersect has already coordinated two network upgrades, is preparing for a third, and led ecosystem coordination during the November 2025 chain partition incident. As Cardano moves further into decentralized governance, a multi-client future, and the advancements of AI models this function becomes more important, not less.

Funding this proposal means Cardano retains an open coordination layer for governance participation, a mechanism to respond to critical unowned issues, and a technical stewardship function covering release coordination, incident response, repository management, and security initiatives such as bug bounties. Together, these functions provide the operational backbone that helps Cardano evolve with resilience, accountability, and confidence.

Strategic Pillar Alignment

Intersect’s proposal primarily supports the operational infrastructure on the core Cardano Haskell node, governance coordination, and overall long-term resilience of the Cardano ecosystem, while enabling broader ecosystem activity through the committee structures operating within the Member-Based Organization.

Primary alignment

Pillar 1 - Infrastructure & Research Excellence

Intersect contributes to infrastructure resilience through technical coordination activities including coordinating network upgrades across all of Cardano’s environments, incident response, security coordination, repository stewardship, and operational coordination around critical components of the network. These activities support threat detection, response coordination, and recovery processes that help maintain the reliability and security of Cardano’s infrastructure.
This pillar is further supported through collaboration with ecosystem structures such as the Technical Steering Committee and the Open Source Committee, which focus on protocol evolution, security practices, and sustainable open-source development.

Pillar 3 - Governance
A central focus of the proposal is supporting the operational functioning of Cardano’s governance system. Intersect provides a structured environment for collaboration, deliberation, and coordination across the ecosystem, enabling stakeholders to participate in governance processes and develop proposals for the network. This includes governance support through the Civics Committee, facilitation of ecosystem strategy discussions through the Product Committee, and coordination of budgeting processes through the Budget Committee.
Through these activities, Intersect helps maintain and improve the off-chain and on-chain processes required for Cardano’s governance system to function effectively.

Pillar 5 - Ecosystem Sustainability & Resilience
Intersect supports the long-term resilience of the ecosystem through operational functions that ensure continuity, transparency, and responsible implementation of community decisions. This includes the administration of community-approved initiatives, delivery oversight through milestone-based frameworks, technical coordination across the ecosystem, and processes that strengthen operational reliability.
These capabilities help ensure that governance decisions can be translated into effective and accountable implementation across the network.

Secondary alignment

Pillar 2 - Adoption & Utility

Intersect contributes to the developer ecosystem and technical collaboration across Cardano through its technical coordination work and through collaboration with the Open Source Committee.
These activities support developer participation, open-source contribution, and initiatives that strengthen the ecosystem’s ability to attract and retain builders.

Pillar 4 - Community & Ecosystem Growth
Through its Member-Based Organization structure, Intersect supports broad participation across the ecosystem. The organization currently supports thousands of participants across members, committees, and working groups, providing a neutral coordination layer for collaboration, debate, and collective problem-solving across the Cardano community.

Intersect Budget Process

This proposal achieved the required 67% support threshold during the 2026 Intersect Budget Process Hydra Voting phase and has therefore been advanced for on-chain Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action submission in accordance with the approved Budget Process Framework.

Net Change Limit Compliance

The requested amount does not at time of submission, on its own or in aggregate, breach the applicable 350M Net Change Limit covering Epoch 613 to Epoch 713.

In accordance with the guardrail TREASURY-02a, this withdrawal does not exceed the NCL at the moment of submission.

Audit & Oversight

Independent audits and assurance for this proposal will be provided by Appold.

This assurance function is intended to provide the Cardano community with additional confidence that Treasury funds are being used in line with the approved mandate, that reported milestones are supported by appropriate evidence, and that financial controls are operating effectively. Reviews may include deliverable verification, control testing, spend validation, and assessment of milestone evidence where appropriate.

Intersect will continue to operate milestone-based drawdowns, evidence-backed reporting, and transparent disclosures alongside this external assurance process. Where recommendations are identified through audit or assurance reviews, Intersect will seek to implement reasonable improvements to strengthen accountability, efficiency, and public trust.

Prior Treasury Funding Disclosure

Intersect and its committees have received funding from the Cardano Treasury within the past 24 months through previously approved Treasury Withdrawal governance actions.

The following governance actions are relevant to this disclosure:

Budget Summary

Intersect Budget Management Tooling

To administrate treasury funds on-chain, Intersect will utilize the treasury management smart contract framework developed by Sundae Labs. A new instance of these smart contracts has been deployed for 2026, mirroring the contracts from the 2025 budget cycle.

• The 2026 Treasury Reserve Smart Contract stake address: stake1784sdxt6jjennmstphgdu7l7c2scf5d02a6cve2dgn5s2kq5u3j9v
  
• The 2026 Treasury Reserve Smart Contract payment address: addr1x84sdxt6jjennmstphgdu7l7c2scf5d02a6cve2dgn5s2k8tq6vh499n88hqkrwsmealas4psng674m4sej5638fq4vqmxs59w
• The 2026 Project Specific Smart Contract payment address: addr1x9d6k9z6t6fvsetj2djmerargk475lef9gfvshy4rwh4h7jm4v295h5jepjhy5m9hj86x3dtafljj2sjepwf2xa0t0aq048cay

Specifics

Intersect will utilize a single Treasury Reserve Smart Contract (TRSC), with one Project-Specific Smart Contracts (PSSC). Intersect’s management consists of five ‘admin’ and three Intersect ‘leadership’ roles. An Oversight Committee consisting of six external, independent third-party entities will provide checks and balances on Intersect, and safeguard against errors and unilateral control. The administration of both TRSC and PSSC will be managed by Intersect, with external oversight on certain actions from the Oversight Committee.

The Oversight Committee consists of Sundae Labs, Cardano Foundation, Dquadrant, NMKR, Sundial and Eternl. Their role is to independently verify key administrative actions using on-chain logic, ensuring accuracy and consistency without exercising discretion over governance decisions.

For all details on Intersect’s configuration please see the Smart Contract Guide on the knowledgebase.

The high level permissions are as follows:

• TRSC Fund and PSSC Modify
  
  • Two of the five Intersect admins, two of the six trusted entities and one of the three Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Disburse
  
  • Two of five Intersect admins, three of six trusted entities and two of three Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Pause and Resume
  
  • Two of five Intersect admins, and one of three Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Sweep
  
  • One of five Intersect admins, and one of three Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Reorganize
  
  • Two of five Intersect admins and three of six trusted entities must authorize

Processes

Upon enactment of this governance action, funding for this project will be directed into the TRSC’s stake address. All instances of TRSC and PSSC can not be staked with a SPO and are delegated to the auto-abstain predefined DRep. From here funds will be withdrawn into a UTxO remaining at the TRSC payment address.

When the Legal contract is prepared and the vendor is ready, funding for this project will be transferred using the Fund action to the PSSC. All milestones will be outlined within the metadata.

A dashboard is available (treasury.sundae.fi) for the community to audit the TRSC or PSSC and track metrics related to this withdrawn ada as well as being immutably verifiable on chain.