Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Budget - 275M ada Administered by Intersect

On behalf of Intersect and the Cardano Budget Committee, this Budget Info Action proposes a Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Budget of 275,269,340 ada. The period during which this Budget Info Action remains in effect will begin at the close of its voting period and continue for 73 epochs (52 weeks). This budget is an aggregate allocation and following Treasury Withdrawal(s) must be in compliance with an approved and active Net Change Limit, among other conditions. This budget comprises 39 proposals that support maintenance, development, marketing, innovation, and governance initiatives within the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem.

To arrive at this budget, Intersect facilitated a community budget submission process, using live DRep stake to assess and validate support through the Ekklesia platform. More than 3.8B ada in voting stake participated, representing over 70% of actively delegated stake (excluding pre-defined voting options). A total of 194 proposals were submitted as part of Intersect’s coordination efforts for budget socialization. Projects that received over 50% support by stake from participating DReps, and named Intersect as their Administrator, have been included in this Budget Info Action. Of the 194 proposals submitted, 40 met the required support threshold, and 39 of these named Intersect as their Administrator. Any proposals that proceeded directly on-chain outside of this Budget Info Action have been excluded from ours.

All proposals listed below have requested Intersect as their Administrator, who will oversee and administer the use of funds from Cardano Blockchain Treasury withdrawals in accordance with this budget and the requirements of the Cardano Constitution. This includes leveraging blockchain technology such as smart contracts as per Article IV, Section 2 in the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution. Intersect, in our role as an Administrator for the included proposals in this aggregate budget, will - wherever possible and available - utilize a smart contract framework to oversee disbursements including a multi-signature oversight body made up of organizations and auditors, one of which will be Intersect in our role as Administrator.

On March 30, the Cardano community approved the “Defining the Cardano Vision and Roadmap for 2025 and Beyond” Info Action, establishing the foundations for building and anchoring a budget to support its delivery. The budget socialization process - facilitated by Intersect in collaboration with the Cardano community and DRep participation - was designed to be inclusive, with no formal criteria required to take part. It supports the ongoing operation, maintenance, and future development of the Cardano blockchain ecosystem and implementation, administration and maintenance of the decentralized, on-chain governance processes (as outlined in Article IV, Section 1).

This budget represents an aggregate allocation from the Cardano Treasury covering a multi-period timeframe, as defined in the individual proposals included herein. The total amount of ada withdrawn from the Treasury is subject to due diligence requirements in Intersect’s role as an Administrator - including KYC/KYB and sanctions compliance - the satisfaction of contractually negotiated milestones and terms, and remaining within an approved and active Net Change Limit. Each withdrawal must be approved through a separate Treasury Withdrawal governance action.

The proposals included in this budget below reflect those signaled “yes” by DReps during the final temperature check via the polling tool Ekklesia, which concluded at 23:59 UTC on May 5, 2025:

• 96,817,080 ada: 2025 Input Output Engineering Core Development Proposal
• 69,459,000 ada: Catalyst 2025 Proposal by Input Output: Advancing Decentralised Community Innovation Funding & Infrastructure
• 26,848,000 ada: Input Output Research (IOR): Cardano Vision - Work Program 2025
• 15,750,000 ada: A member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem: Intersect
• 12,000,000 ada: Cardano Builder DAO
• 11,070,323 ada: TWEAG’s Proposals for multiple core budget projects for Cardano 2025
• 6,000,000 ada: Cardano Summit 2025 and regional tech events
• 6,000,000 ada: Unveiling the First Unified Global Events Marketing Strategy for Cardano
• 5,885,000 ada: OSC Budget Proposal - Paid Open Source Model for Sustainable Development
• 4,000,000 ada: Expanding Stablecoin / Cardano Native Asset Support / Fiat Ramps
• 3,126,000 ada: Ecosystem Exchange Listing and Market Making service pool
• 3,000,000 ada: High-yield RWA Asset for Cardano : Tokenized Real Estate
• 2,162,096 ada: Midgard - Optimistic Rollups
• 1,500,000 ada: Complement Catalyst: Extended Quadratic Funding—Zero Operational Costs
• 1,300,000 ada: Blockfrost Platform community budget proposal
• 1,161,000 ada: zkFold ZK Rollup
• 1,119,333 ada: Cardano Ecosystem Pavilions at Exhibitions
• 750,000 ada: Cardano Product Committee: Community-driven 2030 Cardano Vision and 2026 roadmap insights collection via workshops and structured product research
• 700,000 ada: ZK Bridge
• 657,692 ada: Scalus - DApps Development Platform
• 605,000 ada: A free Native Asset CDN for Cardano Developers
• 600,000 ada: Complete Web3 developer stack to make Cardano the smart contract layer for Bitcoin
• 592,780 ada: Beyond Minimum Viable Governance: Iteratively Improving on Cardano Voltaire
• 583,000 ada: Eternl Maintenance
• 578,571 ada: Gerolamo - cardano node in typescript
• 424,800 ada: Hardware Wallets Maintenance
• 314,800 ada: PyCardano
• 300,000 ada: Ledger App Rewrite
• 266,667 ada: Cexplorer.io – Developer-Focused Blockchain Explorer for Cardano
• 243,478 ada: MLabs Core Tool Maintenance & Enhancement: Plutarch
• 220,914 ada: Dolos: Sustaining a Lightweight Cardano Data Node
• 220,914 ada: Pallas: Sustaining Critical Rust Tooling for Cardano
• 220,914 ada: UTxO RPC: Sustaining Cardano Blockchain Integration
• 212,000 ada: AdaStat.net Cardano blockchain explorer
• 199,911 ada: OpShin - Python Smart Contracts for Cardano
• 130,903 ada: Lucid Evolution Maintenance
• 104,347 ada: MLabs Research towards Tooling for Elliptical Curves - GrumpleStiltSkin
• 99,600 ada: BloxBean Java Tools Maintenance and Enhancement
• 45,217 ada: MLabs Core Tool Maintenance & Enhancement: Cardano.nix

Total allocation: The budget request that Intersect will administer is not to exceed 275,269,340 ada (275,269,340,000,000 lovelace), subject to the associated Treasury Withdrawals remaining within an approved and active Net Change Limit. These Treasury Withdrawals must be approved through Treasury Withdrawal governance actions.

This Budget Info Action formalizes the outcome of a community-driven budget process, facilitated by Intersect and based on live DRep support as signaled through the Ekklesia platform. Each proposal listed here received over 50% support by voting stake from participating DReps and requested Intersect as Administrator. This action seeks approval to recognize and authorize the aggregate treasury allocation in alignment with the outcomes from our budget process, and to fuel the development and implementation of the Cardano vision and roadmap.

This rationale underpins the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Budget Info Action - an aggregate allocation of 275,269,340 ada across 39 proposals that each won >50% of participating DRep stake (3.8B ada in live stake >70% of actively delegated stake excluding pre-defined voting options).

Proposal Intake & Consolidation

Between 1 April – 5 May 2025, the Cardano Budget Committee at Intersect accepted funding requests through two streams:

• Committee “block budgets” connected to several Intersect committees (product, open source, governance, marketing, research) aligned to the vision and product roadmap.
• Open community submissions from any Cardano contributor, regardless of Intersect membership.

All 194 submissions followed a standard template (problem, benefits, roadmap alignment, cost) and could be refined with committee feedback, capturing both top-down strategy and bottom-up innovation before DRep review.

Community Signalling

DReps and ada holders expressed their preferences in two rounds of off-chain polling: an initial GovTool survey and a final Ekklesia “temperature-check” poll that closed at 23:59 UTC on 5 May 2025. Proposals that garnered over 50% of the participating DRep stake and selected Intersect as their Administrator advanced to this Budget Info Action. The poll artefacts are publicly available (see references below). All proposal content was timestamped at the close of the temperature-check poll and now published to IPFS as part of this on-chain submission, creating an immutable record.

On-Chain Approval & Oversight

Budget Info Action & Net Change Limit

The 39 qualifying proposals have been bundled into this single Budget Info Action for DRep ratification. While the total requested funding sits below the Net Change Limit (NCL) currently in force, 350 trillion lovelace, or 350 million ada, as of 8 May 2025, the NCL itself can be amended by a separate Info Action at any time. Consequently, each subsequent Treasury Withdrawal must be presented and approved only if it remains within the then-active NCL, in line with Article IV of the Cardano Constitution and Guardrail: TREASURY-02a.

Although all included proposals have requested Intersect as their Administrator, this designation is not automatically guaranteed. Ahead of any Treasury Withdrawal governance action, proposers will be required to undergo due diligence, including KYC/KYB and other background and verification checks. Intersect reserves the right to decline or withdraw its role as Administrator if a proposal fails to meet these requirements, and remains at its discretion.

Treasury Withdrawal & Fund Management

Once ratified, Intersect - named as the Administrator in every proposal included in this budget allocation - will submit Treasury Withdrawal governance action(s) for DReps to approve the release of funds from the Cardano Treasury. Safeguards include:

• Wherever possible and applicable, multi-sig controlled smart-contract decentralized escrow with signers from Intersect, independent auditors, and other appointed bodies. Being developed by Sundae Labs.
• Disbursements from smart contracts or related accounts will be executed in line with the proposal’s contractual terms and subject to regular oversight, reporting, and - where applicable - milestone acceptance. These will be public via a new community dashboard.
• Audit and pause-payment capability allow funds to be paused if contractual terms are breached. After arbitration, any undisbursed funds remaining in the smart contract or related accounts will be returned to the Cardano Treasury.
• On-chain transparency: every payment is publicly traceable, and Intersect’s delivery assurance team working with elected committees will publish progress reports for community oversight.

Outcome

Through community signalling, DRep ratification, adaptable NCL compliance, and smart-contract oversight (wherever applicable and available), Cardano can fund the 2025 roadmap and supporting initiatives confidently - allocating Treasury resources responsibly while retaining the agility to adapt to future economic parameters.

The provisions set forth in the Cardano Constitution state that the approval of a Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem budget requires a threshold of greater than 50% of the active voting DRep stake and that Constitutional Committee members shall record a vote on-chain that sets forth their opinion as to whether the proposed budget, if it were to be implemented in the form contained in the “Info” action, would violate this Constitution. Therefore, this Budget Info Action will be considered passed with a DRep vote of greater than or equal to 50% +1 lovelace and a Constitutional Committee vote of at least 5 of 7 members.