Blockfrost: Maintenance and Next Generation Indexing

Proposal as pdf: https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmUdbgB3eHms52HY4oha5u2V4mrpCZkhBw2AaozeMiz8sL

One of the primary challenges in decentralizing access to data-providing services such as Blockfrost is the substantial amount of resources required to index the entire Cardano blockchain dataset, even when only a fraction of that data is needed in practice.

As Cardano prepares for Leios, the cost of indexing the full blockchain dataset will grow substantially. Today, participating in data-serving infrastructure requires indexing the entire chain. This prices out smaller operators and concentrates infrastructure around fewer providers.

Project Cayley introduces decentralized slice indexing — allowing SPOs and node operators to choose which portions of the chain they want to index and serve. This lowers the barrier to participation, reduces infrastructure costs across the ecosystem, and keeps data-serving infrastructure decentralized as the chain scales. Its modular multi-chain architecture further enables developers to access data across Cardano, Midnight, and Bitcoin through a unified API.

This proposal funds two components: Project Cayley ($1,000,000) to build the next-generation indexing architecture, and an operational subsidy ($900,000) to maintain the free-tier infrastructure that Blockfrost has funded entirely on its own since inception. Total ask: ₳7.92M ($1,900,000 at $0.24/₳).

1. The Proposal (What)

One of the primary challenges in decentralizing access to data-providing services such as Blockfrost is the substantial amount of resources required to index the entire Cardano blockchain dataset, even when only a fraction of that data is needed in practice. This challenge becomes increasingly significant when considering Cardano's planned scalability improvements under Project Leios and the substantial impact its adoption will have on the growth of the Cardano dataset.

Project Cayley addresses this directly by introducing decentralized slice indexing — empowering SPOs and other Cardano node operators of all sizes to participate in data-serving infrastructure without the burden of maintaining a full dataset index, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs across the ecosystem. Its modular multi-chain architecture will further enable application developers to seamlessly integrate and reach different blockchain ecosystems with significantly greater ease, benefiting from reduced integration time and a unified API across chains.

Since its first day of operation, Blockfrost has provided free API access to the Cardano blockchain for developers and projects across the ecosystem — absorbing 100% of the infrastructure cost of that free tier without ever passing it on to users. Today, Blockfrost serves approximately 90% of all free-tier API traffic, making it the de facto data access layer for a significant portion of the ecosystem's builders and applications. This was a deliberate choice to lower barriers to entry and accelerate Cardano adoption — and as we scale Cardano with Leios, ensuring that infrastructure remains freely accessible and distributed is more important than ever.

This proposal therefore addresses both challenges: funding Project Cayley to build the decentralized infrastructure the ecosystem needs at scale, and asking the Cardano Treasury to assume its fair share of the cost of free-tier infrastructure that Blockfrost has carried alone since inception — an operational subsidy to keep this service running, maintained, and freely accessible to developers while the decentralized infrastructure matures.

The total funding ask is ₳7.92M (equivalent to $1,900,000 at a reference rate of $0.24/₳).

Deliverables

High level estimates

• 1 project manager for 9 months
• 1 community coordinator for 9 months
• 4 engineers for 9 months
• 3 devops for 9 months

Budget Allocation

2. Proposed Value Delivered (Why)

2.1 Making Data Infrastructure Affordable

Project Cayley addresses one of the most pressing infrastructure challenges facing the Cardano ecosystem today and in the near future. As Leios scales Cardano throughput, the cost of full-chain indexing becomes increasingly prohibitive — Cayley tackles this head-on by enabling sliced indexing, projected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs across the ecosystem. This makes building on Cardano significantly more affordable, lowering barriers for developers and operators of all sizes while keeping decentralization economically viable at scale.

Table 2.1: Predicted growth patterns based on CIP-0164 for a single indexer (we have more than 100+ Icebreakers)

Beyond cost savings, the multi-chain architecture extending to Bitcoin and other ecosystems opens up new economic opportunities by positioning Cardano infrastructure as a unified data layer across blockchains, broadening the addressable market and attracting developers from outside the ecosystem.

2.2 Sustaining Ecosystem-Critical Infrastructure

Blockfrost has operated as public infrastructure since day one, offering free access to Cardano data to any developer who needs it. This has never been a commercial decision — it has been a subsidy paid by Blockfrost to the ecosystem. The scale of that subsidy is now significant: approximately 90% of all free-tier Cardano API traffic flows through Blockfrost's infrastructure, representing a broad base of projects, developers, and users who depend on its continued availability.

Asking the Cardano Treasury to share that cost is a recognition that community infrastructure is best sustained as a shared responsibility across the ecosystem. The $900,000 operational subsidy ensures continuity of a service the ecosystem already relies on, with no disruption to the developers and applications that depend on it.

The operational subsidy breaks down as follows. $600,000 covers the personnel required to operate the free tier reliably — three DevOps engineers in a follow-the-sun rotation ensuring round-the-clock coverage and incident response, a dedicated developer for ongoing maintenance and bug fixes, and support staff handling developer-facing queries and incident communication. The remaining $300,000 covers the underlying infrastructure costs required to sustain the service at the reliability standard committed to in this proposal.

In parallel, Blockfrost is actively reworking its commercial model to ensure that future pricing and access structures do not create barriers or negative dependencies for the ecosystem. This work is being undertaken with ecosystem health as a primary consideration, ensuring that as the decentralized infrastructure matures, the commercial model evolves in a way that complements rather than competes with community interests.

2.3 KPIs

2.4 Additional KPIs

2.5 Pillars

Cardano 2030 Pillars: https://product.cardano.intersectmbo.org/vision/strategy-2030/

3.0 Treasury Governance & Compliance

3.1 Contract Management

A written off-chain Legal Contract will be created between Input Output and the Cardano Development Holdings (CDH), as mandated by the Constitution, and will be administered by Intersect. This will include details of the project delivery schedule and dispute resolution.

Project Delivery

All milestones, acceptance criteria, payment amounts and expected delivery dates will be agreed between the Input Output and Intersect, acting on behalf of the CDH. Input Output will deliver according to the agreed-upon project schedule within the Legal Contract, of which the necessary information will be made public via the budget management platform via transaction metadata.

Defined by the milestones within a Legal Contract, Input Output will submit and attest milestone acceptance to the community, Intersect or 3rd Party Assurer.

Project progress will be monitored via Intersect's delivery assurance function which will be communicated to the community.

Acceptance of the work will be supported by a 3rd Party Assurer, who will be responsible for reviewing and signing off the work completed at each project milestone against the corresponding milestone deliverables detailed within the Legal Contract. This work is funded from a portion of this treasury withdrawal.

3.2 Auditable Accounts & Fund Delegation

Budget Management Tooling

To administrate treasury funds on-chain, Intersect will utilize the treasury management smart contract framework developed by Sundae Labs. The smart contracts have been extensively tested including audits from TxPipe and MLabs.

Final mainnet validation test can be seen via the Disburse action within transaction: 0f591dc544ae14102dbb4a74d5311a6acffc1772b163d8b7a9656b9525950b17

This withdrawal will utilise Intersect’s 2025 treasury reserve contract with address being: stake17xzc8pt7fgf0lc0x7eq6z7z6puhsxmzktna7dluahrj6g6ghh5qjr
Funds will later be migrated to a 2026 treasury reserve contract once established.

Budget Management Specifics

Intersect will utilize a single Treasury Reserve Smart Contract (TRSC), with many Project-Specific Smart Contracts (PSSC), managed by Intersect. Intersect's management consists of three 'admin' and two Intersect 'leadership' roles. An Oversight Committee consisting of five 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 PSSCs will be managed by Intersect, with external oversight on certain actions from the Oversight Committee.

The 2025 TRSC Oversight Committee consists of Sundae Labs, Cardano Foundation, Dquadrant, Xerberus and NMKR. 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 three Intersect admins, two of the five trusted entities and one of the two Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Disperse
  
  • Two of three Intersect admins, three of five trusted entities and two of two Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Pause and Resume
  
  • Two of three Intersect admins, and one of two Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Sweep
  
  • One of three Intersect admins, and one of two Intersect leadership sign-off must authorize
    
• TRSC Reorganize
  
  • Two of three Intersect admins and three of five trusted entities must authorize

Processes

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

When a 2026 TRSC is established, the funding for this project will be migrated via the ‘disburse’ action.

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

A dashboard will be available 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.

3.3 Funding Denomination

All amounts in this proposal are denominated in ada (₳). The total Treasury ask is ₳7,916,666. USD figures ($1,900,000) are provided for reference only, based on an ADA/USD rate of 0.24.

3.4 Refund Conditions

All funds not disbursed by the end of the delivery period will be returned to the Cardano Treasury. A final reconciliation will be published as part of the oversight reporting cycle. In the event of partial delivery or scope reduction, unspent funds associated with cancelled or reduced deliverables will be returned proportionally.

3.5 Prior Treasury Receipts

IO and its affiliated entities have been accountable for delivery of work funded by the Cardano Treasury. The total funds allocated has been ₳130,708,860 across a number of projects within Treasury Smart Contract, to date IOG has withdrawn ₳78,459,777.

**Note: for Catalyst this only reflects the workstream that focuses on the Hermes Infrastructure and UX/UI improvements, not the execution and operation of Funds 14-16. Per Info Action this is in the process of transitioning to Cardano Foundation.

3.6 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.

3.7 Audit & Oversight

Audit and oversight costs are included within the overhead applied to this proposal. The Intersect administration fee covers administrative oversight and is reflected within the cost of this proposal. Independent oversight will be provided through Intersect and technically capable third-party, including reporting obligations and milestone-based disbursement controls.