IO & Ensurable Systems: Cardano Maintenance Initiative

Proposal as pdf: https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmYKV7vbX9pwNxst2qWpmtM2k6LRJB4NKKNFJSQyh7zojz

Every feature, upgrade, and innovation proposed for Cardano depends on a stable, secure, and well-maintained platform underneath. This proposal funds that foundation — continuous core maintenance and operational support from Q3 2026 through Q1 2027.

Maintenance is not discretionary. It covers nine functional areas that together constitute the full support envelope for Cardano: bug fixing and security reviews, CI/CD and infrastructure operations (including disaster recovery per CIP-135), mainnet and mempool monitoring, the Cardano Blueprint documentation project, open-source community support, systematic performance analysis and optimization, quality assurance and release sign-off, full node release management with L1/L2/L3 incident response, and component maintenance across Plutus Core, DB-Sync, guardrails scripts, APIs, and CLI tools.

The value is both protective and enabling. On the protective side, this work ensures network uptime, swift incident resolution, and proactive security hardening through collaboration with the Intersect Security Council. On the enabling side, it delivers the Cardano Blueprint — implementation-independent specifications that lower the barrier for alternative node implementations — and continuous performance optimization that safeguards throughput gains and release quality. IO is collaborating with Ensurable Systems to distribute infrastructure stewardship. Intersect administers funds through milestone-based smart contracts with independent third-party assurance and transparent on-chain dashboards. Unspent funds return to the Treasury.

Treasury Ask: ₳62,134,630

As a stake pool operator, DApp developer, or ada holder, I want the Cardano platform to remain stable, performant, and secure with predictable release cycles, so that I can rely on it as a production-grade foundation for my operations and applications.

A well-maintained Cardano delivers the availability, reliability, and security that operators, developers, and users depend on. Our maintenance program covers disaster recovery, knowledge sharing (including the Cardano Blueprint), security reviews, monitoring data, and performance metrics — all published transparently.

Opportunity: Operating a production blockchain at Cardano’s scale requires continuous investment in maintenance, testing, security, and infrastructure that goes far beyond feature development. Sustained maintenance keeps the codebase modern, secures the platform proactively, preserves performance gains, and gives the release process its predictability. Every other initiative within the ecosystem depends on this foundation: new features can only be safely delivered on a well-maintained platform.

Solution: This proposal secures continued support for the Cardano codebase and infrastructure for the second half of 2026 through the first half of 2027. It covers nine functional areas that together constitute the complete maintenance and support envelope for Cardano:

• Node Bugfixing and Architecture: Timely issue resolution, hot fixes, and architectural security reviews.
  
• DevOps and Infrastructure: CI/CD system maintenance, OS/platform compatibility, Haskell compiler and tooling support, disaster recovery per CIP-135, bootstrap relay operations, and testnet maintenance.
  
• Monitoring: Mainnet monitoring for oversight and community, plus global mempool monitoring for congestion data, fee estimation, and evidence-based decision-making.
  
• Documentation: Cardano Blueprint comprehensive specifications covering consensus, network, ledger, and Plutus in an implementation-independent manner.
  
• Open Source Support: GitHub issue triage, response, and assignment, plus review and integration of external code contributions.
  
• Performance: Systematic ledger performance analysis and improvements, system-level node optimizations (block production, diffusion, timeliness), benchmarking at integration level to safeguard releases and hard forks, and distributed cluster operations.
  
• Quality Assurance: Unit and property test maintenance, E2E testing framework and execution with release sign-off, conformance testing,internal pen-testing as appropriate, and ledger testing strategy improvements. AI-supported analysis and quality assurance is incorporated into execution strategy at IO
  
• Release and Support: Full Node release process (integration, build, test, release, documentation, communications), L1/L2/L3 incident management with on-call support, and Cardano API/CLI maintenance.
  
• Component Maintenance: Plutus Core interpreter and language version updates, DB-Sync consistency, Cardano High Assurance tools, DB Synthesizer, third-party libraries (libsodium), code modernization, technical debt reduction, guardrails and CC identity script maintenance.

Why now: Maintenance is continuous and non-discretionary. The platform requires uninterrupted support regardless of the feature development cycle. Continuous maintenance coverage prevents risk from compounding — it keeps bugs from escalating, ensures every release is tested, and maintains the infrastructure's resilience. This proposal covers the period immediately following the current budget cycle.

Ecosystem Collaboration: IO is collaborating with Ensurable Systems to deliver and sustain Cardano’s core maintenance and operational infrastructure, combining IO’s deep protocol knowledge with Ensurable’s specialist capabilities as part of a broader commitment to distributing infrastructure stewardship across the Cardano ecosystem.

Proposed Value Delivered (Why)

Maintenance is not a feature. It is the foundation that every feature depends on.

Our maintenance efforts focus on preserving and enhancing the existing codebase, ensuring the community benefits from modern, efficient products and services. We prioritize disaster recovery to minimize downtime and ensure business continuity. We are committed to preserving and sharing the valuable knowledge the community and builders directly benefit from, including the Cardano Blueprint and transparent publication of security reviews, monitoring data, and performance metrics.

Support for various levels of technical expertise (L1, L2, L3) and testnet maintenance ensure smooth operation and continuous improvement. A well-structured and transparent release cycle and communications guarantee a timely and structured rollout of Node features and other deliverables.

A well-maintained and supported Cardano ensures the overall health, availability, and reliability that are paramount for providing a stable and secure foundation. This directly benefits the community, users, operators, and products and services interacting with Cardano.

Expected Outcomes

• Continuous Network Availability: Robust bugfixing and disaster recovery ensure Mainnet remains resilient against critical failures and forks.
  
• Enhanced Onboarding and Portability: Cardano Blueprint provides implementation-independent specifications that lower the barrier to entry for new builders and alternative node implementations.
  
• Reliably High Transaction Throughput: System-level node and ledger optimizations lead to improved resource usage, faster block diffusion, and validation.
  
• Predictable Release Cycles: A well-managed release process supported by CI, E2E, and performance testing ensures stable and vetted feature updates.
  
• Robust Smart Contract Execution: Plutus interpreter maintenance provides developers with a higher-performing and reliable environment for cost-efficient DApp execution.
  
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Global mempool and network monitoring provide stakeholders with real-time congestion and performance data for fee estimation and infrastructure planning.
  
• Hardened Security Posture: Proactive architectural reviews and collaboration with the Security Council ensure swift threat identification and mitigation.
  
• High-Quality Code Standards: Systematic peer reviews of open-source contributions and technical debt reduction ensure a modern, maintainable codebase.
  
• Reliable Testing Environments: Continuous testnet maintenance allows developers to experiment and validate in a safe, production-like environment.
  
• Accelerated Incident Resolution: Structured L1/L2/L3 support ensures issues are triaged and resolved swiftly, maintaining ecosystem confidence.
  
• Verifiable System Integrity: Advanced tracing, logging, metrics, and conformance testing provide the observability required to verify system behavior matches specification.

KPIs

Additional KPIs

Pillars

3. Deliverables & Milestones

All deliverables in this proposal are continuous - they run for the full duration of the funded period. They are grouped by the functional areas below. There is no sequential phasing or quarterly gating: maintenance activities are ongoing and parallel.

Continuous Deliverables (Q3 2026 to Q1 2027)

Resources

Delivery is supported by a cross-functional team spanning all nine component areas — including engineering, DevOps, QA, performance, security, documentation, and release management — plus dedicated infrastructure (AWS).

Budget

Total Treasury Ask: ₳62,134,630

Pricing Principles: IO is requesting funding in ADA and has provided USD figures as a reference. A portion of the funding shall be specifically tied to demonstrating measurable impact on Cardano's KPIs and pillars

• Personnel & Delivery: Majority of costs needed to fund the delivery resources
  
• Ecosystem support, Audit, Assurance & Contingency: Leadership, ecosystem, and delivery to support execution and wider alignment. Independent work assurance and audits, plus contingency to account for complexities during execution

Risks

Treasury Governance & Compliance

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.

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.

Funding Denomination

All amounts in this proposal are denominated in ada (₳). The total Treasury ask is ₳62,134,630. USD figures ($14,912,311) are provided for reference only, based on an ADA/USD rate of 0.24.

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.

Prior Treasury Receipts

IO and its affiliated entities has 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.

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

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.

Standardized Format & Immutable Hosting

Upon finalization, this proposal will be hosted on IPFS in an immutable format. The blake2b-256 hash of the document will be provided for on-chain reference and verification.