☕ DRep Double-Espresso Dispatch
DRep Dispatch #7 Edition – | A cup of fast, strong governance and budget intel—brewed especially for DReps.
GM DReps! Constitution v2.0, championed by Yuta from Japan, expires tomorrow (06/09/2025). If you haven’t reviewed it yet, take a look and make sure your vote is on-chain. Intersect Board elections close next week, and Charles addressed client diversity & Leios trade-off questions.
TL;DR – Five Things
Constitution v2.0 – Info Action, Vote Closes Sept 6. Championed by Yuta from Japan, the draft reflects community feedback and has already seen 173 DRep rationales. Supporters highlight clarity and streamlined treasury processes; critics object to new identity disclosure rules for treasury withdrawals. If you haven’t yet, review the draft and cast your vote on-chain.
Intersect Board Elections → Applications open until Sept 12 (7 days left) for 4 community-elected seats (up from 2). Voting Sept 15–26. Board oversees ₳270.5M treasury admin and guides technical committees.
Client Diversity & Leios Trade-offs: IO is pushing 24/7 to deliver Leios in 2026, but alternative clients may lack resources to keep pace. DReps could face trade-off decisions on funding, timing, and rollout.
GovTool Funding – Treasury Proposal Coming. GovTool’s ₳1.15M Info Action passed with 58% support. A Treasury Withdrawal proposal is now being prepared to fund 12 months of maintenance, open-source contributions, and new features.
Constitutional Committee Transition Complete. The fully elected Constitutional Committee is now live, ratified at epoch 579/580 after a one-epoch delay due to parameter limits. This marks the shift from the interim committee (appointed by founding entities) to a community-elected body — ending the bootstrap governance phase and beginning elected oversight.
🗳 Constitution v2.0 – Info Action, Vote Closes Sept 6
Status: 173 DReps have already voted with rationales. Yuta’s constitutional rewrite simplifies the text (55% shorter), removes unused provisions, and drops budget info action requirements.
Views are divided: supporters highlight these improvements in clarity and efficiency. Critics, however, focus on the new rule requiring identity disclosure for treasury withdrawals, arguing it risks excluding pseudonymous builders. Notably, Kostas Panagias voted NO, calling identity disclosure a “red line” and published his rationale here.
🔧 Client Diversity & Leios Trade-offs
TL;DR: Charles reaffirmed IO’s support for client diversity. The challenge is coordination and resources as Leios targets 2026 — meaning DReps may soon face trade-offs on whether to fund alternative clients, delay Leios, or proceed Haskell-first.
Key Points from the full video on X.
Leios timeline: IO is running a 24/7 development push on the Haskell node to deliver Leios in 2026. Charles cautioned that alternative clients may lack the resources to keep pace — raising likely governance trade-offs for DReps: fund them, delay Leios, or proceed Haskell-first.
Client diversity: Cardano’s model has always aimed for multiple client implementations, enabled by formal specifications and a future certified client program rather than a single “official” node. Charles reaffirmed that IO values the work of alternative builders, collaborates with Pragma teams, and sees client diversity as essential for decentralization.
Coordination: The plan was for client work to run through Intersect’s steering committees, but many builders now coordinate through Pragma. Charles noted closer alignment on specifications would reduce costs and avoid interoperability risks, while stressing collaboration will continue.
Watch Charles's full explanation: https://x.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1962649340721405969
📋 Intersect Board Elections
Candidate applications are open until September 12th (7 days left) for four community-elected board seats (expanded from two last year). Voting runs September 15–26.
💡Elected board members provide strategic oversight of Intersect, which will administer ₳270.5M in treasury funds. They guide technical steering committees and shape Cardano’s primary governance infrastructure.
📊 Info Actions
Info Actions are non-binding votes that signal community support for ideas. If they pass, the next step is usually a formal Treasury Withdrawal or governance action.
GovTool Funding - Info Action Passed
The GovTool Info Action passed with 58% support, signalling community backing for continued development. A Treasury Withdrawal proposal (~₳1.15M) is now being prepared to fund 12 months of maintenance, incentivized contributions, and new features. DReps will soon decide whether to resource GovTool—the governance platform already used by 48,000+ people in 170+ countries—to keep it community-owned and actively developed.
Cardano in Oceania – Info Action Live
₳778K proposal for a regional growth strategy across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Led by selfdriven Services, it focuses on training, enterprise pilots, hackathons, and ecosystem mapping — aiming to prove a repeatable model of community-driven adoption that could scale to other regions. Supporters highlight Oceania as a strategic testbed; voting now open.
📊 IO Research Mid-year Reports
Fundamental Research Report → Updates on 20+ research streams, from Ouroboros Omega (Leios, Peras) to Democracy 4.0 governance, ZK capabilities, and tokenomics design. A 3-week community feedback window is open to help shape research priorities.
Technology Validation Report → Six prototypes tested and ready for deployment, including Leios (5x throughput scaling), Ouroboros Phalanx (anti-grinding), recursive SNARKs, and Minotaur restaking. These mark the bridge from research to implementation.
💡 Why it matters for DReps: Fundamental research sets long-term treasury funding priorities. Technology validation highlights which advances are close to deployment — shaping near-term governance and funding decisions.
🌐 Other Updates
Constitutional Committee Framework: New infographic by Mike Hornan explains building on-chain consortiums with the Credential Manager. Step-by-step guide for technical implementation.
The Cardano Foundation have rebuilt the developer portal with new guides, demos and more
University of Edinburgh Constitution Research: Academic study on Cardano's constitutional governance process needs active DRep participation. Your experience shapes research that could influence future governance design across blockchain ecosystems.
MLabs launched their Catalyst funded protocol, Feesaswap.io which allow users to pay transaction fees in CNTs instead of ADA.
Stay sharp, stay voting, and stay accountable.
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