Enacted Cardano Treasury Withdrawal Proposals

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

**Proposal as pdf: [https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmQBhjELHaMKhYZjwuskHS9NRyvUdiGv69aK8C1H787c5A](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmQBhjELHaMKhYZjwuskHS9NRyvUdiGv69aK8C1H787c5A)** Cardano's strongest differentiator is its focus on security and correctness, but the tools that deliver on that promise have so far been the domain of auditors and formal methods experts. This proposal lowers the barrier: it brings automated formal verification, and the full high-assurance toolkit, within reach of every Cardano developer. Two workstreams deliver this. The first extends Blaster, IO's open-source automated formal verification tool, from single-script verification to full DApp-level verification. Blaster has already been used to prove correctness properties on production DApps including Djed and USDCx, and has received strong feedback from the Cardano developer community. Today, extending those results to an entire DApp requires manually decomposing properties and verifying each script in isolation. This proposal removes that manual work by automating verification at the DApp level. It also connects Blaster to four smart contract languages (Aiken, Pebble, Scalus, and Futura), so developers can invoke verification directly from their native toolchain. It delivers a VS Code extension with visual counterexample exploration and inline verification feedback, creates a Common Vulnerability Library with ready-made security templates for major DApp categories, and adds an equivalence checking tool that formally proves two UPLC programs are semantically identical, enabling safe and aggressive optimization. The second workstream delivers a Container-Based Developer Environment (CBDE) that packages the complete high-assurance toolkit into a single-command setup, compressing environment configuration from days into one click. The outcome is a stronger foundation for everyone who depends on Cardano: DeFi users get DApps whose correctness has been mathematically proven, developers get tools that make high-assurance engineering practical, and the ecosystem gets a toolkit maintained collectively by multiple teams. The work is structured as a technical collaboration: IO, Lantr, Harmonic Labs, SAIB, Midgard Labs, TxPipe, and No.Witness Labs each contribute defined components, distributing delivery and long-term maintenance across the ecosystem. Intersect administers funds via milestone-based disbursement with independent oversight, and unspent funds return to the Treasury. **Treasury Ask:** ₳13,078,578

**Proposal as pdf:[https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmXD6eoaFWrRoubFfvB2vSmLGbhVa66DbM9xw2dH1htRYK](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmXD6eoaFWrRoubFfvB2vSmLGbhVa66DbM9xw2dH1htRYK)** This proposal delivers three coordinated initiatives that together expand Cardano's economic models, strengthen long-term Treasury resilience, and remove one of the biggest barriers to mainstream adoption, the requirement to hold ADA before you can transact. Each workstream targets a different dimension of this opportunity. First, CIP-159 Account Address Enhancement upgrades how Cardano handles account addresses. This enables wallets to collect micro-fees (currently blocked by a minimum deposit requirement), makes DeFi applications cheaper for end users, and provides building blocks for Layer 2 scaling solutions to manage user funds. Second, Multi-Asset Treasury begins the design work to let the Cardano Treasury hold stablecoins and other native assets alongside ADA, protecting the funding process from price volatility and opening new financial models for the ecosystem. Finally, Babel Fees lets users pay transaction fees in any Cardano native asset (such as USDC or bridged BTC) instead of requiring ADA, removing a key friction point for new users entering the ecosystem. Together, these initiatives unlock new wallet and DeFi revenue models, strengthen the Treasury's financial position through asset diversification, and reduce friction for users entering Cardano's DeFi ecosystem, where cross-chain bridging alone represents an estimated $1–2 billion annual market. IO is collaborating with Ensurable Systems on delivery. Intersect administers funds via milestone-based smart contracts, with independent oversight, and any unspent funds will be returned to the Treasury. **Treasury Ask:** ₳13,103,039

**Proposal as pdf: [https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=Qmd7G7L6xinunTLU9JorPLYyFCLGRarXEn7RngdNYgNH3B](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=Qmd7G7L6xinunTLU9JorPLYyFCLGRarXEn7RngdNYgNH3B)** This proposal strengthens Cardano’s smart contract platform across three critical and closely connected areas: language capabilities, formal correctness, and developer experience. It funds targeted expansion to the Plutus language with new syntactic forms and new primitives to reduce script costs, improve expressiveness, and unlock more efficient contract patterns; formal specification, conformance testing, and structured security review to support correctness as node diversity grows; and a better compiler and tooling experience that lowers setup friction, improves error reporting, and makes smart contract development more accessible. Together, these workstreams make Plutus cheaper to use, more trustworthy to build on, and easier for developers to adopt, helping Cardano support a broader range of applications while also providing stronger foundations for alternative node implementations and other ecosystem tooling. This is a technical collaboration with Input Output and VacuumLabs, distributing Plutus stewardship across expert teams. Intersect administers funds via milestone-based smart contracts with independent oversight. All unspent funds return to the Treasury. **Treasury Ask:** ₳11,877,575

**Proposal as pdf: [https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmPdBp8QjKaPdYdvwLxzDiCxX85hGx8H6rxbSvTTuLkcx2](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmPdBp8QjKaPdYdvwLxzDiCxX85hGx8H6rxbSvTTuLkcx2)** Cardano needs a step change in throughput to meet its 2030 ambitions, and Leios is how it gets there. This proposal funds the path from public testnet to a mainnet-ready release candidate — delivering a 10–65x increase in transaction capacity. Why this scale matters: Cardano's 2030 strategy targets growth from roughly 800,000 monthly transactions to over 27 million. At sustainable utilization levels, that requires at least 6x current capacity. Leios delivers 10x or more — giving significant room to grow. It works by enhancing Cardano's existing Ouroboros Praos consensus with Endorser Blocks and committee-based validation, increasing throughput without compromising decentralization or making stake pool operations unviable. The current budget cycle (ending June 2026\) delivers an early public testnet. This proposal picks up from there and focuses on three objectives. First, a release candidate: maturing the implementation through substantial engineering, conformance testing against formal specifications, and integration into the primary node. Second, high confidence: systematic validation through parameter exploration, load testing, and adversarial red-teaming on the public testnet. Third, hard-fork enabling: everything within IO's control to make the Leios hard fork possible, including stable interfaces for ecosystem tools (DB-Sync, Mithril, Blockfrost), SPO and developer workshops, governance artifact preparation, and contingency procedures. The proposal explicitly excludes external dependencies like the community hard-fork vote from its acceptance criteria — those are captured as risks, not promises. Intersect administers all funds through milestone-based smart contracts with independent oversight. Unspent funds return to the Treasury. **Treasury Ask:** ₳27,714,342

**Proposal as pdf: [https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmQPLwjTwZeGrzsgs2QiC6crJLcMg64fU2kDYZmPZ9o7wf](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=QmQPLwjTwZeGrzsgs2QiC6crJLcMg64fU2kDYZmPZ9o7wf)** Cardano's long-term utility depends on attracting and retaining developers — and this proposal accelerates that by making it dramatically easier to build on the platform. The target: a 30%+ improvement in developer growth rate within 12 months. Why this matters: Cardano currently has roughly 550 active developers, with no signs of growth, whereas Ethereum added nearly 2,000 new developers per year on average over the last 6 years. Survey data from 109 Cardano builders points to a clear set of barriers — fragmented tooling, scattered documentation, lack of coordination, and a steep learning curve. These are solvable issues, and solving them unlocks the ecosystem flywheel: more builders lead to more DApps, which attract more users and generate more protocol revenue, which attracts more builders. The initiative delivers five practical outcomes. First, community alignment paired with a bounty program that incentivizes improvements to ecosystem tools and libraries where pain points are greatest. Second, a setup tool ("cardano-init") that lets a new developer go from zero to a working project in minutes, regardless of their preferred tech stack. Third, an OpenZeppelin-style collection of ready-to-use smart contracts that gives builders a solid starting point. Fourth, a unified, simplified onboarding experience in the Developer Portal, built in collaboration with Intersect and coordinated with the team responsible for the Developer Portal. Fifth, a measurement hackathon designed to quantify progress and identify the next priorities. IO is collaborating with Intersect's Developer Advocate Program and exploring a partnership with TxPipe to broaden delivery capacity. Intersect serves as the designated administrator, with milestone-based disbursement and independent third-party assurance. Unspent funds are returned to the Treasury. **Treasury Ask:** ₳3,601,926

The Draper Dragon Orion Fund, L.P. (“Orion Fund”), managed by Draper Dragon Orion GP, LLC (“General Partner” or “GP”), is proposed as a multi-year, tranche-based ecosystem investment fund designed to support Cardano-native and Cardano-integrated companies, grow on-chain usage, and return capital to the Cardano Treasury (“Treasury”) over time. Importantly, the Orion Fund is structured so that Treasury exposure is incremental, capped, and fully governed. This proposal (“Proposal”) asks the Cardano community (“Community”) to vote only on the first Treasury withdrawal tranche of **ADA 50M,** which is approximately **$15M USD** (“Tranche One”), calculated using an assumed ADA price of $0.30, to launch the Orion Fund. Net proceeds from the direct investments made with a majority of the Treasury withdrawal contribution to the Orion Fund will be returned to the Treasury in accordance with the repayment schedule detailed in this Proposal.

## Executive Summary For the last year, we have engaged the Cardano community to discuss deployment of treasury funds into the DeFi ecosystem to boost liquidity. Under the old constitution, we received broad support (more than 67%) for a budget info action to deploy 50,000,000 ADA into the ecosystem. While we acknowledge a budget info action is not required under the current constitution, we feel encouraged to submit this withdrawal action to setup the legal and on chain components needed to carry out the liquidity deployment. For a detailed overview of what we are aiming to accomplish more broadly, we invite people to read the budget info action (gov_action1u4jrcvlkppjzuv5j9z5ksacwtvv77h6glu0knpcjut8gvjjfu0cqqt3alsy). In this Withdrawal Action, we propose withdrawing 800,000 ADA to setup a legal entity and audit the smart contract that will be built free of charge courtesy of Lucas and Kasey from UTxO Company. The user interface will be contributed by Hinson from Sidan Labs.

Blink Labs is requesting 6,900,000 ADA from the Cardano Treasury to fund twelve months of full-time engineering on Dingo, our Go Cardano node. Dingo is a work in progress, and that's the whole point of this proposal. But it's a substantial one: 1,290+ non-dependency PRs merged in the past year, Plutus V1/V2/V3 at 100% conformance, 314 passing conformance tests, VRF/KES crypto, ChainSync, mempool, and governance transaction support. This funding gets Dingo the rest of the way to mainnet block-production readiness: Ouroboros Praos consensus completion, Dijkstra hard fork support, CIP-0164 Linear Leios built alongside IO Engineering, a proper security audit, and the operational hardening that makes a node reliable at scale.

Amaru is an open-source project building a new, **fully interoperable block-producing node** that improves the overall accessibility and robustness of the Cardano network without compromising its safety and security. Amaru provides another perspective and solution for stake pool operators and developers alike, prioritizing **low hardware requirements** and a seamless user experience. The project is implemented primarily in Rust and aims to attract new contributors to the ecosystem's core maintenance. This is our second treasury withdrawal proposal, following [a successful budget](https://explorer.cardano.org/governance-action/gov_action1h4ygjv0hjfj3lmafcm76rpdzcm8vsvj9k5wejn3npyxwxm3fesnqqw9kxxz) and [treasury withdrawal](https://explorer.cardano.org/governance-action/gov_action1vrkk4dpuss8l3z9g4uc2rmf8ks0f7j534zvz9v4k85dlc54wa3zsqq68rx0) in mid-2025. We will recap what we have accomplished so far, thanks to this first allocation, and break down the objectives, scope, and timelines for 2026.