Costin Pavăl

ex-tennis pro, cryptocurrency enthusiast, Cardano believer.
SPO and Sports Club Owner. IAGON Node Operator. UBQT

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

@pete_rizzo_ Again this narrative... Won't happen

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

I would vote NO as well.

[⛏️Dr. Navjit Dhaliwal @NaVi_GaT0R]

I am voting NO on Blockfrost proposal.

This is being presented as a community takeover of critical Cardano infrastructure. In reality, the community is being asked for around 10 million $ADA to fund 18 months of salaries and operations before the basic facts of the proposed acquisition have been properly disclosed.

The community does not know what it is acquiring - The proposal says that Blockfrost's source code, trademarks, domains and associated assets will eventually be transferred to a not-for-profit. It does not clearly disclose:

- the current legal owner of each asset
- the complete asset schedule
- the chain of title for the website, domains, trademarks and code
- whether any assets are owned, controlled or merely licensed
- what rights Five Binaries, IOG or other parties retain
- the value assigned to the assets or the actual acquisition price

There has already been a dispute over who owns https://t.co/QOAeJ1OibV and its IP. Blockfrost's legal terms previously described the site as Five Binaries' proprietary property. Its invoices stated "https://t.co/QOAeJ1OibV by Five Binaries OÜ" and used Five Binaries' VAT number.

When ownership representations change after scrutiny, the answer is not to wave the proposal through. The answer is to require independent legal verification of the chain of title.

What did IOG acquire in late 2024?

The proposal states that Blockfrost was founded by Five Binaries and "joined IOG" in 2024. It does not explain what that means commercially.

The community should be told:

- what IOG acquired
- whether it bought shares, IP, domains, commercial rights or some combination
- how much it paid
- who received that payment
- what valuation was used and what exactly is now being transferred using treasury funding

These are routine acquisition due diligence questions. The treasury should not fund a second transaction without disclosure of the first one.

This is mainly an operating subsidy - The proposal requests approximately 10 million $ADA, but there is no separately identified purchase price for the IP, website, trademarks or domains

Approximately 75% is allocated to staffing, approximately 25% is allocated to operations & infrastructure and a small amount is allocated to legal and accounting work.

The community is therefore not being offered a clearly priced asset acquisition. It is being asked to pay for the continued operation of Blockfrost while ownership is transferred later to an entity that has not yet been finalized. Calling this a community takeover does not change the economics. It is an operating grant tied to a future transfer promise.

The staffing budget is excessive and not fully outlined.

The staffing request is $1,478,266 for six people over 18 months - four developers, one project manager and one community manager. That equals an average loaded cost of approximately:

$82,126 per month for the team
$13,688 per person per month
more than $164,000 per person annually (Does a community manager earn 164k annually?)

Those are extremely high blended costs for a mostly European team containing both technical and non-technical positions. Yet the proposal does not disclose -cost by role, seniority, employee versus contractor status, related-party payments or the identity of the organization receiving the staffing funds.

"Privacy" is not a credible excuse for withholding role based costs. Nobody is asking for personal payslips. Public treasury funding requires transparent FTE assumptions and compensation. The proposal also places DevOps personnel inside the infrastructure allocation, creating further uncertainty over how many people are actually being funded and whether labour is being obscured inside multiple budget categories.

The expenditure will not end after 18 months The proposal annualizes to approximately $985,000 in staffing and overhead, $240,000 in infrastructure and operations, roughly $1.2 million in recurring yearly expenditure, before insurance, compliance, commercial support, sales, legal costs or expansion.

There is no demonstrated sustainability model.

Commercial tiers, vendor fees and treasury repayments are merely ideas that a future board may consider. The proposal admits that long-term sustainability will be decided after the community has already funded the transition. That means the treasury is being asked to commit first and discover the business model later.

The predictable result is another funding request when the 18 months expire.

Cardano governance cannot operate an enterprise API business

The proposal claims Blockfrost will become community owned and decentralized. But Cardano governance cannot itself
- sign an enterprise SLA
- employ staff
- invoice customers
- accept contractual liability
- provide indemnities
- hold commercial insurance
- enter data centre and hosting contracts
- manage tax and data protection obligations
- or be sued when the service fails.

A centralized legal entity will still own the assets, control the domain, employ or contract the team and sign commercial agreements. The proposal recognizes this by requiring a separate not-for-profit entity and an off-chain legal structure involving Intersect and Cardano Development Holdings.

Therefore, this is not "fully decentralized." At most, it is centralized legal and commercial control combined with community board elections. Those are not the same thing.

Enterprise customers require a legally accountable counterparty and detailed contractual protections covering uptime, response times, incident escalation, service credits, security, liability, indemnification and termination.

The public service is only promised at 99% monthly uptime, which permits more than seven hours of downtime per month. Calling that an SLA does not make it enterprise grade, particularly when no contractual remedies are specified.

The acquiring entity does not yet exist in final form

The proposal does not even determine whether the assets will move into a new entity or existing one. The final governance structure, legal jurisdiction, constitutional documents and permanent board are still to be decided.

No competent acquisition committee would approve such a transaction. This proposal is missing the most basic information required for a takeover:

Verified ownership, chain of title, prior transaction details, historical revenue, current paid customer data, an independent valuation, a stated purchase price, role based FTE costs, assignable enterprise contracts, a finalized acquiring entity, and a credible long term operating plan.

[Mintern @MinswapIntern]

UPDATE

IAGON OPENS INSIGHT TO ALL OF CARDANO 😱😱😱

@IagonOfficial has announced that Insight will be available to all Cardano developers, projects, businesses, and individual builders in approximately six weeks.

Currently used by enterprise partners such as Fireblocks, Insight will provide a unified API with access to data and endpoints offered by providers like @blockfrost_io , Maestro, and Koios along with new capabilities not previously available to the Cardano community.

[Holger - Guarding our Vision! @HolgerCardano24]

"....there is STILL money left,...."
"...so very decentralized...."

in the moment where we think that when the majority (60%+ or something) of the treasury money gets funnelled to IOG/Charles only, then THAT is what i would NOT call very decentralized.

I would call it the opposite, centralized funding.
Where he makes profit and the rest of the ecosystem dies, but this guy DOES NOT CARE, because he has midnight,.. he will slowly bleed us out, blame us and fully shift to midnight.

Not a problem for me,... #Cardano will make it without him, where I have a problem with is - to continue giving this guy more out of the treasury.

He is against EVERYONE but himself, and he tolerates people who lick his ass.

[THOR ⚔️ @Vikings_for_ADA]

It’s probably nothing…
$IAG

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

Allow me to declare my profound dislike for the significant man I once met. I have rendered a judgment, one I consider fully justified by the feelings it evokes in me, rooted entirely in my personal view of the world. I occupy these elevated circles because I once possessed a certain intriguing desirability, therefore, I claim the authority to shape the narrative. Think as I instruct you to think.

[Holger - Guarding our Vision! @HolgerCardano24]

Sources, verify it all yourself:

Catalyst grants to Five Binaries:
.NET https://t.co/fzFnHUsEYX

Ruby https://t.co/9SB63Kgtok

Kotlin https://t.co/EihHBSjznA

Swift https://t.co/ygDVdOKGmr

WebSocket https://t.co/invFsJFfMZ

Backend https://t.co/TuGukAwW84

The proposal: https://t.co/A92nIPTOk7

The 62M maintenance ask: https://t.co/HjoYSaLC85

Terms of Service (paid tier): https://t.co/YhlnSNSM7u

Company register (2025 report unfiled): https://t.co/Xqh3c9Vca4

IOG buys Blockfrost: https://t.co/kgwvx1LLjk

"Commercial backbone" quote: https://t.co/cEOX8wdiki (2 Jul 2026)

[Holger - Guarding our Vision! @HolgerCardano24]

Since all my stuff was across multiple posts.

Here is any easy to digest summary, so everyone can make an educated decision and/or do some more research:

BLOCKFROST: follow the money.

Before you judge the 9.8M ADA ask, look at what the Cardano treasury has ALREADY paid Five Binaries, the company behind Blockfrost, in direct Catalyst grants:

Fund4 .NET SDK ............ $8,300
Fund4 Ruby SDK ............ $7,000
Fund4 Kotlin SDK .......... $9,000
Fund4 Swift SDK ........... $9,500
Fund5 WebSocket link ...... $18,000
Fund7 Open-source backend . $119,000

Total: about $170,800. Every one completed. Every one community-funded. And that is before the separate Fund9 "Building on Blockfrost" challenge.

In the Fund7 proposal, they told us in writing:
"Blockfrost is already a successful project."
And that after the funded year, "Five Binaries will take over to provide funds."

The community believed them. The WebSocket vote alone passed 341M YES to 38M NO.

THE TIMELINE

2020: Five Binaries launches Blockfrost.
2021 to 2022: treasury pays about $170k to build it out. Community votes YES, heavily.
Jan 2024: IOG buys Blockfrost. Price: undisclosed.
May 2026: IOG's first Blockfrost funding proposal fails.
Jul 2026: it is back. Now 9,832,979 ADA to hand Blockfrost to "the community."

So the community paid to build it, a private company bought it, and now the community is asked to buy it back.

WATCH HOW CHARLES DESCRIBES IT, DEPENDING ON WHAT HE NEEDS THAT DAY

Selling this proposal on video, reading out Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Revolut:
Blockfrost runs "the backbone of many of the off-chain activities in the network." Critical. Irreplaceable. Everyone depends on it.

Defending IOG's commercial strategy in July 2026:
he lists Blockfrost as part of the "commercial backbone" of Cardano, next to RealFi, Midnight and Pogun, the layer that "larger commercial integrations can be built" on.

So which is it?

If Blockfrost is critical public infrastructure, it belongs in the 62M ADA "maintenance" proposal IOG filed in the SAME round. Not a separate 9.8M ADA purchase.

If Blockfrost is "commercial backbone," a business, then it should pay for itself. That is what commercial revenue is for. The treasury should not be buying it at all.

He is calling it both. Pick one, and one of the two asks disappears.

THE THINGS THAT DO NOT ADD UP

The proposal says Blockfrost is "free since day one."
Its own Terms of Service describe a paid, card-billed, recurring subscription.

The proposal says all IP transfers "to the community."
Nobody will name the entity that owns it today. The site said Five Binaries. After it was questioned in public, the footer switched to "(c) 2026 IOG Singapore Pte. Ltd."

The operating company named in Blockfrost's Terms of Service and on its invoices is Five Binaries. Its 2024 and 2023 annual reports are filed and public. Its 2025 report was legally due on 30 June. It is still not filed.

That is the one public document that would show what money actually runs through this operation. We are asked to approve 9.8M ADA without it. Make of the timing what you will.

PLAINLY

The community paid to build it (about $170k).
A private company bought it (undisclosed sum).
Now the community is asked to buy it back (9.8M ADA):
for an asset nobody will name,
with accounts nobody will show,
sold as a "gift" by the people who would be paid to run it.

Who is actually getting the better end of this deal?

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

I appreciate your interest in the progress of the project. However, the relationships we have cultivated with Iagon partners, including Würth, must remain internal to our team.
We remain fully committed to completing all required due diligence, meeting every milestone, and delivering on the terms outlined in the Catalyst proposal to ensure the agreed funding is released. That said, providing introductions to our key contacts at Würth was never part of the agreement and is not something we can accommodate.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

And we think we have problems...

[Morbid Knowledge @MorbidKnowledge]

Selfie taken by North Korean man Kim Kang-woo inside North Korea after he secretly reentered after previously escaping. He returned just to help his mother.

Kim Kang-woo was a poor farmer's son in a North Korean border town, top of his class but barred from university for being the wrong social class. He and his mother sometimes didn't have enough to eat.

His father had already died attempting the same escape Kim was about to make.

It was pouring rain the night in May 2016 when Kim crossed the Yalu River alone. His mother gave him a boiled egg as he left, he pressed it back into her hands.

She couldn't risk seeing him off, and cried silently for nights after. He reached Seoul after a five-month journey through China, Laos and Thailand.

Then he worked. Construction sites, a mattress store, a cellphone store, every job he could land, thinking of his mother each night on the walk home.

By 2019 he had saved enough and found a broker he trusted, and flew to China to oversee her escape himself.

It fell apart in a single dropped phone call. His mother called from a borrowed phone, frightened, saying she couldn't find him on the Chinese side and maybe they should try another time. Then the line went dead.

His money was nearly gone, his visa almost expired.

So he made his choice. "There was really only one path," he said. "I had to go back. And if I got caught crossing back in, I was ready to die."

He spent two days watching the border guards from the Chinese side, and the moment they broke for dinner, he crossed back in and ran for the woods.

He knocked on his mother's door. She was stunned, they held each other in silence and cried and then she was terrified.

“If he's caught, he would be immediately exec*ted and the rest of us would go to a prison camp."

For 22 days he scrambled to arrange brokers on both sides of the border. Then surveillance caught a call.

Soldiers raided the house while Kim was out, detained his mother, and beat her to make her admit her son had returned. She denied it.

The day after she was detained, Kim crossed the Yalu a second time, without her.

South Korean intelligence had tracked his whole journey by phone records and interrogated him for weeks as a suspected spy.

Because defectors legally become South Korean citizens, entering the North is a crime he was sentenced to six months in prison and two years' probation.

But it worked. While he was still being questioned, a broker called, his mother had escaped on her own. He arranged for his contacts to guide her out through China, Laos and Thailand.

She wrote him a letter every week he was locked up, about her new driver's license, about a young man on the subway who looked just like him.

On the night of his release in September 2020, she waited at the prison gates at midnight, and they reunited more than four years after he first fled.

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

@bryan_johnson Don't die!!!!

[Holger - Guarding our Vision! @HolgerCardano24]

Not gonna lie, this videos obviously look as raw and "shitty" as it can get, but we wanted to share some hot-alpha with you.

So if someone will ever say we are not transparent then I do not know what to say - it can not get more alpha-"leak"ish than that one.

MORE IMPORTANT, no matter how "goofy" the way the videos are made looks like - in the moment when you understand what that means for #Cardano, you will agree, it does NOT matter at all how the videos look like.

@IagonOfficial + Würth Group == Will be the biggest Web2 Enterprise Use-Case on Cardano we have ever seen till now!

[Harry Mack @harrymack]

Move Your Body

@marcrebillet

[Adi @AdrianAdi_RO]

Nu mai e bună Alexandreasca. S-a luat de voievod... 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

Pickleball is a dangerous sport....

[The Kitchen Pickleball 👨🏻‍🍳 @TheKitchenPB]

We’ll keep you updated on Rachel as we know more. Putting out good thoughts and prayers for you Rachel! 💚

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

@HolgerCardano24 @Adafan430292 @phil_uplc U need to be 10x more vocal @HolgerCardano24 u have lots to say. I learn something every time I read your posts. I had such a different view of Cardano and CH until 9 months ago since 💩 under the rug started to smell. Thank you for keeping it straight. Kinda hard these days

[Doar RoMânia @Doar_Romania]

Cum adică nu avem o explicație? Nu ne-au explicat Nicu și Boulejean că rușii sunt vinovați?
Ce vrea să sugereze domnul Kelemen?

[Costin Pavăl @CostinPvl]

@GPiperea Interesant de observat. Mulțumesc pentru toată munca depusă.

[Iagon @IagonOfficial]

Compliance by Design: Mapping Iagon to the GDPR, Article by Article

Behind every GDPR article is a person whose data should be handled as the law intends.

Most platforms add compliance after the system is built: certifications and policies are wrapped around an architecture that was never designed for the obligation. Iagon was built the other way around. Here is the architecture mapped to the GDPR, article by article.

Read more insights ↓

[Holger - Guarding our Vision! @HolgerCardano24]

Okay, it has been over 24 hours now.

No sign of @IOHK_Charles responding to this or to your retweets (at least none that I am aware of).

I think what MAY be the case is that most of you just retweeted it (and I would like to say thank you for that!).

Since Charles blocked me, it may be that he does not see the retweeted post because he blocked me.

So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not see it.

Let's give it another try - just to make sure.

This would be try #4. I am trying to invite him to a constructive conversation, not only to remove the bad tensions, but especially to brainstorm about and improve the future of #Cardano.

PLEASE, be so kind once again... and try to help me make sure that my post (below) reaches him.

This time:
1. Click on the post below👇
2. Choose QUOTE (instead of repost)
3. Then just write: @IOHK_Charles
4. Send

Thank you so much! Let's make this happen.