DRepTalk

- a calmer, accountable home for Cardano governance. Open source.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Cardano governance has a discussion problem. Discussion happens scattered across Discord, X, and private rooms. Votes get cast, most of us never see the reasoning.

Building something to fix part of that.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Breakdown of the NCL. Thoughts?

Whatever your view on the mix, the numbers in one place. 👉 https://t.co/zr4EwK7SbU

[Cardano YOD₳ @JaromirTesar]

Only 16 withdrawals were approved in the current budget period (NCL). ₳291.4M (83%) was allocated.

₳58.5M remains in the Treasury. We have many active proposals, including 11 proposals from the Intersect budget process.

Of the 16 approved, 7 were approved for IO, 1 for an IO-related project (Tweag), 2 for Pentad members, and 3 for other infra-related projects.

Only 3 projects for the community and ecosystem were approved.

Orion Fund with a budget of ₳50M. Some projects may receive funding, but not all. In addition, a preliminary proposal for liquidity injection was approved. In addition, ₳50M should yet be requested, which would require an NCL increase (again).

If the NCL is increased by ₳150M and the AlphaGrow proposal is approved at the same time, an additional increase will probably be necessary for Elder's liquidity proposal.

Only one community proposal for 5am-earth (₳10M) was approved in on-chain governance.

Not many community withdrawals were submitted through on-chain governance.

13 withdrawals related to IO, infra, integrations, alt nodes, and one crypto event can collect a total of ₳230.8M from Treasury.

Overview of withdrawals:

IO
- Cardano Vision 2026: Human Centred, Scalable, Post Quantum Secure - IO Research: ₳32.9M
- IO: Cardano Upgrades: ₳13.1M
- IO: Developer Experience Initiative: ₳3.6M
- IO & VacuumLabs: Enhancing Plutus - Performance, Correctness, and Usability: ₳11.8M
- IO: Cardano High Assurance Technical Collaboration: ₳13M
- IO & Assurable Systems: Cardano Maintenance Initiative: ₳62.1M
- IO: Consensus Initiative:₳27.7M

Total: ₳164.4M

IO-related
- Tweag Core Cardano Infrastructure: Treasury Withdrawal 2026-2027: ₳18.2M

Total: ₳18.2M

Infra/nodes/devs
- Pebble & Ecosystem maintenance: TypeScript core of Cardano: ₳4.6M
- Dingo: a Production-Grade Block Producer in Go by Blink Labs: ₳6.9M
- Amaru Treasury Withdrawal 2026: ₳10.14M

Total: ₳21.6M

Pentad/FE
- Cardano Critical Integrations V2: ₳23M
- Cardano at TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026: Baseline ‘Platinum' Sponsorship Proposal: ₳3.3M

Total: ₳26.6M

Liquidity
- Cardano Defi Liquidity Budget - Withdrawal 1: ₳800K

Community/FE
- Cardano x Draper Dragon: Orion Fund: ₳50M
5am-earth Trust Layer Targeting Vision 2030 KPIs: ₳10M

I believe this context will help DReps in deciding on the following proposals.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@CashAnvil Yes but ofc if this is to happen automatically, the treasury withdrawals would need to be tagged in some way.

On that note @Cardano_Will wrote about "bucketised budgets" on https://t.co/zHUK12ynY3

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

NCL tracking is here. Every treasury withdrawal on dreptalk now shows its net change limit headroom and which period it counts toward.

Live treasury balance, per-period breakdowns, csv export. The spending cap, in context.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@adamKDean 👀 I want this.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

The whole site is open to read for everyone, only to write you have to prove on-chain that you actually are the DRep, SPO, committee member, or proposer you claim to be. Try it.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

The search on DRepTalk just got everything in one box: Discussions, Governance Actions, DReps, even Rationales, and Help.

Yes, you can now search the reasons DReps gave for their votes.

What else is missing? ⤵️

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Good to see this statement from CF around gov tooling. It lines up closely with why we are building https://t.co/Z8zvLl3jI2

On-chain identity for DReps, SPOs, CC and proposers. Fully public and searchable, open source. Governance on Cardano's own rails, not a Discord server.

[Cardano Foundation @Cardano_CF]

A big question in the community at the moment centers on Cardano Governance.

To help keep this conversation going, the Cardano Foundation has published a post today on the Forum which shares our initial thoughts and ideas on what the future could look like for Cardano’s community engagement and governance.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback on the forum: https://t.co/hkUk7BUAL4

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@Cardano_CF The right direction.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Bonus lesson: and don't vote too fast. Fire off the next one before the last confirmed and you hit an already-spent UTxO. (Pun intended) node rejects it.
So you wait...
On a hardware wallet...
Between every single vote...
...delightful.

[ADAtainment🐙 @adatainment]

Creating a DRep from a hardware wallet is great for peace of mind, until voting season: Every action signed individually, no bulk voting, endless clicking.

Is anyone solving this, or is it just the price for key security?

[LallyMcClay @LallyMcClay]

“The cleanest path to navigate right now would be for any DRep who wishes to vote on the Ikigai treasury withdrawal to do so before epochs end on July 8. A ratification, if achieved, this epoch would give the hard fork a clear window to ratify next epoch without impacting any other live proposal.”
👇

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@UtxoSaint

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@HephyPool You're right SPOs haven't been prioritized. They should catch up soon. (At least there is SPO metadata now.)

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Cardano Dreps, you want that badge, too.
Just admit it already. 😁

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@blockjock2017 Thanks! 👀Lone Voice Badge spotted on your profile btw, that's rare.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@blockjock2017 Thanks! 👀Lone Voice Badge spotted on your profile btw, that's rare.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@PaddyCTO Sir. 🙋‍♂️

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@adatainment Here we go: https://t.co/bRaYcDSggP

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

In 2025, Cardano's treasury limit was 99.1% consumed (347M of 350M ₳).

For 2026/27 we're already at 83%, and the period is only half over.

The trend is hard to miss. We made it visible:
https://t.co/WpnaqCFIOU

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

In 2025, Cardano's treasury limit was 99.1% consumed (347M of 350M ₳).

For 2026/27 we're already at 83%, and the period is only half over.

The trend is hard to miss. We made it visible:
https://t.co/WpnaqCFIOU

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

Governance Report just dropped.

Key takeaways: DRep voting power is concentrating, 58% want incentives to boost participation, and governance is still too fragmented/hard to navigate.

The community also prioritized 5 clear recommendations to fix it. Important read. ⤵️

[Maureen @maureenyam]

📣 The Beyond Minimum Viable Governance (Beyond MVG) is excited to announce that the State of Governance Report is now available!
After months of research, interviews, workshops, surveys, governance discussions and on-chain analysis, we asked one simple question:
How healthy is Cardano governance… really? Some of the answers surprised us.

DRep voting power is becoming more concentrated.
58% of participants believe incentives would increase active DRep participation.
The community prioritized five recommendations to strengthen governance.
…and that’s only scratching the surface.

So let’s take a quick tour through what we found. A thread🧵👇🏾
#Cardano
#CardanoCommunity

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@kostas_panagias Great pity.

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@phillewisit @CashAnvil @JaromirTesar 👀

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

@jonahkoch @BEACNpool Deep Link: https://t.co/Vc2xyffwhp

[DRepTalk @dreptalkcom]

You could inscribe the full rationale in tx metadata for <1 ada. But no gov tool would know how to read it atm, there’s no standard for it. CIP-1694 deliberately chose URL+hash anchors instead, accepting link-rot as the tradeoff. (On purpose, not by accident) So we would have to start this discussion all over again.