Gov Action

This treasury withdrawal funds **A member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem: Intersect** which will provide the following services: Intersect exists to serve as a neutral, nonprofit coordination layer that bridges decentralized governance and decentralized infrastructure. Our mission is not to direct the network, but to enable it. By stewarding core systems, supporting community-led processes, and facilitating safe, transparent delivery. Specifically, this proposal will fund Intersect to: - Steward core infrastructure - Execute the Administrator role - Support participation and coordination - Facilitate roadmap and budget processes - Expand ecosystem capacity Note: Intersect's original proposal submitted early in the off-chain process was updated after recent leadership changes. However, this proposal reflects the approved Budget Info Action and new strategic direction. This treasury withdrawal funds one of 39 proposals to give effect to the approved budget info action for ₳275,269,340, administered by Intersect via gov_action1u9x73kwufaxa70lfy59g4ynwyrcsaxdcd0gxzzmh67s9fxq4j8hqqk2phgh. The information provided herein is intended to fulfill the spirit of the constitutional requirement for a treasury withdrawal info action by also providing the details of the proposed solution, alignment to the budget, and amount to be withdrawn from the Cardano Treasury.

This proposal aims to solve the following problem: As Cardano enters the age of Voltaire, governance is transitioning from a small number of founding organizations to a decentralized global community. While the introduction of a constitution and on-chain voting forms the structural backbone, these mechanisms alone are not enough to sustain a functional decentralized system. What's needed in parallel is community-aligned coordination - infrastructure that enables participation, promotes continuity, and supports informed decision-making across the network. Intersect is also responsible for the stewardship of Cardano's core Haskell codebases, including the repositories that power the core Cardano node. This role involves more than maintenance - it includes coordinating new releases, aligning contributors around engineering best practices, and ensuring that upgrades are ready for safe deployment. Intersect acts as a neutral facilitator in this process, helping translate new feature proposals from ecosystem vendors into stable, tested releases that can be confidently adopted across the network. Intersect has played a central role in coordinating ecosystem-wide upgrades, including the successful deployment of the Chang and Plomin hard forks. These upgrades required aligning infrastructure providers, SPOs, dApps, and exchanges globally - a process demanding deep technical coordination, ecosystem trust, and communications capacity. Beyond technical infrastructure, Intersect provides a collaborative space for governance to mature and grow, supporting over 30 working groups and eight elected committees made up of Cardano community members. These committees focus on key areas such as budgeting, product development, open source, membership, growth, and technical standards - offering non-binding recommendations and practical insight to on-chain actors like DReps and SPOs.