Gov Action

### **Strategic Need** Cardano has a strong technical and governance foundation, but lacks several critical integrations required for large-scale economic activity and external liquidity. The absence of key systems, including stablecoin infrastructures, interoperability frameworks, and institutional-grade pricing oracle networks limits the ecosystem’s capacity to attract external capital, facilitate stable on-chain operations, and support advanced DeFi use cases. Cardano also requires institutional digital asset custody and wallet infrastructures, as well as on-chain analytics platforms to ensure user access, ecosystem transparency, and multi-chain liquidity efficiency. While none of these integrations in themselves are ‘silver bullets’, taken as a whole, they will provide the essential foundations to connect Cardano to the wider Web3 landscape and pave the way for accelerated growth. * **Stablecoins** With data and interoperability in place, Cardano can support the introduction of a tier-one stablecoin, the ecosystem’s primary base currency. A stablecoin provides price stability, predictable liquidity, and access for both institutional and retail users. However, its deployment depends on reliable oracle data and established interoperability channels. As such, stablecoin integration is the final step in the infrastructure rollout sequence and the key enabler for large-scale DeFi adoption and sustained liquidity growth. * **Institutional Digital Asset Custodies and Wallet Infrastructures** User access and transaction flow depend on a high-quality wallet infrastructure that supports multi-asset management, seamless dApp interaction, and secure cross-chain functionality. Wallets serve as the primary interface between users and Cardano’s financial systems; therefore, scalable, reliable, and feature-rich wallet solutions are required to support onboarding, institutional usage, and mass-market adoption. Enhanced wallet capabilities also ensure that new infrastructure layers like bridges, analytics, and stablecoins remain accessible and usable for all users. * **On-chain Analytics Platforms** A mature financial ecosystem requires transparent, real-time insights into network activity, risk exposure, asset flows, and application performance. Advanced analytics platforms allow developers, institutions, compliance teams, and users to assess liquidity conditions, monitor protocol health, and make informed decisions. Without robust analytics, DeFi operations remain opaque, limiting institutional participation and hindering ecosystem-wide risk management. * **Cross-Chain Bridges** Once a reliable data layer is established, the next requirement is enabling liquidity and user movement between Cardano and other ecosystems. Bridge and interoperability infrastructures allow assets to transfer securely across blockchains, opening access to external liquidity pools and new user bases. Without these routes, Cardano remains isolated, constraining inflows of capital, developers, and institutional participants. * **Pricing Oracle Infrastructures** Oracles provide the external data required for DeFi & RWA operations, including asset pricing, risk management, and stablecoin collateralization. While current native providers deliver early coverage, Cardano still lacks a globally recognized, institution-grade pricing oracle provider. This limitation restricts the ability of major stablecoin issuers and financial applications to deploy on Cardano, as their operations require data from trusted pricing oracle networks. Establishing a robust pricing oracle infrastructure is the foundational step in enabling higher-level financial systems. These integrations will provide the capability ‘rails’ for increased liquidity flow to Cardano which impact across ‘downstream’ metrics such as monthly active users, transaction volume, DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL), stablecoin liquidity/volume and more. However, people, incentives, products, and narratives are still needed to attract users and drive economic flow. As such, clear ecosystem KPIs, derived from the Cardano 2030 strategy that will be voted on via Info Action as a pillar of the 2026 budget, must be validated with the community as a separate workstream. Similar integrations are commonplace across leading L1 projects and, when combined with supporting activities and incentives to drive awareness and user onboarding, have demonstrated positive liquidity inflows and network value. ### **Current Gap & Urgency**: Despite being a top-10 blockchain by market cap, Cardano’s TVL as of November 25, 2025 remains around $191.86 million (Source: Defillama.com), which is still far below comparable ecosystems in DeFi trading volume and TVL. This gap highlights Cardano’s limited market reach and the absence of the core primitives that other networks treat as standard utilities. Without scaling these key components, Cardano risks falling further behind in attracting dApps, liquidity, institutional partners, and large-scale integrations such as tier-one stablecoins. Cardano’s growth now depends on institution grade pricing oracles and interoperability layers linking on chain applications to external networks and real world data. These integrations are capital intensive and time sensitive, yet foundational for every future financial primitive. This proposal is advanced now because priority negotiations have reached an executable stage and can be finalized upon funding. ### **Why Treasury Funding** The Cardano ecosystem needs foundational public infrastructure that every dApp depends on. Certain components cannot practically be built or licensed by individual teams; they are shared utilities that must be delivered at ecosystem scale, to unlock liquidity, attract users and developers, and enable institutional use cases. The Constitution states “The Cardano Community is expected to periodically propose one or more budgets for the ongoing operation, maintenance and future development of the Cardano”. By placing the budget under Intersect administration, all fund flows follow constitutional guardrails: separate auditable addresses, auto-abstain delegation, milestone validation, independent audits, dispute resolution, and public reporting. This ensures full community oversight from start to finish and reinforces decentralized governance across the entire integration pipeline. ### **Timeline & Current State of Governance** This Treasury Withdrawal is submitted in parallel with the “Cardano Critical Integrations Budget” Info Action and the recent “2025 Net Change Limit Extension” Info Action. Running these actions together allows DReps to consider the full budget and the concrete withdrawal at the same time. For the avoidance of doubt, this Treasury Withdrawal may only be enacted if, at the time of enactment: * The Cardano Critical Integrations Budget Info Action has been approved by DReps at the required threshold and has not been determined unconstitutional by the Constitutional Committee * The withdrawal is being made pursuant to an approved Net Change Limit; the Constitutional Committee is in a state of confidence, is at or above its minimum required size and has voted that this Treasury Withdrawal is Constitutional. While this Treasury Withdrawal runs in parallel with the related Info Actions it is slightly staggered, so that DReps are able to signal their support in conjunction with the ongoing Budget Info Action, and the Constitutional Committee members will have a period of time after the Budget Info Action voting closes to assess constitutionality of this Treasury Withdrawal within the applicable govActionLifetime. If any of these conditions are not met, including if the Cardano Critical Integrations Budget Info Action fails, if the Net Change Limit extension Info Action fails or is not in force for the relevant period, or if the Constitutional Committee is not restored to at least its minimum size, then the Treasury Withdrawal may be deemed unconstitutional. ### **Steering Committee** The Steering Committee provides high-level business direction and integration governance of this initiative. The committee oversees negotiation strategy, prioritization of integrations, and overall alignment with Cardano’s ecosystem needs. Its purpose is to ensure that each integration delivers clear strategic value and that decisions are made in the best interest of the ecosystem. The Steering Committee operates as a five-member group representing Input | Output Global, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Midnight Foundation and Intersect. These members act independently to maintain neutrality. Together, they evaluate which integrations should be onboarded first, assess ecosystem impact, and guide the negotiation of commercial and contracting terms with integration partners. The Steering Committee voting members will not be compensated from withdrawn funds and will each cover their own expenses. An amount of no more than 5% of the budget will be allocated to legal, custodian fees, administration, and compliance costs of the Administrator and connected parties. The Steering Committee comprises representatives from each of the following organizations: * Input | Output Group * Cardano Foundation * EMURGO * Midnight Foundation * Intersect (as a non-voting member acting in the capacity of the Administrator) While ultimate accountability and delegated authority sits with the Steering Committee, dedicated sub-working groups will take operational responsibility across key areas such as commercial, legal, technical delivery, and communications/community engagement. Conflict of interest policies will be applied to the Steering Committee and the Treasury Reserve Smart Contract Oversight Committee members when making allocation and disbursal decisions. In order to expedite these workstreams, a clear structure is required to ensure responsibility and accountability, both between the Steering Committee members organizations and to the community. While some elements of this structure are still being finalized, the intent is clear: collective action where coordination improves efficiency, combined with individual accountability so that responsibilities cannot become diffuse or ambiguous. For the avoidance of doubt, Intersect in its role as Administrator, commits to administering funds for the sole purpose as defined in the Budget Info Action and this Treasury Withdrawal.