Budget Reconciliation workshop #1 – Day 3, Summary
Governance and Budget Process
🗳️ The Ecclesia polling tool, an MVP flexible on-chain voting system developed by community members, facilitates the budget reconciliation process for determining 2025 Cardano ecosystem spending.
💼 Intersect, as administrator for over 200 budget proposals, will manage contract creation, signing, financial processes, delivery assurance, and auditing for a projected 1000+ milestones in the next 12 months.
📊 The budget reconciliation process allows DREPs to determine treasury spending for 2025, staying within the net change limit while having the flexibility to go below it if desired.
🔍 Quarterly meetings by Intersect’s budget committee and an annual external audit ensure fiscal accountability, with openness to DREP feedback for proposal adjustments.
Financial Management and Transparency
💰 Intersect’s budget proposal requests $10M at a 2:1 ADA-to-USD rate, focusing on dollar value, with unused funds returned to treasury if ADA value drops below $0.50.
📈 The proposed 20M ADA ask at $0.50 value is unlikely to fully materialise due to market fluctuations at milestone-based disbursements, with a suggestion for quarterly disbursement to cover administration costs.
🔒 Smart contracts will support stablecoin payouts (e.g., USDM, USDA) if deemed appropriate by Intersect, using current smart contract capabilities.
📝 Template contracts for different delivery scenarios include fiduciary duties, with milestone tracking and payments tied to milestone achievement.
Community Engagement and Decentralisation
🌐 Intersect aims to become a supportive, decentralised institution aligned with the cyberpunk ethos, envisioning itself as a small piece in the ecosystem needed for Cardano to reach a $100 billion to $1 trillion market cap.
🔧 Intersect plans to make governance tools fully open source in the next 3-6 months, allowing community funding for feature development and enabling direct decision-making authority over the roadmap.
🗣️ The one-member, one-vote model allows members to have their voice heard on committees, with a low $10 membership fee, which helps maintain an accessible and inclusive ethos.
Technical and Infrastructure Focus
🛠️ TSC’s core budget proposal aims to maintain existing staff and essential functions, with a tight definition to avoid resource grabs and ensure continuity of critical technical integration.
📚 Intersect stewards over 100 GitHub repositories, including 40-50 core Cardano node repos, representing significant open-source assets for upgrades and technical features.
🏗️ Prioritising funding for critical core functionalities like layer 0 infrastructure and governance development is crucial to avoid losing potential for the biggest bull run in Cardano’s history.
Marketing and Ecosystem Growth
📣 Marketing is identified as key to Cardano’s success over the next six months, with the marketing committee working on stability and programs to effectively promote Cardano.
💡 Avoiding funding for commercially viable, self-sustainable products like stablecoins initially, focusing instead on core infrastructure and governance as necessary prerequisites.
Proposal Management and Auditing
🔄 Implementing measures to prevent double funding of projects in both Intersect and Catalyst, coordinating between funding sources to ensure projects are not funded twice for the same work.
📊 Utilising tools like 1694.io to swiftly detect overlapping proposals funded by Catalyst and proposed again, identifying potential duplicate funding requests.
🔗 Establishing a data standard for treasury withdrawals to ensure interoperability across tools and avoid being locked into a single auditing solution.
Process Improvements
📅 Setting fixed time periods for proposal submission and refinement based on feedback, followed by a voting phase, to streamline the process and build confidence in Intersect and the project.
📝 Requiring proposers to clearly indicate changes in revised proposals, ideally with a change log listing revisions and their rationale, to facilitate efficient review by delegates.
🔍 Implementing a process where proposers can submit change requests, reviewed and approved by a community group, allowing for milestone adjustments with community legitimacy.
🏷️ Categorically defining which proposals should go to treasury funding and which to Catalyst, preventing treasury access from becoming a Catalyst 2.0 initiative.
