Why I’m Stepping Down as a Cardano DRep and Why Governance Isn’t Working
Episode by Peter Bui on June 13th, 2026
Cardano governance was meant to expand participation, distribute decision-making, and give everyday ADA holders a meaningful way to steer the ecosystem. In this episode, Peter explains why he is stepping down as a DRep anyway, arguing that the current model asks for too much time, creates too much social pressure, and leaves too many important lines blurred.
This is not a broad attack on governance itself. It is a candid assessment of what the DRep role feels like from inside the process right now, and why Peter no longer believes it is a good use of his time in its current form.
Why Peter Is Leaving the DRep Role
Peter says he will deregister as a Delegate Representative at the end of the month, and he makes the practical implication clear straight away: anyone currently delegated to him should start looking for another active DRep. His argument is not that Cardano governance is beyond repair, but that the present structure is too immature, too demanding, and too draining for him to continue participating responsibly.
At the centre of the issue is the mismatch between what the role looked like in theory and what it has become in practice. Early on, the DRep process was often framed as something that might require roughly an hour a month. Peter says the reality has been nothing like that. Instead, it has turned into a recurring time sink built around reviewing proposals, understanding budget actions, speaking with teams, reading rationales, and deciding where to cast or withhold support.
The Social Pressure Around Voting
One of Peter’s main frustrations is the steady stream of direct outreach from people wanting his vote. He describes getting regular emails, messages, and DMs from proposal teams or supporters trying to secure backing. While public advocacy is one thing, he argues that private lobbying creates a bad dynamic, especially when the person being asked to vote already knows many people across the ecosystem.
That matters because the DRep role is meant to represent independent judgement. If every vote is surrounded by social pressure, friendships, or expectations, it becomes harder to evaluate proposals purely on merit. Peter says that pressure can even leave him feeling pushed toward a vote he would not otherwise want to cast, which undermines confidence in the process.
Conflict of Interest Is Still Too Fuzzy
Another major issue is the lack of clarity around conflict of interest. Peter points out that the obvious cases are easy enough: if a proposal benefits him directly, he should not vote on it. The difficulty comes in the grey areas. He is involved across multiple parts of the Cardano ecosystem, including ambassador roles and other ongoing work, so people can reasonably question whether a vote is ever fully detached from those relationships.
Rather than risk voting through unresolved grey zones, Peter says he often ends up abstaining. That creates a second problem: if people delegated to him expecting active representation, but he is abstaining repeatedly because the boundaries are unclear, the arrangement stops making sense for both sides.
Time Burden, Fatigue, and the Post-Catalyst Shift
The other central theme is fatigue. Peter says he has spent countless late nights reviewing proposals, trying to interpret technical material, speaking with teams, and making sense of the volume of governance activity that has built up this year. He points to the wider budget process, treasury actions, and the proposal review cycle around Intersect as examples of how much reading and judgement the role now demands.
In his view, the end of Project Catalyst shifted more of that burden directly into the governance path. Smaller projects that might once have gone through a separate funding lane are now pushing through on-chain or budget-driven processes instead. That means more proposals, more scrutiny, more debate, and more time pressure on people expected to vote sensibly.
Peter is blunt about the trade-off. The time spent reading proposals could have gone into making more videos, working on his business pipelines, or finishing other projects already on his plate. For him, the opportunity cost has become too high.
No Clear Compensation, Plenty of Scrutiny
He also argues that the role remains structurally undercompensated. Voting requires time, attention, research, and on-chain activity, but the practical reward is often little more than criticism from people unhappy with a result. He notes that discussions about compensating DReps have existed for years, yet no durable solution has emerged, and parts of the community remain strongly opposed to any compensation model at all.
That leaves DReps carrying a serious accountability burden without a stable framework that recognises the work involved. Combined with accusations of shilling, disputes over voting decisions, and ongoing community drama, Peter says it becomes hard to justify continuing.
What He Recommends Instead
Peter does not tell viewers to abandon Cardano governance forever. Instead, he draws a distinction between participating at a basic level and taking on the DRep role as an ongoing responsibility. If people want to vote for themselves, he points to his DRep site and the broader governance tooling ecosystem as useful entry points, with gov.tools described as the easiest place to begin.
But his personal advice is clear: in the current form, most people are better off not becoming deeply involved as DReps unless they fully understand the time commitment and are prepared for the surrounding politics. He believes governance can improve, and he expects it will, but he no longer wants to keep carrying the cost while the model is still this rough.
Key Takeaways
- Peter is stepping down as a Cardano DRep at the end of the month and is asking current delegates to consider moving to another active DRep.
- He argues that constant lobbying, direct messages, and social pressure have made governance feel unhealthy and difficult to navigate fairly.
- Conflict-of-interest lines are too blurry for someone involved across multiple roles in the ecosystem, which often pushes him toward abstaining rather than voting.
- The time burden has grown far beyond what many participants originally expected, especially after the shift from Catalyst-style funding to heavier on-chain and Intersect proposal review.
- He believes the current model does not properly compensate DReps for the hours of review, voting, and public accountability involved.
- Despite stepping away, he still expects Cardano governance to evolve and improve over time, just not in its current form.
Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. Always do your own research.
Text Transcript
So, some of you may have heard that I am stepping down as a Delegate Representative, a D-Rep within the Cardano ecosystem, and there are many reasons behind this, and I will list them for you in a moment. But overall, the governance process is still so new within the Cardano ecosystem. There’s a lot, definitely, definitely a lot of growing pains at the moment. And I’m sure this whole process will grow and evolve over the years to be smoothed out, to make the process a lot easier for people to participate and vote within the governance ecosystem.
There’s so many proposals out there, there are so many cool projects building, but seeing how things are at the moment, I just can’t dedicate the time to this process until it changes completely. So as of the end of this month, I’m giving it a bit of time, I will be deregistering as a Delegate Representative. So if anyone out there is delegated to my D-Rep profile and is relying on me to vote on your behalf, it’s probably a good time to look for a smaller and a different D-Rep that has the time and energy to continue with this process. Now let me list off a couple of reasons why I decided to delist myself or deregister as a D-Rep.
First off, the soliciting and begging for votes. I get constant emails, I get constant DMs and messages from people asking me to vote for their proposals. I just wouldn’t beg for votes. If I have a proposal out there, I’ll put news out there, I’ll put a post in general, but I wouldn’t dip into people’s DMs and essentially their private space and beg for votes.
I find it, I guess it’s beneath me to do that, and when people come to me asking for those votes, I find it not really good. I don’t like it myself, so it’s something that I wouldn’t do, and when people do it to me, I kind of don’t like it. I understand what they’re trying to do, trying to get the votes to try and push up and get support for it, but I don’t like how that whole process is handled. And sometimes I feel pressured into voting in a particular way for someone that I know in the ecosystem, and you may have seen in some of my rationales that I put on change, I literally write, I feel forced to vote yes on this, and that’s my rationale.
So you may have seen that on a couple of my posts, but that’s how it is sometimes, and that’s one thing I really dislike about the governance process. The other big thing is conflict of interest, and where you draw that line of conflict of interest. So, in general, yes, if it’s my proposal and I gain direct benefit from it, then yeah, of course, I wouldn’t vote for it because it’s a direct conflict of interest, but then how far do you stretch that? I’m also a Kadano ambassador, I ambassador for many different projects, I’m a Midnight ambassador as well, so where do I stop in regards to that conflict of interest point?
I could say, I benefit for everything, I’m a state port operator, so anything that makes state port operating better will benefit me, therefore I can’t vote on any of those things. It’s not a direct line of conflict of interest, but it kind of stretches into it, and because of that, people scrutinize you for those particular aspects, and because I have so many hats, so many roles, I work with so many projects, I talk to so many people, people say there is a conflict of interest there. So, I don’t know where to draw that line, or have that clearly defined, and as a result, I just abstain from everything. And if you’re delegating to me, expecting me to vote in your best interest, and I’m just simply abstaining because it’s a conflict of interest for me, what’s the point?
There is absolutely no point. The other thing is being labelled a shill, or a scammer, or you know, those type of aspects. I’m working on a particular project, I’m working with particular people, and when I promote their posts, or I may not be even working with these particular people, people assume that I am shilling their project. I am associated with the project in some sort of way, when I’m completely not.
So you see a lot of my ex-posts and videos, I write, this is not a paid promotion. The only time that I do, I tag it clearly, so you see in the top of the video, and in the ex-posts as well. So I make that really clear, I make that as clear as possible, but I still get accused of being a shill for various projects. So I step away from dereps.
The other thing is the scrutiny, and the backlash on how I vote. I vote yes on something, I vote no for something, and then I get scrutinised for it, I ask why, I put a rationale up, but still it’s not good enough. So I kind of have to step back for that too. Now the other really big thing is the time burden, and the lack of time and energy to commit to this entire process.
Over the last month and a half, I’ve spent countless hours on the derep process, reviewing proposals, talking to projects, interviewing projects, and it is just a massive time sink, and it’s not worth my time doing this. I can be doing something else that is more productive, earning more revenue, earning more money, working on my business, working on myself, going to the gym, working out, getting more sleep. But no, I’ve spent countless late nights working on proposals, reading through them, trying to understand them, and most of the time, I still don’t understand what I’m reading. I don’t know what I’m analysing here.
Some of them get very technical, and I have to talk to people to get a better understanding of what I’m actually reviewing and voting on. And because I lack the time, I have to abstain on things, because I simply don’t understand the depth of knowledge that is required. I don’t have that depth of knowledge required to vote accordingly. So I have to step back from a lot of those things as well, and vote abstain.
That’s a little bit unfortunate too. With this whole process, like I said, it has been going on for a while. So we’ve seen the governance season open early this year, with the new net change limit, that 350 million ADA set, and then people can start withdrawing from that amount of ADA. Now, since that process started, there’s been countless amounts of on-chain governance actions, and then of course, the Intersect proposal process.
I think there’s been about 101 or so proposals, 99 to 101, somewhere around there. And it takes a long time. And this has been going on for a long period of time, and I’m just fatigued. It’s now June, and I’ve gone through so many things, I’ve read so many things, and I’ve just had enough of it.
Originally when the whole DREP process started, we were promised maybe an hour a month. That sounds good. Don’t need compensation for that. Don’t need to spend additional time.
And that was fine. But as time progressed, things get more and more cumbersome, more time-consuming. And I know, Project Catalyst doesn’t exist anymore. And I think that’s where a lot of this burden comes from.
Project Catalyst took away a lot of these small projects that were trying to bid for cash and get things done. But without Project Catalyst, people are now going on-chain directly, or through this Intersect budget process. And as a result, we’re seeing more time being spent on those governance actions and proposals to review them and vote on them and whatnot. So it’s not a good process as it is at the moment.
That definitely needs to change. And it’s been a long time of going through all those proposals. The other thing around this is the lack of compensation, the lack of reward for all this. It’s a tireless job.
You constantly work on this stuff. You do all the work that’s needed. Maybe you get some thanks, but that’s pretty much it. You spend AIDA to do the voting as well.
You spend time to do the vote. But that’s pretty much it. There’s always been talk about compensation. Ever since I did the first initial DREP workshop back in 2023, we modelled and looked at different ways that DREPs could be compensated, at least for their time and transactions that they put on-chain for this process.
But none of that was really put in place. And there’s a large portion of the community that believe that no one should be compensated for any of this. And it’s going to be very hard to fight that part of the community to get any sort of compensation. And as a result, probably won’t ever happen.
But you know what? There are thousands, well, maybe just about a thousand DREPs out there. Someone else with time and energy can step up. Maybe they are good.
Maybe they’re not. I don’t know. But on my website now, drep.learncadano, at the very bottom, I’ve put in a random DREP generator where you click on the random dice roll and it will delegate to a DREP for you within that dice roll change. So you can find a new DREP quite quickly and easily under 10 million and is actually active at that point in time.
The last aspect is the toxic community that we have at the moment. I know price of ADA is very low. It makes things very difficult. People are fighting for funds and a lot of the FUDsters are out there at the moment trying to bring things down and fight against people trying to build up the chain or whatever it is, whatever the latest drama is.
And I personally don’t want to be involved in it. If you see me post a video or anything, I avoid all that drama. I don’t talk about those projects that are creating the drama. I don’t talk about the drama itself.
I’m just simply not interested in that type of aspect. And when there are big headlines or something and everyone’s trying to, you know, I just, I don’t care. It’s just a big waste of time and energy. So I avoid the toxic side and I’ll try and filter it out so you guys don’t ever see any of that as well.
But you know, that’s my reasons why I need to step down as a DREP. I can focus my time and energy on creating videos. All that time that I spent on reading proposals, I could have created more videos for you guys. I could have finished off the bounty platform program that I’m doing.
I could have finished off the lead generation pipeline that I’m doing for my business. So all of these different things I could be doing, which are a lot more productive than reading proposals. And I think all the proposals that I voted for, maybe three of them have gotten through. If you have a look at this AdaTool website at the moment, at the intersect process, there are nine proposals out of the 69 proposals that are going to get through and potentially funded.
And that also depends on what is remaining in the net change limit. If there isn’t enough budget in the net change limit, when this goes on chain for a treasury withdrawal, it won’t go ahead. It won’t be voted and the ADA won’t be withdrawn out for these projects. So it’s a very hard process at the moment, the way things are.
I do believe that this whole thing will change. How long will it take for things to change? I don’t know. What will it change into?
What form? There are many different ideas and concepts being floated at the moment. I did a big post on it myself. It’s on my ex profile.
I’ve seen Ed and stuff do a big post. I’ve seen Jack Briggs from Intersect do a big post as well. And there are actually many more documentations and models and ideas being presented by the Cardano community as well. So governance will change.
Governance will get better in general. But in the form that it is in right now, I don’t want to participate in it. And this is probably when you expect me to say something like, it’s good if you guys want to participate in it, check out my tutorials, go ahead, be part of it. No, I highly recommend that you don’t.
It is extremely time consuming and is not worth the effort in the current form that it is in at the moment. By all means, set up a Cardano wallet. Set yourself up as a self-voting D-Rep. So you can be anonymous.
So people don’t know who you are when you’re voting. So you don’t need a public profile. And go on chain and vote on the things that you think deserve to be voted for. Use the gov.tools website.
That is probably the best place to go. It has all the wallets set up and has all of the infrastructure and proposals all in one place. So it’s a good starting place. And then you can evolve and move on to other platforms and other ecosystems where you can vote and use dashboards and stuff like that.
But gov.tools is the first starting point. But personally, for me, don’t do it. That’s that’s my word of advice. You can spend your time working with a project, working with something else, or just involving yourself in the Cardano ecosystem on a grassroots level or on a project level.
And that is a much better use of your time, I think. That’s it, guys. That’s all I have for this one. Not very positive for this particular video.
But if you got something out of it, if you’ve got a comment on something, leave a comment down below. Let me know what you guys think. Are you going to participate in governance? Are you delegated to me at the moment and need to redelegate?
If so, I apologize. But like always, guys, if you enjoyed the video, you got something out of it, hit that thumbs up, like, subscribe, notification bell, YouTube memberships down below, buy me a coffee links there as well if you want to support that way. And as always, try and stay positive, try and do the best to build this chain up. It’s a tough ride out there at the moment.
I’ll see you guys in the next video.
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