Overview
How Cardano's proposed future governance model will work
Cardano's governance - three defining pillars
Cardano's governance structure is made up of three areas of interest:
On-chain decision making (best described in the specification, CIP-1694)
A Cardano Constitution
Institutions (such as the member-based organization, Intersect)
Each area delivers complementary features to the others and are intertwined to drive better outcomes both on and off chain.
On-chain Decision Making
Cardano Improvement Proposal-1694 (CIP-1694) describes a governance system to bring decision making for the Cardano network on-chain. It seeks to advance the current governance system ensuring every ada holder has a voice in Cardano’s governance.
There are three key governing bodies with roles on-chain to secure consent on proposals submitted by the community (otherwise known as governance actions). The three roles played by stakeholders are:
Delegate Representatives (DReps)
Constitutional Committee (CC)
Stake Pool Operators (SPOs)
Depending on the type of governance action, a combination of the three roles above will vote to either accept or reject a proposal.
The Cardano Constitution
In Q2 2024, the Interim Cardano Constitution was published for community review and included in the genesis files when the community approved Chang Update #1. The Interim Constitution is not a fully elaborated constitution, but rather a set of essential rules that were designed to ensure Cardano maintained stability during the interim period that Cardano’s governance would go through during 2024. For now, the Interim Constitution is still in effect and is being interpreted by the Interim Constitutional Committee who votes on the constitutionality of governance actions (as described in CIP-1694).
Later in Q2 of 2024, the drafting process began with the aim to move towards a final version ratified later in the year. The draft served as the primary input to global community workshops throughout 2024. With community input, the Draft Constitution built upon the essential guardrails described in the Interim into a more holistic set of principles and rules.
A total of 63 workshops were held with more than 1400 contributors. The final version of the draft was voted on by elected delegates from every workshop during the Constitutional Convention held in Buenos Aires and Nairobi in December 2024 with a resounding 95% votes in favor.
Following the Constitutional Convention, the delegate-approved Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution will be submitted as an Update Constitution governance action that will be voted on by DReps and the Interim Constitutional Committee for its ratification and thereby replacing the Interim Constitution, signalling Cardano fully entering the age of Voltaire.
Institutions
Institutions create the spaces and structures for the ecosystem to ideate, deliberate and recommend changes to the Cardano network. They can be informal collectives and alliances such as the many working groups formed by the community since Cardano launched, to newer larger organizations such as Intersect. In the example of Intersect, it will not only develop into a rallying point for community discussion, but will also work towards maintaining Cardano’s open source repositories and product backlogs.
Institutions support the feedback loop to ultimately drive better outcomes on-chain for the wider benefit of the Cardano ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
With these three overarching governance features, the ecosystem will have the foundation of a governance system that can be observed and refined over time by the ecosystem itself. The age of Voltaire has only just begun.
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