Key terms and Resources

• Interim Constitution - Until a final Cardano Constitution has been developed and ratified by the community - a programme of consultation that will take place during 2024 - a set of interim rules will be required to support the transition. The interim Constitution will define both the on-chain ‘technical’ and the off-chain ‘governance’ guardrails needed to maintain the security and reliability of the blockchain. Without an interim Constitution, the interim Constitutional Committee cannot fulfill its role in ensuring (within a limited scope) the constitutionality and technical soundness of on-chain governance actions. The process to develop an interim Constitution started by defining both technical and governance guardrails within committees of Intersect. As the steering bodies within this organization, committees provide recommendations for the Cardano community. Once finalized, the content of the interim Constitution will be included in the Chang upgrade (see CIP-1694 or our recent article on the milestones and key terms). Also, development is underway for technical guardrails within a smart contract framework, which will support the interim Constitution on-chain.

• Draft Constitution - The starting text for constitutional workshops to review, debate, and update. This document serves as a revision of the Interim Constitution and represents a mid-way point in the development of a final Cardano Constitution.

• Cardano Constitution - As referred to in this document, this is the constitution ratified by ada-holders through on-chain voting following the Constitutional Convention.

• Delegate Representative (DRep) - A governing body of the CIP-1694 governance system who votes on governance actions. They are concerned about more than constitutional matters.

• Constitutional Delegate and Alternate - Selected at the constitutional workshops to be a representative of the Cardano community to attend the Constitutional Convention.

• Constitutional Workshops - A series of up to fifty (50) workshops to review the Draft Constitution. They will be hosted by select community members around the world. Constitutional Workshops will select Constitutional Delegates and Alternates who are responsible for attending the Constitutional Convention to approve the Draft Constitution.

• Constitutional Convention - A multi-day event for Constitutional Delegates and Alternates to attend, with the goal of making final decisions on any outstanding questions within the Draft Constitution to approve, through 1-delegate, 1-vote. If approved at the convention, the final constitution will be put on-chain for ada holders to ratify.