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On August 2, 2025, a governance proposal requesting 96 million ADA (approximately $71 million) for Cardano’s core engineering team passed with 73.93% of voting support.
Author: Sahil Thakur
The Cardano community has approved a major treasury withdrawal to fund protocol development, marking one of the largest decentralized blockchain funding decisions to date. On August 2, 2025, a governance proposal requesting 96 million ADA (approximately $71 million) for Cardano’s core engineering team passed with 73.93% of voting support.
This milestone represents a major step in Cardano’s Voltaire era, where ADA holders directly influence the blockchain’s future through on-chain voting.
The approved proposal, titled “2025 Input Output Engineering Core Development,” was submitted by Input Output Engineering (IOE)—Cardano’s main development team. It received over 73% “yes” votes from Delegated Representatives (DReps), along with support from 5 out of 7 Constitutional Committee (CC) members and validation from stake pool operators (SPOs). Under Cardano’s governance rules, this supermajority clears the threshold for treasury funding.
Funds will be disbursed in phases, based on milestone completion and subject to smart contract-enforced transparency and third-party oversight. The legal and contractual aspects are being managed by Intersect, a member-based group that supports Cardano’s ecosystem.
The approved funding targets a broad range of technical goals tied to Cardano’s 2025 development roadmap. Key areas include:
IOE will collaborate with key technical partners such as MLabs, Vacuumlabs, dcSpark, TxPipe, Sundae Labs, and Well-Typed to deliver the planned upgrades.
This vote is part of a larger governance cycle involving 39 treasury proposals totaling about 275 million ADA (~$200 million). These initiatives emerged from a community-driven budgeting process and include funding for scaling tech, developer tools, governance systems, and adoption programs.
Alongside the IOE proposal, other key proposals that have passed so far include:
Voting is ongoing for other proposals, with results expected by the end of Epoch 576 (August 17, 2025). ADA holders can track voting activity on platforms like gov.tools and Cexplorer.
Cardano’s treasury system represents a shift away from foundation-led grants toward fully decentralized funding. Treasury proposals must meet a high approval bar and receive community, SPO, and CC support to proceed. This structure ensures accountability and aligns funding with community priorities.
With more than $1 billion in total treasury reserves, future rounds of funding could reshape how open-source blockchain development is financed.
As of early August 2025, Cardano’s community is actively progressing on 39 approved or proposed actions, chosen from hundreds of community submissions and refined during a June 2025 budget poll. These initiatives span far beyond protocol development, encompassing tooling, governance, scaling solutions, and ecosystem adoption strategies. While the core protocol proposal from Input Output Engineering, requesting ~96M ADA, has garnered the most attention, the collective funding across all initiatives reaches approximately 275M ADA. With dynamic on-chain voting still underway for several proposals, current treasury withdrawal progress stands at roughly 67%.
| Proposal Name | Proposer | Requested Amount (ADA) | Brief Description | Status (as of Aug 4, 2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Input Output Engineering Core Development | Input Output Engineering | ~96M | Funds protocol R&D, scalability (e.g., Leios, Peras), smart contracts, and infrastructure upgrades. | Approved (73.93% yes) |
| Catalyst 2025 Proposal | Input Output | Not specified | Upgrades to Project Catalyst for sustainable funding and governance integration. | Approved |
| Midgard – Optimistic Rollups | Not specified | Not specified | Scaling solution using optimistic rollups for faster, cheaper transactions. | Approved |
| Hydra and Mithril Maintenance | Input Output | Not specified | Core scaling and fast-sync protocol development. | In voting |
| Tweag’s Haskell and Formal Verification | Tweag | Not specified | Maintains libraries for network stability and verification. | In voting |
| MLabs’ Developer Tooling (Plutarch, etc.) | MLabs | Not specified | Sustains tools for DApp and infrastructure development. | In voting |
| Leios | Input Output | Not specified | High-throughput protocol innovation for reduced finality. | In voting |
| Peras | Input Output | Not specified | Similar to Leios, focused on performance scaling. | In voting |
| Hardware Wallet Maintenance & Ledger Rewrite | Not specified | Not specified | Enhances security and access for hardware wallets. | In voting |
| Expanding Stablecoin / Native Asset Support | EMURGO | 4M | Improves fiat ramps, wallets, and exchange support for assets like USDA. | In voting |
| Market Making & Listing Support Pool | Flowdesk (via Intersect) | 3.1M | Boosts token liquidity and exchange listings. | In voting |
News of the vote’s success contributed to a modest rebound in ADA’s price. Community sentiment appears strong, with voters showing confidence in IOE’s leadership and the broader technical roadmap.
As more proposals reach final votes in the coming weeks, Cardano’s experiment in on-chain governance continues to set precedents for decentralized ecosystems worldwide.
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