Intersect’s Technical Steering Committee (TSC) requests a budget of 82.2M ada from the Cardano treasury to support a programme of core infrastructure development and maintenance over a 12 month period planned to commence in June 2025. Work items will be selected according to community needs and priorities in accordance with the Cardano roadmap that will be agreed with the community. This will enable the Technical Steering Committee to fulfil an essential constitutional role in providing good technical oversight of core infrastructure work and in maximising its delivery potential for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem as a whole. Immediate roadmap priorities that have already been identified by the community include:

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• Ouroboros Leios, which will enable greater transaction throughput, and potentially also larger smart contracts;
• Ouroboros Peras, which will enable faster settlement (in the order of several minutes);
• Midgard, which will improve speed, scalability and cost for Layer 2 solutions;
• Nested transactions, which enable Babel fees;
• Hydra, which enables greater Layer 2 throughput;
• Mithril, which enables snapshotting and secure signing;
• Support for alternative node implementations.

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Other priorities that have been identified include support for Zero Knowledge (ZK) proofs, improved on-chain governance, improvements to the incentives scheme to benefit the SPO community, integration of new data structures to support lower memory usage in the node and DB-Sync, support for those developing alternative node implementations, and better management of high transaction load. All of these are considered in this proposal.Core infrastructure maintenance priorities include, but are not limited to:

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1. The Cardano node - which supports the Cardano network as a whole;
2. DB-Sync - which supports many important applications;
3. Daedalus - which represents a unique full node wallet;
4. Hardware Wallets - which are relied on by many users;
5. Mithril - which is used by SPOs to enable fast bootstrapping.

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The budget will be distributed using a public tendering process that will enable the community to obtain the best value for money, ensure proper coordination of technical effort, maintain security and performance guarantees, coordinate rollout and deployment, and mitigate development and ecosystem risks. The budget includes provisions to validate the technical and financial delivery of each project in line with standard practice for public procurement. Reports will be provided to enable DReps and ecosystem partners to track progress and monitor delivery. Wherever possible, work must contribute to the public open source repositories that are maintained by Intersect on behalf of the community.

Cardano is at a critical juncture. The founding entities have successfully delivered a top-10 blockchain that is built to last, that is highly decentralized, that is resilient, robust and reliable, and that has an excellent system of on-chain community governance. This strong foundation needs to be maintained and to be carefully enhanced so that Cardano can deliver to its full potential in terms of scaling transaction throughput, enabling new L2 solutions, attracting new users, expanding utilisation by current users, and increasing diversity. This needs to be done in a coordinated way that works with the Cardano community to deliver the best possible solutions for the benefit of the Cardano ecosystem as a whole, including both current and future participants.

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Objectives The main objectives of this proposal are to:

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1. Ensure that essential core infrastructure is properly developed and maintained, in order to assure the long term sustainability of Cardano;
2. Create a stable and certain technical base for those building on and using Cardano, aligned with the community-agreed Cardano roadmap;
3. Ensure that technical concerns are properly addressed in all core infrastructure delivery, including technical feasibility, performance, security and long-term sustainability;
4. Ensure that long-term as well as short-term development goals can be supported;
5. Ensure that integration, deployment and rollout of core infrastructure development is properly considered in all work that is carried out;
6. Establish a framework for responsible use of treasury funds;
7. Create an orderly and defensible process for funding necessary core infrastructure work;
8. Ensure that DReps and the community at large are fully involved in the development process.
9. Ensure that proposals are submitted to the DReps not only from the perspective and interests of the proposers, but according to the needs of the protocol, the ecosystem and all participants. This includes commissioning tasks that have not been yet proposed by suppliers since they may not consider the issues relevant to their current or future interests.

The primary advantages of the TSC approach are:

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1. Consistency. All work items will be evaluated according to the same criteria.

2. Transparency. All funded work will engage with and report consistently to the community.

3. Avoidance of technical gaps. Vendors can be sought for all necessary work items.

4. Proper Prioritisation. Work items can be prioritised in line with community needs, rather than vendor wishes.

5. Avoidance of duplication. Duplicate work items can be eliminated.

6. Complementarity. Where work items can benefit from each other, this can be identified.

7. Conflict resolution. Where work items conflict in scope, this can be resolved.

8. Coordination of Effort. Coordinated integration and rollout plans are necessary, e.g. for hard forks.

9. Flexibility of Delivery. Discovery tasks can be carried out where necessary, new work can be undertaken as it is needed, and unsuccessful work can be terminate

The community will ultimately receive a coherent and well-managed programme of technical work that will maintain, develop and enhance Cardano in its dominant role as a technically excellent top-10 blockchain. Work will be selected to align with the community agreed Cardano roadmap.

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Roadmap items that are expected to be progressed in the 12-month projected period, based on community feedback to previous proposals and technical needs/importance include:

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• Ouroboros Leios, which will enable greater transaction throughput, and potentially also larger smart contracts;
• Ouroboros Peras, which will enable faster settlement (in the order of several minutes);
• Midgard, which will improve speed, scalability and cost for Layer 2 solutions;
• Nested transactions, which enable Babel fees;
• Hydra, which enables greater Layer 2 throughput;
• Mithril, which enables snapshotting and secure signing;
• Support for alternative node implementations.

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Other priorities that have been identified include support for Zero Knowledge (ZK) proofs, improved on-chain governance, improvements to the incentives scheme to benefit the SPO community, integration of new data structures to support lower memory usage in the node and DB-Sync, support for those developing alternative node implementations, and better management of high transaction load. All of these are considered in this proposal

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Many of these projects will eventually cover multiple years. Projects will be scoped realistically based on current and expected Software Readiness Levels which will define a set of standardized and consistent milestones and deliverables. Projects will include provisions for integration and rollout where appropriate (e.g. via a hard fork).

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Core infrastructure maintenance priorities include, but are not limited to:

1. The Cardano node - which supports the Cardano network as a whole;
2. DB-Sync - which supports many important applications;
3. Daedalus - which represents a unique full node wallet;
4. Hardware Wallets - which are relied on by many users;
5. Mithril - which is used by SPOs to enable fast bootstrapping

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We will also carry a programme of community engagement via Technical Town Halls, Technical Working Groups, community workshops, blog posts etc. This programme will include regular progress reports on the work that is carried out by funded work items, with periodic open technical workshops.

Core Roadmap Development: including necessary integration, deployment and rollout - 47,840,000 ADA ($23,920,000)

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Core Infrastructure Maintenance: as required to maintain Cardano’s position as a top-10 blockchain - 19,136,000 ADA ($9,568,000)

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Infrastructure Operational Costs: including cloud provider costs etc - 808,800 ADA($404,400)

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Applied Research (distinct from fundamental research into e.g. new consensus) as needed to progress the development of the Core Roadmap or answer questions that arise during development - 5,980,000 ADA ($2,999,000)

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Operating Costs for the TSC, including community communications, funding for community events and limited travel funding to attend necessary meetings and events - 480,000 ADA ($240,000)

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Support for Sub-committees: reimbursement for community volunteers including the Parameter Committee, the Security Council, the Proposal Triage Group and Technical Working Groups. - 1,000,000 ADA ($500,000)

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Contingency Funding approx 10% to be held for programme risks throughout the year - 7,000,000 ADA($3,500,000)

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Total: 82,204,800 ADA ($41,102,400)

The project duration is planned to be 12 months from June 2025 to May 2026

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We estimate approximately 122 FTEs (Full Time Equivalent Developers) will be deployed across various suppliers, broken down into Core Roadmap Development (80); Core Infrastructure Maintenance (32); Necessary Applied Research (10).

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In addition, we expect approximately 50-100 community members will be deployed on a part-time basis to fulfil necessary evaluation, technical review and other roles in the Technical Steering Committee and subsidiary bodies.

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We will be supported by part-time community technical communications officer and meeting organiser. Team Quality As described in the full proposal, the Technical Steering Committee and its associated sub-committees and working groups represents a highly experienced body of technical expertise that spans Cardano, providing both breadth and depth of technical expertise, including all current Cardano developers via the corresponding Technical Working Groups.

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Roadmap and maintenance suppliers will be selected based on their technical appropriateness to undertake the corresponding work item, including experience with the Cardano ecosystem. This will generally be the proposer of each roadmap work item. Full consideration will be given to the best way to onboard new suppliers as part of funded work items. This will be assisted by the ability to bid by lot.

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While consideration will be given to obtaining best value for money, this will generally be achieved by selecting the best technical expertise rather than necessarily the lowest bid for a work item. Cost per FTE will not be the dominant assessment criterion when selecting suppliers.

Kevin Hammond - Chair

Kevin Hammond chairs the Technical Steering Committee, co-chairs the Intersect Parameter Sub-Committee, and serves on the Security Council and Hard Fork Working Group.

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As Head of Software Engineering for Cardano at IOG and IOE, I was at the heart of Cardano’s technical development for over five years, from the rollout of the Incentivised Testnet in 2019, through the successful deliveries of Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Vasil and Valentine hard forks, that have delivered tremendous value to the Cardano ecosystem through the development of on-chain incentives, NFTs, smart contracts, reference scripts and numerous other improvements, up to and including the delivery of the Chang and Plomin Hard Forks that have collectively enabled on-chain decentralised governance through CIP-1694. I also have a strong relevant technical background in performance analysis, parallel and distributed computing, optimisation, and real-time systems, having published over 130 research papers and obtained over 30 national and international research grants. I have led many of these research grants, which have involved coordinating large teams across many countries. These projects are almost universally rated as delivering excellent value for money and producing outstanding results within budget and on time.

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Adam Dean - Vice Chair

Adam Dean is Vice Chair of the Technical Steering Committee and co-Chair of the Open Source Committee.

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Adam has been a member of the Cardano Community since 2019 during the ITN and HTN phases where he was a stake pool operator, eventually running an NFT/Token minting platform (Buffy Bot), and then moving into community event organization and planning (cNFTcon, NFTxLV). Through it all he has strongly contributed to the open source and developer ecosystem of Cardano where, when, and how he could.

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Johnny Kelly

Johnny Kelly has 6 years experience working with On-Site Asset Maintenance Contract Management for Residential and Commercial Real Estate locations as well as generating Quarterly and Annual Accounts Reports for over 200 Real Estate Clients. Serves as a part of the Governance Parameters Working Group, was a co-author of a Report from this Group relating to the Initial Recommendations for Governance Parameters Settings as a part of Cardano's CIP-1694 implementation. Served as a DRep. Is currently a Non-Custodial Co-Management SysOps Engineer (Tech Janitor) for 3 Stake Pools on Cardano, providing SPO Server Maintenance and Monitoring without access to his Clients’ cold keys.

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Johnny regularly provides Pro Bono support to people who wish to set up their own Development Infrastructures, or who wish to set up an SPO Infrastructure. Is a Cardano Keystone Wallet Ambassador working with them to ensure full compatibility with Cardano Ecosystem CIP Standards where possible. Is a tester of their upcoming Firmware implementations to give feedback on the UX/UI experience for Cardano Users.

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Markus Gufler

Markus Gufler is the Technical Community lead at the Cardano Foundation. He has 25 years of experience in the Internet Service Provider sector as CTO of his own company which has served thousands of customers, integration partners and clients. This means hands-on experience in all areas of procurement, design, project management and quality control of networks, hardware, operating systems, software, applications and monitoring. He has been a community member since 2017, developer of CLIO explorer, RockPi StakePool node, ITN stake pool, Ambassador, developer and service provider of the Topology Updater service, co-founder of CNTools, Testnet and Mainnet stakepool operator, inventor of SPO-poll and the blockperf monitoring project.

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Ben Hart

Ben Hart is Chief Technology Officer at MLabs, a Cardano supplier. In addition to his role of the Technical Steering Committee, he also serves on the Membership and Community Committee, and has served as a voting member of the Membership and Community Committee, the MCC's working group on ecosystem grants, as well as the Core Infrastructure Roadmap Working group as a Co-Chair over the course of 2024.

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Since early 2021, Ben has worked in various capacities to assist many Cardano businesses and services launch, and has worked directly with IOG to deliver core Cardano functionality. He was also a co-chair of the Cardano Defi Alliance, and the Cardano Developer Experience Working Group.

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Nicholas Clarke Nick Clarke is Director of Engineering at Tweag, a major supplier of Cardano expertise. As a mathematician turned software engineer, Nick has over 15 years of experience in various forms of software R&D, working in data mining, genome analysis and distributed systems. He formed an important part of the Cardano ledger team, playing a critical role in developing the ledger for the Shelley hard fork that introduced staking and incentives. Most recently he’s been employed for the past 7 years at Tweag, a software consultancy, where he’s worked in projects across pharma, data processing, build systems and finance. In the last two years Nick has taken over as director of engineering, where run a department of some 20 people, many of whom are working on Cardano projects.

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Neil Davies

Neil Davies has over 7 years experience within the Cardano ecosystem, working within Predictable Network Solutions Limited he has had significant input into the design and implementation of the ‘system’ aspects of Cardano (data diffusion, the node architecture etc). He has also contributed to the initial design of Hydra and, most recently, the evaluation of the Peras and Leios designs. He has a long history of publishing on issues of performance and system design, including several related to the Cardano development. He has experience defining, tendering and managing large scale international projects (in EU framework programs) and running a small (but beautifully formed) distributed systems performance consultancy for over 20 years.

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Within Intersect Neil is currently chair of the Network Parameters Advisory Group, part of the Parameter Committee and has been a member of the Technical Steering Committee since it was formed in October 2024.

The proposal includes a sensible provision for ongoing maintenance of core Infrastructure items, including but not limited to: the Cardano node; DB-Sync; Daedalus; Hardware Wallets; and Mithril. New work that is developed under the core roadmap will be maintained on the same basis as these existing items, forming the subject of budget proposals for 2026 and beyond. Maintenance will be assisted by the strong focus on open source, non-proprietory software, and by the use of good software engineering practices, which have successfully ensured the development of high assurance software for Cardano.

The Technical Steering Committee itself unanimously endorses this proposal. It believes that this is the best way to manage community funds wisely and effectively. The proposal is designed to align with the needs of the Cardano Constitution in forming an orderly system of governance that can ensure the long-term security, viability and sustainability of Cardano.

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Roadmap priorities have been discussed with the Product Committee and reflect open community involvement, endorsed by an on-chain Info governance action that has received almost 65% of the DRep vote. Work items listed here are ones that have been already submitted for consideration by Intersect and discussed by the community, prioritised by community interest (including evidence of support for each project) and technical need.

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The proposal itself is based on earlier budget drafts that have been widely circulated for discussion within Intersect, including by the Budget Committee, Open Source Committee, Product Committee and Intersect members as well as with the wider community. The proposal takes into account community feedback on those drafts. It also builds on the public statement that has been previously made to the community, which has been positively received and opened valuable lines of discussion within the community, including a public Space Place discussion.

The key technical dependencies for this proposal are the completion of work that is being carried out by IOG, Tweag, Well Typed, PNSol, MLabs, Anastassia Labs and other existing Cardano suppliers in preparation for delivery of the roadmap items that are being proposed here. These include the completion of the Milestone report for Peras that has closed off work at Software Readiness Level 5 (Initial Implementation) and that will enable work at Software Readiness Level 6 (Main Implementation), and detailed design work that is being completed for Leios at Software Readiness Level 4 (Design) that will enable Initial implementation work during 2025-2026 (Software Readiness Level 5) moving to commence main implementation in 2026 (Software Readiness Level 6). Assessments have been made of the Software Readiness Levels for all proposed roadmap work items.