Overview

One of the key community goals in 2025 is to create a shared long-term vision, transitioning from the roadmap created by Cardano’s founders to a community-led dynamic vision and yearly roadmap.

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To create the first community driven 2030 Cardano vision, and a following 2026 roadmap, the Cardano Product Committee of Intersect, via consultation, has drafted a strategy (which is already operational) which includes both broad consultation via workshops (remote and in-person) and focused insights collection via focus group calls, with key ecosystem stakeholders (like SPOs) and businesses (both in Cardano and outside Cardano), and incentivized structured user and market research with an initial set of broad questions divided by the broad Cardano goals.

About 2030 vision process and in-depth product research

2030 vision process

To draft a community-driven proposed 2030 vision, the Committee has defined a 4-step phases (currently in progress):

1. Insight Collection

   • Community workshops (up to 100 globally, online and in-person)

   • Collection of qualitative insights on user pain points, ecosystem opportunities, and desired 2030 outcomes

   • Documentation and analysis of insights gathered

2. Drafting the Vision Proposal

   • Synthesis of insights into key objectives for 2030

   • Structuring of broad eras to achieve those objectives

   • Incorporation of existing research, SWOT analysis, academic reports, and ecosystem data

3. Community Review & Iteration

   • Public virtual workshops to critique the draft vision

   • Naming of eras, prioritization of deliverables

   • Final refinements based on feedback

4. On-chain Submission

   • Ratification via community info action

   • Public release of the final vision document and supporting research archive

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The process above will provide qualitative insights from consultations, which will also be available to the whole community for reference and to act as guidance.
To facilitate more and more of these discussions the committee is providing support to run remote workshops, however, knowing how important in-person discussions are when brainstorming a vision, and to collect regional insights, the committee has identified a need to incentivize small gatherings, possibly in existing events, which will generate extremely valuable insights during the first step and great critiques during the third step.

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In particular, we aim to provide support to local discussions via small rewards up to ADA 500 to anyone who meets in their own region and documents the insights gathered. The local element will emphasise the regional insights and help the committee (and the broader community) to find use cases and opportunities in different regions and markets. We also aim to give support via small rewards of up to ADA 1000 to anyone who will run structured workshops with more than 10 attendees.

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Basic acceptance criteria to access these funds will include:

• Anyone running a small ad-hoc gathering or a structured workshop will need to create a Luma event and add it to the Luma Product committee calendar

• Send the 2030 Vision consultation survey

• Hosts of small ad-hoc gatherings need to take notes and compile a report with key insights

• Hosts of structured workshops need to ensure participants have access to the provided Miro template, and during the session, they should collect notes as well as compile a report with key insights

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Since the end of 2024, the Cardano Product Committee of Intersect has already started to work through this by:

• Creating a first version of a repeatable process (documented here)

• Opening a wide consultation via survey (here)

• Running open remote, and in-person workshops (here)

• Running focus groups with SPOs and builders/businesses (here)

In-depth Product Research

To answer more detailed questions in relation to user needs and market opportunities the committee has collected, via open consultation, an initial set of broad questions which aims to expand and answer by incentivizing and funding the first consolidated user and market research effort in Cardano, creating a framework and opening the way to continuous product insights collection (bringing that to the same quality and standards of Cardano’s academic research).

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For year 1, 2025, the research conducted aims to provide insights into the direction and refinement of the proposed goals for 2025 and support builders (as well as other committees in Intersect) with information on user needs. In addition to this initial need, the insights from this first year will directly inform the Cardano strategy for 2025 and 2026 and help create a longer-term vision. The outcome of this research will also lead to clear problem statements, which will be documented as Cardano Problem Statements (CPSs).

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The initiative aims to produce validated Cardano Problem Statements (CPSs), evidence-based recommendations, and qualitative and quantitative user and market insights to reach and get closer to five strategic goals (documented here in more detail):

1. Get more usage

2. Make Cardano easier to build on and use

3. Make Cardano a competitive option

4. Create clear funding mechanisms

5. Make Cardano more recognizable

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It will also support the underlying vision of creating a shared, community-driven path for Cardano’s growth through 2030. The results will be published in public repository to ensure reusability and transparency. The research will:

• Identify bottlenecks in tooling, onboarding, and documentation

• Validate which use cases Cardano is best suited for (and which it's not)

• Map personas and journeys for dApp teams, enterprises, and community members

• Clarify gaps in governance awareness and participation

• Offer comparative insights from other ecosystems to identify opportunities

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The Product Committee has analysed and documented in detail, also building on the successful workshop methodologies implemented in Paris, Florida International University, and Japan :

• High-level Skillset and expertise required to run this research

• Broad acceptance criteria for the overall Product research effort, which include:

  • Expert-led, rigorous research

  • Transparent and timely dissemination

  • Validated and ecosystem-aligned

• An initial set of questions for each of the five broad goals that, once answered, will help determine the most effective direction to take in order to achieve them

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A comprehensive survey and workshop template optimized for gathering broader insights with a strong focus on regional nuances, as demonstrated by the success in the initial workshops

The original Cardano roadmap, set by Cardano’s founders, ended with the age of Voltaire. Now it’s time to define an open, shared, and transparent process for the Cardano community to define a long-term vision and a roadmap.

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Creating a long-term vision in a small group is not easy, and it gets more complex as more stakeholders participate. One of Cardano’s strengths is its community-shared mind, so the challenge is to define a reusable process to leverage Cardano’s shared mind to create a long-term vision for Cardano and make it operational.

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Furthermore, as Cardano advances toward a maturing ecosystem, its future hinges on informed decision-making. However, the ecosystem currently lacks a dedicated, rigorous, and consolidated product research function to guide these decisions across themes such as user adoption, developer onboarding, governance participation, competitive positioning, and broader awareness. This absence limits our ability to reliably measure barriers, understand emerging needs, and identify product-market fit opportunities.

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Cardano overall, and builders across the ecosystem, operate without a shared, research-backed understanding of what users actually need or how to prioritize strategic direction. Existing insights are scattered or outdated, and there is no ecosystem-wide standard for how assumptions are challenged or validated. This creates the risk of fragmentation as well as solutions that don’t address real user pain points or market gaps.

The outcome of this proposal is a 2030 community-driven vision for Cardano, a 2026 proposed roadmap, and the first consolidated product research effort in Cardano. This will be achieved by providing clear paths for the broader Cardano community to participate in the 2030 vision creation process—both by contributing insights as key stakeholders and by enabling the collection of additional input through structured user and customer interviews, along with targeted product research initiatives.

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Key Outcomes and value this proposal will deliver:

• Broad community participation in the first community-driven Cardano vision creation process

• Documented insights from the community shared brain

• Documented insights from key groups (such as SPOs, builders, and businesses in and outside of Cardano and Blockchain)

• Participation in creating and critiquing the first draft proposal for a 2030 Cardano vision

• Creation of the first framework and consolidated data set of insights coming from product research guiding Cardano (and builders on Cardano) on what are the most prominent user needs and the key market opportunities

• Opportunities to access funding to run product research initiatives

• Identify promising focus areas for Cardano to achieve product-market-fit, which can be coordinated with the Technical Steering Committee of Intersect to ultimately identify mission-critical Cardano feature sets

Concerning community consultation for the 2030 Vision creation process, this proposal aims to deliver rich and diverse documented input and insights from the broader Cardano community to support the drafting of the first community-driven long-term vision for Cardano, as well as through critique and feedback for the future draft proposal for the 2030 Cardano vision.

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Expected deliverables:

• Up to 100 workshops supported

• Documented insights

• Documented feedback and critiques of the 2030 vision proposal which will be based on the insights

• Overall community engagement and support for the future 5-year vision

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Concerning the first consolidated product research effort for Cardano, this proposal aims to deliver an initial simple process, a strategy to answer and expand the questions documented above, and a set of structured research initiatives opportunities to be allocated with funding to product researchers in Cardano. These will deliver:

• Research initiatives based on the initial research questions outlined to be allocated via an open and transparent tender process

• A scalable and open framework to consolidate the Insights collected documenting them in a public repo for broader community consumption

• Key insights socialised and used to inform the 2030 Cardano Vision draft proposal and 2026 roadmap proposal

2030 vision process

In relation to the first consolidated Cardano Product research question the Cardano Product Committee requests a budget of $200k to get insights related to the research questions (described in the full proposal here), plus any other questions that will be brought to the committee from other committees in 2025, as well as to cover costs for managing the process and making the outcome easily accessible to the community, with a commitment to return any unused remaining funds to the treasury.

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The budget will be roughly allocated as follows:

• $5000 will be allocated to an individual or a team to expand the initial research questions and structure a full product research strategy, dividing the research effort into defined initiatives with a recommended strategy for each

• $12000 x 15 research initiatives to cover answering questions related to the 5 goals, with a focus on identifying user pain points and needs as well as market opportunities (particularly on a regional level, for example, on emerging markets in Africa and Latin America or other underexposed regions)

• $5000 to document and analyse all the insights gathered and make them available in the pre-defined framework, and open a potential new Cardano Problem Statement

• 5% ($10000) committee contingent overhead to manage the process

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In-depth Product Research

In relation to the 2030 vision creation insight collection and consultation, the Cardano Product Committee is budgeting for up to 100 ad-hoc gatherings and workshops (in-person and remote), coming to a total of $175k with a commitment to return the remaining funds to the treasury, at the end of the vision creation process, if the funds are not fully spent. We don’t see a need for professional services as we’re going to be developing this in an open-source volunteer fashion. These gatherings and local workshops will also give a stronger focus on collecting regional insights, both about broader Cardano evolution depending on the regional perspective and about regional use cases and opportunities for Cardano.

The budget will be roughly allocated as follows:

• $50k towards retroactive reimbursement of anyone who wants to run an in-person local ad-hoc gathering or structured vision creation workshops - up to 100 sessions

• $25k towards retroactive reimbursement of structured discovery business/development sessions to gather insights - up to 10 sessions

• $100k to support the overall facilitation of local structured in-person larger workshops with Product experts' attendance, aiming to group workshops in series of 3 by location - up to 20 workshops. Target focus area for potential options:

  • Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda

  • Latam (Equador, Chile, Argentina, Colombia- Medellin, Uruguay, Paraguay)

  • North America (Quebec, Wyoming, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania)

  • Europe (Germany, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland)

  • Australia (Sidney, Perth, Melbourne)

  • Asia (Hong-Kong, Vietnam, Japan, Philippines, Sri-Lanka, Singapore)

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Example of budget breakdown for a series of workshops over 4 days in one location might include:

• $4000 for 2x product experts' travel costs

• $3000 for 2x Product experts’ lodging costs and expenses

• $4500 for 3x venue for 3 separate workshops

• $3000 for 3x workshops for food and refreshments

• $3000 for 2x fixed stipend

Equal to AVG of $5800 per workshop

This is not a development proposal. Research initiatives will be assigned to either people or teams who apply to run them. The product committee is already running workshops and focus groups, alongside initial outcomes from this. First results are expected in Q3 2025, and the overall key insights are expected to be collected and analyzed by Q4 2025.

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In relation to the vision creation process, the Cardano Product Committee members are already running this process. They aim to support with these funding up to 100 small workshops over the course Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2025.

The Cardano Product Committee of Intersect is made of members’ elected product experts with knowledge in business, market research, and user research. The committee is also supported by academic researchers and it will consult Subject Matter Experts to define research initiatives and allocate fund in an open and transparent process to expert providers, as well as to properly document and share all the collected insights.

This is not a development proposal, nevertheless, the aim is to define an initial strong framework for insights collection and documentation, which will allow further community expansion, as well as an initial framework to keep the long-term vision updated and to generate from that an annual roadmap.

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All data collected via this process will be hosted in a public repository. This initial framework will then be repeated and refined year after year to keep the vision updated.

The proposal is based on 7 months of consultation run by the Cardano Product Committee of Intersect. It aligns with the broader goals defined by the community in the initial consultation (here), and it aligns with the original Cardano budget submitted on Cardano Forum (which had prior community support via open consultation)

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Furthermore, this process has already started, and the community has been actively participating via workshops, focus group calls, and surveys (initial documentation here).

No direct dependencies, the Product Committee of Intersect is already running this process and we’ll continue to do so even before any supporting funding is approved.