Cardano governance

CIP-1694 defines seven types of governance actions: a motion of no confidence, an update of the committee, a new constitution, a hard fork initiation, protocol parameter changes, treasury withdrawals and info actions. Each action needs the approval of at least two of the three bodies, and the type of action decides which ones. Treasury withdrawals and parameter changes go to the DReps and the Constitutional Committee, while a hard fork needs all three bodies.

DReps and stake pool operators vote with the weight of the stake behind them, one lovelace one vote, while each committee member has one vote. An action that misses its threshold before the deadline expires, and the proposer gets the deposit back.

A DRep is an ada holder who votes on governance actions for everyone who delegates to them, much like a member of parliament. Delegation moves no ada, can be changed at any time and stays in place for later votes until the holder changes it. Holders who want no representative can pick one of the two predefined options, Abstain or No Confidence.

Directories in GovTool and in block explorers list the registered DReps with their votes and the reasons they published. The Cardano Foundation is a registered DRep itself and has delegated more than 300 million ada to community DReps in the groups builders, adoption and operations.

The Cardano Constitution sets the principles and guardrails that every governance action must respect, for example the limit on how much ada may leave the treasury in a given period. The Constitutional Committee has seven seats and judges whether an action is constitutional, but it cannot propose anything itself. DReps and stake pool operators can remove the committee through a motion of no confidence. An interim committee served from the Chang hard fork onward, and the Cardano Foundation was one of its members from September 2024 to September 2025.

GovTool is the web application in which ada holders delegate, DReps register and vote, and proposers submit governance actions from a compatible wallet. Intersect, a member organization incorporated in Wyoming, keeps the list of compatible wallets and coordinates the maintenance and development of Cardano through its committees. Its members elect these committees twice a year with one vote per member, whatever their holdings of ada. The votes on every action are public on chain, so anyone can check the results in GovTool and in block explorers.

The Cardano Academy teaches on-chain governance in two free online courses. In the applied course, learners register as a DRep, draft a proposal and vote with GovTool on the Preview test network before they act on mainnet.