On Governance and 2025

Speaking after the Argentina and Chile Constitutional Convention and a Patagonia break, he calls it the culmination of two years, hundreds of workshops, and thousands of people across 50-plus countries with 50 elected delegates.

95 percent of delegates from all six continents judged the constitution good enough to try, up from under 50 percent at the start, calling it one of the proudest moments of his career and a dream from ten years ago.

2025's challenge is fully decentralizing governance, and his view is members-based institutions and on-chain government where every significant role is elected and constrained first by algorithmic law, then constitutional law.

Rejects others' preference for accountability institutions not subject to the democratic will, comparing them to the US unelected fourth branch of government that accumulates power over daily life.

Cites Three Felonies a Day and a million-page tax code as proof of an overly bureaucratic society you cannot vote your way out of, and says his goal since the Japan tripartite design of February 2015 was that Cardano never reach that state.

Takes direct blame for today's governance failures as the architect of the tripartite structure, admitting he was young and underestimated how serpentine governance is, while IO built a top research and engineering company.

Cardano has run seven years under constant technological and social attack and is still top ten, though he felt the sting of roadmap prioritization mistakes that hindsight would have avoided.

Code and momentum lock in past decisions and cannot change instantly because exchanges, SPOs, and dApp developers depend on them, and that Emurgo was meant to be the ecosystem growth hacker and near-consensus entity focused first on Asia.

Weak Emurgo execution left the community struggling with listings, VC, and representation, noting Sebastien and Nico left to found dcSpark, leading to Flint and Paima, and the Emurgo CIO made good investments.

Calls the Cardano Foundation the biggest anomaly, started wrong when Michael Parsons brought friends in and incorporated it as the Digital Asset Foundation in the Isle of Man under its 2015 DLT-friendly law.

Basic governance, membership, and board-election tasks went undone until the Guardians of Cardano and community ousted the Foundation board through social pressure, replaced by an interim Emurgo and IO board.

The Foundation was relocated from the Isle of Man to Switzerland via MME Partners, meant to move to the US to become Intersect, but the Swiss government liquidated the board and appointed non-community Swiss members still in power today.

Pushed for the Foundation to be members-based with a community-elected board and to host the GitHub repos and CIP process as a neutral nexus it received Genesis funding for, but it claimed this was impossible under Swiss structure.

Recounts trying the Linux Foundation as a neutral home, hiring a person named Dirk and holding a Colorado workshop, but scrapping it when it would exclude most ADA holders and required that he not participate in governance.

IO and Emurgo then created Intersect, an American nonprofit funded by a Caribbean Dev trust they bootstrapped with over 10 million dollars, but the Foundation used that Caribbean entity as an excuse not to join the board.

The Foundation instead created Pragma with closed membership, though IO contributes to Aiken and hopes to help the Rust node, and did join Intersect's Civics committee and the CIP 1694 and constitution drafting.

Thanks Matthias Benkort of the Foundation for participating, but says overall constitutional participation was slight, that he personally funded the convention, and that the Foundation held its summit in Dubai again instead of Argentina.

A week before the convention the Foundation launched its own constitution without notice, which he believes was an anchor point to vote against the community-ratified one, and suspects a rival budget is coming too.

Years of dirty laundry include the Foundation coaching his employees and sowing discontent from an office near the Tezos foundation's, but setting ego aside he only cares about a successful transition of power to elected ADA representatives.

Admits one-token-one-vote has flaws as a bootstrap criterion, which is why Minotaur and Ouroboros Omega exist on the roadmap to find leaders from diverse resources, and says he respects Fred Gregaard despite being perplexed by the behavior.

Recalls that after the emotional ratification with crying and applause, only the Foundation delegation did not join, instead rushing the stage to tell Lloyd they felt excluded, despite two years as invited co-equal partners since Edinburgh 2022.

Asks why the Foundation dropped an unread alternative constitution a week before a convention built from 65 workshops in 50 countries, and notes a whistleblower leaked an email to Big Pay and Hosky, saying governance means converging, not agreeing.

He does not want to remove the Foundation and suggests it rename to the Cardano Enterprise Foundation and focus on Fortune 500 and government adoption, where he would be its best salesman.

Governments and companies from Paraguay to Alabama to Arkansas bring him RFPs, and the Foundation is competent at enterprise work like Georgia wine and Dubai law enforcement, but not suited to governance or building yet another client.

A polyglot ecosystem is needed but the Foundation should not be first-class in it, since TxPipe, Harmonic, and Anastasia Labs could build a client with funding while agreeing with Haskell developers on implementation-agnostic formal specifications.

A productive meeting with the TxPipe CEO in Argentina about a Pragma and Intersect working group on formal specifications, active extraction to Rust, and a test suite ensuring clients interoperate under shared on-chain-governed blueprints.

The ecosystem needs adult supervision more than another dev company: training DReps and growing on-chain voting participation like Catalyst, agreeing that 180 million ADA should not tip scales against tens of billions.

Says if he ran the Foundation he would fund community conferences, bring developers to Token2049 and Consensus, and pursue exchange listings, noting John McPherson negotiated a 3 million dollar Circle deal in 2021 that was never executed.

Says Polkadot and Algorand got the same Circle deal, now far more expensive, and warns a16z, Coinbase, Consensys, and BlackRock are forming a cabal with the Trump administration that could exclude Cardano from crypto policy.

A governance body's job is the uncomfortable long-arc conversations, not replacing core developers, and insists community governance bodies must be elected and accountable, never self-appointed.

CIP 1694 and the constitutional process ignored ADA wealth, giving delegates from Africa, South America, and Asia the same vote as those from Japan or the US, and wants that model replicated for product, marketing, budget, and innovation.

Proposes five workshop streams a year growing from 50 to 100 countries at 5 to 10 million dollars, affordable against a nearly 2 billion dollar treasury, and defends governance entities as endowed to make mistakes, citing the 10 million-plus behind Intersect.

Acknowledges Intersect is criticized as bureaucratic and slow because of its dual mandate to move fast while including many who have never done governance, a balancing act between competence and inclusion.

Admits being accused of narcissism and ego but says he cares about Cardano more than anything as his legacy, and could never live fulfilled if it failed, since that would mean the world rejected the freedom and libertarian ethos he built into it.

Everything in 2025 aims to make the ecosystem self-sustaining like a self-replicating virus, with 1694 fully live in January, DReps arriving, a ratified constitution, and a nearly 2 billion dollar on-chain treasury.

A deployed treasury could growth-hack 100 to 200 million dollars a year and grow into a sovereign wealth fund, and vows not to let ego or old rivalries get in the way as he heals old wounds.

He is prepared for any role in 2025 because it is about the protocol, not him or IO, and will never accept the ecosystem being controlled for years by an unelected group of bureaucrats.

Rails against a US comfortable with wars, lead in the water, poison in food, 100,000 fentanyl deaths, and a media telling demoralized Americans to shut up, saying no human wants to live under that bureaucracy.

To judge them in 2025 by actions, and splits his year into three: building products like Quantum Hosy, Hydra, Midnight, Lace, and Bitcoin work, done with principles and careful partners, not shameless cash grabs.

IO as a governance participant has three final tasks, the first being to get the constitution ratified on-chain.

The second task is an annual budget that leaves no one behind, since many work 16-hour days for free and Catalyst is a glass of ice water in hell, and the third is electing the full constitutional committee, after which IO steps back from on-chain governance.

The community must flex its muscles and take complete control, and that his third focus is US politics, tired of Scary Gary and Operation Chokepoint 2.0, having reached out to Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple, Hedera, and MultiverseX.

Getting everyone in one tent to pass a law would give crypto the Jubilee to grow like the internet, too big to control, and he is willing to work with the Solana Foundation, Vitalik, Ethereum, and Bankless regardless of the past.

Every discussion comes down to whether it advances the goals, that IO is not going anywhere, and that he never expected a group of friends this diverse whom he cannot let down.

Closes that Cardano's best days are ahead and 2025 will be productive but full of drama and doubt, like fatiguing while climbing a mountain, where you must find the will to keep going before you can enjoy the summit.