Welcome to this week's Intersect dev update! This report examines the renaming of the hard fork, the constitutional convention, the CIP1694 and delegated representation, community hubs, governance tooling, and more.

Countdown to the Cardano Constitutional Convention!

Next week, after months of community consultation, marks the next milestone in the Cardano constitution journey. From December 4 to 6, the Cardano Constitutional Convention will occur simultaneously in Buenos Aires and Nairobi. The 63 elected delegates representing 50 countries will join the total of 450 attendees across the convention to discuss the latest amendments to the draft constitution.

Delegates will meet with the civics committee and drafters to finalize amendments and agree to confirm the text for on-chain submission. Attendees can look forward to two days of deliberations, presentations, keynote speeches, panels, and much more.

The event will culminate on Friday, December 6, with a morning of exhibition events, to which members of the community have been applying for tickets, followed by the signing ceremony in the afternoon and a gala dinner in the evening to celebrate the community’s efforts in progressing Cardano governance to this important point. 

Check out cardanoconvention.com for the latest event programs, details of speakers, and links to watch certain events live streamed for those unable to attend in person. The last remaining spots are available for the open day on Friday, and you can RSVP here!

We look forward to seeing many of you in Buenos Aires and Nairobi next week!

Plomin HF name change

In a touching tribute to a beloved community leader, the community has chosen to name the second hard fork in the Chang upgrade, the Plomin hard fork. This decision honors the late Matthew Plomin, USDM's president and co-founder, who made an indelible impact on our ecosystem before his sudden passing due to health complications. Matthew's visionary leadership and unwavering dedication to the community inspire all of us, and this renaming serves as a heartfelt acknowledgment of his contributions. The Plomin hard fork is not just a technical milestone; it is a testament to the strength and unity of the Cardano community as we honor one of our own.

We will be propagating this name change across our various touchpoints over the coming days and weeks.

According to Einstein, time is an illusion, and it certainly feels that way as we progress rapidly into the age of Voltaire and toward the full realization of CIP1694. With Cardano node 10 and the Plomin hard fork just around the corner, it's a good idea to look at the core components of CIP1694 once more. 

The CIP1694 was the most widely discussed CIP, generated across multiple community-led workshops worldwide. Its formation is a testament to how passionate ada holders are about ownership over decision-making on the chain. 

In this blog, we explore the foundation of decentralized governance, its history, and its meaning.

Following our blog on Cardano CIP-1694, we also published a blog this week on the importance of delegated representatives, where we dive further into delegating the voting rights of your ada, which is a vital way to shape Cardano’s future in the age of Voltaire actively. Read the full blog here!

We’re excited to remind you about our weekly meetings, an open space for collaboration and discussion. These sessions are designed to clarify processes, gather valuable feedback, and address any questions regarding the budget approval process.

These meetings are growing weekly, and we’re incredibly grateful for your engagement and involvement. Let’s keep building momentum! Join us.

The Budget Committee continues to host open “Ask Me Anything” sessions across different time zones and days, seeking wide input from the Cardano ecosystem regarding the annual budget process here at Intersect.

All Committee Chairs and members have utilized these sessions to present their proposals to the community. So far, the community has received proposals from the Product Committee, the Technical Steering Committee, the Open Source Committee, the Membership and the Community Committee, with inputs from various working groups including technical and marketing.

The Budget Committee will continue to facilitate these sessions into 2025, as we move towards a community-driven budget proposal.

Take an active part in the process.
Intersect encourages participation in the consultation phase through surveys (now closing December 6th), AMA sessions, and committee engagements. Contributions from all stakeholders enhance the planning process.

Technical Steering Committee
Core infrastructure CIR-roadmap prioritization - inputs requested

The Technical Steering Committee attended the budget AMA on Tuesday, November 19, to share the work done with the Product Committee and Core Infrastructure working group on shaping the 2025 roadmap and how the wider community can get involved. The Intersect Knowledge base has an online version of the presentation under the TSC

Review proposed roadmap projects.

Since August, the Core Infrastructure Roadmap working group (CIR-WG) has collated potential roadmap items with contributions from the community and technical working groups. You can read more about that here. Your input, however, is crucial in determining the direction of Cardano's development for 2025 and beyond. By participating, you help prioritize what’s most essential and ensure that we are addressing the needs of the Cardano community. 

The full backlog of project briefs for proposed roadmap items submitted to date is now publicly available for review in the TSC knowledge base. 

Submit a prioritization survey

The committee invites you to provide feedback to help shape the 2025 Core Infrastructure Roadmap. Please share your thoughts by completing this survey. We value quantitative and qualitative input, so please let us know what matters most. The survey will remain open until December 6, 2024.

Roadmap project proposal process

Additionally, if you have a project you would like to submit for consideration for the 2025 roadmap, you can do so here. You can learn how to submit your proposal by following this explainer.

Readiness page updates 

The hard fork readiness page on the Intersect Knowledge base keeps the community updated on progress toward the mainnet hard fork.

The community is encouraged to participate in updating and maintaining the status and details contained within this ecosystem readiness page.

Community hubs

Last week, our Sri Lanka hub, led by CoinCeylon, delivered their monthly town hall with 102 attendees. The event featured insightful discussions on Cardano's ecosystem and future developments, led by esteemed guest speakers: Sheldon Hunt (Head of Cardano Ecosystem, EMURGO), Seira Yun (Founder & CEO, Socious), and Lloyd Duhon (Subject Matter Expert, Intersect), alongside our very own Lawrence Clark (Head of Business Operations) and Abhik Nag (Community Manager). Topics that were covered included building on Cardano, the Intersect budget proposal process, ongoing projects within the ecosystem, the latest Cardano & BitcoinOS integrations & the latest partnerships and hub updates. The town hall offered attendees valuable insights and fostered community engagement. You can watch the highlights here.

Our Africa hub, led by WADA, also held their WADA town hall last week, with 16 attendees. You can watch the recording here.

This week, our hubs are hosting the following events:

Japan hub

• Discord voice chat on the Japan hub server on November 29. You can join the server here.

Europe hub, led by Clay Nation

• Town hall held on November 27 with 52 attendees. You can listen to the recording here.

Africa hub, led by WADA

• WADA town hall was held on November 28 with 18 attendees. You can watch the recording here (passcode: =!i?C195).

And here you can see the updated community hub stats: 

Governance tooling

We are happy to share that soon enough, there will be an update ensuring compatibility with the upcoming hard fork and support for all governance action types outlined in CIP-1694. It will also include support for IPFS.

Since Cardano GovTool is currently in its bootstrapping phase, the upcoming release can be fully assessed on the preview network which supports full governance. At the same time, all teams are working to maintain system stability. Updates can also be followed on the core-gov-tool-announcement Discord channel.

You can also check for compatible wallets and known issues.

CC-Portal

The builder team is working to bring another CC-Portal release next week that includes additional improvements and full compliance with CIP-136.

CC-Portal aims to offer easy access to the interim Cardano constitution and provide constitutional committee members with a streamlined interface for creating metadata as part of their on-chain voting rationale. Additionally, it serves as a platform for the Cardano community to better understand committee members' voting actions.

These improvements will make it easier for the constitutional committee and the wider Cardano community to engage with governance actions. The updates are expected to elevate both usability and transparency for all users.

Governance tools working group

The governance tools working group held another meeting this week, further elaborating on the pilot process of getting much-appreciated community feedback on fairness and transparency. The process itself will be documented online in the next few days. You can track the community backlog here.

The working group continues to invite community members to participate in discussions and feature development for the Cardano GovTool. All feedback is welcome (see feedback guide), and ongoing conversations are held in the wg-governance-tools Discord channel, where new feature ideas are regularly triaged and implemented.Governance in numbers

As we press ahead following Chang #1, follow the progress of governance actions on-chain here every week. Since Friday, November 22, 2024: 

• We've advanced from epoch 523 to epoch 524
• Unique delegators increased by 9,195 (36,525 -> 45,720)
• Total number of vote delegations increased by 9,834 (39,352 -> 49,186)
• Total DRep votes increased by 104 (445 -> 548)
• The total number of DRep registrations increased by 46 (717 -> 763)

To learn how to start using Cardano GovTool, explore GovTool documentation. Here, you'll find everything from step-by-step guides to detailed explanations of its features.

On the Intersect Discord server, you can connect to the core maintainers of governance tools via the new request and new help & support channels under Core Governance Tools in Discord. 

YouTube

This week, we continue to shine the limelight on our Enterprise members - understanding the fantastic and dynamic projects they are pioneering on the Cardano blockchain.

This week’s content features Youry Brauner, CEO and Founder of Waffle Capital. He spoke to us about just how far his organization has come this year and what’s in store for 2025! Take a watch here.

Engaging with our Enterprise member Clay Nation, an NFT art project founded by Lenna, was also excellent. It was super inspiring to gain insight into how the arts sector is expanding on-chain - Learn more here.

Well, that’s it for this week's update. Thanks for reading!

And finally, we’re interested in hearing more from you about subjects important to you, such as Cardano’s governance. Your ideas and suggestions are crucial to us. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, please get in touch via email, X, or LinkedIn.