Welcome to Intersect’s update #129

Two deadlines this week. Stake pool operators have a node release to prioritise, 11.1.2, which supersedes last week's. Members have until Friday to vote in the Board Election. Around these: constitutional amendment proposals in consultation, a Go node validating mainnet blocks, and a Civics Committee update….

Contributors: Larisa Mcfarlane, Ian Hartwell, Abhik Nag

Latest on Cardano upgrades

A change of pace this week. Several releases have landed at once, and action is needed now. Find all the details you need below

Cardano node 11.1.2 is out, and SPOs are asked to prioritize it. The release addresses an issue identified during testing, and it supersedes 11.1.1, so operators who have updated need to do so again. Anyone running Cardano node infrastructure on Mainnet, Preprod or Preview should upgrade where applicable. Alongside the fix, 11.1.2 optimises memory usage in time lock scripts, updates the protocol version minor in the block header and ships cardano-cli 11.2.3.0.

It carries everything from 11.1.1: removal of the V1 LedgerDB and the LMDB storage backend (LMDB users must switch backend), predictable and Mithril-compatible ledger snapshots, faster transaction forwarding and Plutus validation, and initial network and consensus support for Peras, off by default. Removal of the old tracing system was completed in 11.1.1 also so operators should be aware that additional work may be required on their monitoring setups if they have not carried out any prior migrations. See this Quick Start guide for more details. Memory usage during sync remains above 11.0.1, though well below the 11.1.0 regression. Downstream teams should note that cardano-rpc contains breaking changes from 11.0. Full Release Notes.

Mithril 2630.1-hotfix.
SPOs running a Mithril signer should upgrade to 2630.1-hotfix (mithril-signer-1.1.9) at the same time as the node. It fixes a bug in 2630.0 that can stop the signer and aggregator fetching blocks and transactions from the chain and is available here.

Pallas 1.3.0
The development team over at TxPipe have released a new version of Pallas and is available here.

Node diversity: Dingo, a Cardano node implementation written in Go and developed by Blink Labs, validated blocks accepted by Cardano Mainnet this week, a significant milestone for node diversity efforts on Cardano. This achievement adds to their steady progress across Preview, Preprod, Musashi, and Prime Testnet (Apex Fusion). The latest Amaru release improves duplex connections, peer management, block fetching and governance functionality. A full Haskell node was also demonstrated running in a web browser, following the chain tip and supporting transactions. The Node Diversity Celebration Day is on October 6 in Singapore and online, with a London workshop on November 12-13. The Hard Fork Working Group welcomes any node diversity team to attend and give their progress update directly.

What to do now

• SPOs: Upgrade to cardano-node-11.1.2 and mithril-signer-1.1.9, as soon as practical. Check monitoring setups following the complete move to the new tracing system.
• Everyone else: the Upgrade Bulletin and this section are moving from relaying working group updates to telling each group what to assess, test or prepare. The 11.1.2 rollout, with direct outreach to SPOs alongside these publications, is the first example of that in practice.
• Read Upgrade Bulletin #34 in full.
• Join the #wg-hard-fork conversation on the Intersect Discord, email hard-fork@intersectmbo.org, or follow the Hard Fork Working Group on the Luma calendar and the Cardano Upgrades GitBook.
  

Civics Committee & Constitutional updates

The Civics Committee approved its 2026 Constitutional Committee election closeout report this week (7 yes - 1 No), and work on the recommendations made in the report begins straight away. The report will soon be published on the Civics Committee Knowledge Base pages.

• The committee discussed an “Optimistic Constitutionality” CIP, under which a Constitutional Committee vote would default to yes unless a member actively voted no. The room was against it, on the grounds that it rewards inaction and bypasses the debate the role exists to hold, and recommended it be tagged inactive for historical context.

• The Civics Committee pages on the Knowledge Base have been redesigned around cards: working groups, active streams, past work and standardized minutes in date order, once this goes live in a few days, any feedback would be welcome on what members find helpful in our Committee Pages. You can send Feedback by email to: Members (Intersect)

Full minutes are on the Civics Committee pages in our Knowledge base.

Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAP) updates

There are seven proposals live on the Constitutional Amendment Portal right now, none quite yet at the “ready” stage but with four of those having activity in the past 3 weeks, Here’s a summary of the CAP discussions you can get involved in right now:

• CAP-3, Evolve the Net Change Limit into a Strategic Spending Plan, remains the most discussed thread on the portal with sixteen comments and new activity this week.

• CIS-11, Lack of a Defined Process for Disclosing Overlapping Governance Roles, raised the question of what happens when one person holds more than one governance seat and nothing requires them to say so.

• CAP-10, Require SPO Approval for Changes to Stake Pool Economic Parameters, came out of SPO discussion after the last minPoolCost action and is directly relevant to the one now live.

• CAP-9, Remove immutable storage requirement for governance metadata, is marked author-ready and in review.

Also in consultation: CAP-1 on milestone-based treasury disbursement and return of undistributed funds, CAP-2 on removing Article II section 7.4, and CIS-4 on the bundling gap in constitutional amendment.

The first CAP review session ran on September 17. Sessions continue every two weeks, alternating between 7AM and 2PM UTC, open to editors, authors and anyone who wants to follow the proposals. The next is on 1 October 1 at 2PM UTC - sign up on the Intersect Luma calendar and come along!

Get started: head to cap.intersectmbo.org

Recently closed governance actions

Live governance actions*

Three actions are live, with two expiring on October 11: the withdrawal of 11,787,063 ada for the OpenZeppelin Stack, and a fresh proposal to reduce minPoolCost to 75 ada, following the expiry of the previous version last month. The third is an info action asking whether stakePoolTargetNum should rise from 500 to 1,000. SPO votes are not mandatory on info actions, but this one is explicitly asking for SPO input, and it expires on 21 October.

*data from 2026-09-19 at 10:30 UTC
** SPO votes on Info Actions are not mandatory, however this action requests SPO input
Follow vote progress with your favorite Cardano explorers:

GovTool | Tempo | Cexplorer | AdaStat | CardanoScan | CGov | Civitas

Membership updates

Board Election 2026: one week left to vote: Voting for the two available member-elected-seats closes Friday September 25 at 12:00 UTC.

Eleven candidates are standing for the seats, and each eligible member has two votes, one per seat.

If you haven’t voted yet, three things need to be true before you can.

• Your membership needs to be active. 👉 Check your membership status
• Your identity verification needs to be complete. 👉 Complete your identity verification (if required)
• You need to be logged in to the Member Area, where the ballot is. 👉 Cast your vote here
• All can be done at members.intersectmbo.org

All three take minutes but leaving these until the last minute on Friday morning is how people miss their chance at voting.

The candidates have now been heard twice. Last Wednesday we took to the podium in the Intersect Virtual Hub for short presentations and a Q&A with members. On Tuesday the first Candidate X Space ran, and the recording is available to replay. The second X Space is on Tuesday 22 September at 16:00 UTC, and is the last live session before the vote closes.

All sessions use the same format, with equal time and questions shared with candidates.

• Replay Candidate X Space #1
• Join Candidate X Space #2, Tuesday 22 September, 16:00 UTC
• Read every candidate’s full application in the Member Area

Two of these people will sit on the Board for the next two years. If you are an Intersect member, then this is the week to have your say in which two.

Last Wednesday’s Candidate space in the Intersect Virtual Hub was the first test of the recent upgrades made in the Hub, and it held up well! Candidates were able to present from the podium, on the big screen, while members asked questions from the floor. The Virtual Hub’s proximity audio did what it is meant to do, which is let side conversations happen in a natural way and without having to leave the room. Members can now watch videos together on the big screen, present slides and video from the Podium, or separate rooms if needed. There’s some great new mini games dotted around the hub, with more on the way so if you haven’t been in recently it's worth a look! 
The hub is always open - your new 24/7 office? Access through the Intersect member area and jump right in.

Coming to our X account - Over the summer we sat down with members and recorded short video interviews about why they joined, what they work on, and what they would change. The first of those go out on the Intersect X account in the coming days.

Follow along at @IntersectMBO

Intersect Knowledge base tip-of-the-week

As mentioned above, voting in the Board Election closes on Friday, and the three things that stop people voting are all fixable in the Member Area in a few minutes: an expired membership, incomplete identity verification, and not knowing where the ballot is.

The Board Elections pages on the Knowledge Base walk through all three. If you are going to vote, do the checks today to make it more likely that you have your say in this important election!

Enterprise member spotlight:* W3i

Stablecoins are the part of Cardano most people outside the ecosystem will encounter first, and W3i builds the infrastructure underneath them.

W3i provides regulated stablecoin infrastructure: it builds, licenses and operates the technology that lets regulated issuers launch fiat-backed and privacy-backed stablecoins on Cardano and Midnight. That covers more than a token contract. Minting and burning, reserve and treasury management, banking and custody integrations, compliance tooling, multi-chain issuance and issuer licensing all sit in the stack, which is the point. An issuer wants to issue, and would rather not assemble the regulatory and operational plumbing from scratch.
USDM is the live reference. Issued by Moneta Digital, it runs on infrastructure built and licensed by W3i, with native issuance on Cardano and on-chain reserve attestations. If you have used USDM, you have used W3i’s work without seeing its name.

W3i describes its approach as bringing together the technology, regulatory and operational components required for stablecoin issuance in one place. For an ecosystem whose 2026 roadmap leans on tier-one stablecoins arriving, that is infrastructure worth knowing about.

Learn more about W3i by visiting their website.

*Enterprise Member Spotlights showcase the work and activities of Intersect members. Information about products, services, capabilities and activities is provided by, or based on information published by, the featured member, and does not constitute an endorsement by Intersect

Events

Intersect will be at TOKEN2049 Singapore on 7 to 8 October as part of the Cardano booth, with the Node Diversity Celebration Day on 6 October in Singapore and online the day before. Full details, and the Enterprise member merch opportunity, are in last week’s update. If you are coming, tell us! - so we can make sure the right person is on the stand when you are.

📍 Marina Bay Sands, Singapore | 🗓️ Oct 7-8 2026 | 🤝 Find Intersect at the Cardano booth | 🎟️ Get Tickets | ✉️ Coming? Let us know

That’s it for this week’s update. Thank you for reading. To learn more about Intersect’s work, explore the Knowledge Base, which provides detailed information on governance structures, committees, and funding.

Join the conversation on Discord, and follow us on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn to engage with fellow members, working groups, and the broader community. Subscribe to the public Google and Luma calendars.