Welcome to Intersect’s update #131

Much of this update is about getting ready. Node 11.1.3 is out and 11.2 is close, bringing the first public Dijkstra testnet with it. The TSC is looking for two funded CIP editors to keep standards review moving as Dijkstra work picks up. Intersect's own budget now sits in USDM, so the year's work runs on fixed terms. And next week a large Cardano group heads to TOKEN2049 in Singapore, where we hope to meet a lot of you.

Contributors: Bosko M, Ian H, Larisa M, Thomas L, Intersect

Latest on Cardano upgrades

Node releases
Cardano node 11.1.3 was released this week. It is the recommended version for all SPOs and node operators. The release corrects an IPv4 decoding issue introduced in 11.1.2. While 11.1.3 is only a bug fix and not a security fix, node operators are reminded that 11.1.2 was a priority upgrade for an issue discovered on the Preprod testnet. All operators should now be on 11.1.2 as a minimum. For downstream tooling teams, attention should increasingly turn to 11.2, with release sequencing now underway and a pre-release expected soon. It will contain most of the Dijkstra feature set, including the new block format and Plutus V4 context, but not Leios. While 11.2 will not be hard fork-ready, it will provide an important opportunity for teams to begin testing integrations and assessing the documented core semantic, API, and feature changes ahead of the upgrade.

Dijkstra upgrade readiness
For wallet, tooling, protocol, and governance teams, the next stage of preparation is increasingly about identifying what Dijkstra changes for their part of the ecosystem. Hardware wallet providers should assess the Leios requirements around BLS keys and stake pool registration, while the Parameter Committee continues its review of a substantial set of new guardrails, currently estimated at around 100 for Leios and a further 50 for Peras. There may also be a need for new Plutus V4 primitives and associated cost models, with greater clarity expected by mid-October. Across the ecosystem, teams are encouraged to review the Dijkstra impact documentation and raise missing dependencies or risks early through the shared Dijkstra dependency and risk tracking. For the first time, Dijkstra is a hard fork that requires constitutional changes as well as technical changes. A constitutional amendment has been submitted to the CAP portal and is now available for community review, for more details, see governance section below.

Node diversity
For alternative node teams and infrastructure builders, the immediate opportunity for coordination is the Cardano Node Diversity Celebration Day in Singapore and online on October 6. The event will bring different Cardano node implementations together to share their current capabilities, development progress, and upcoming milestones, providing the wider ecosystem with greater visibility into the move toward a node diverse Cardano. This work increasingly places emphasis on shared protocol conformance and readiness across implementations as Dijkstra approaches, rather than treating any single node implementation as the reference point for ecosystem preparation.

Two funded CIP editor roles are open
Every Cardano Improvement Proposal goes through the CIPs repository. How quickly and carefully proposals are reviewed there affects how fast good ideas become standards. The CIP Editors team is recruiting two funded editors to keep reviews frequent and thorough. The roles are paid from the Technical Steering Committee's funding package, a Cardano treasury grant administered by Intersect.

Editors need to be responsive at least five days a week, but otherwise set their own hours around the fortnightly CIP review meetings, which are mandatory. The two editors share review topics as evenly as they can, and each publishes a short monthly report so the community can see the work. Expect around 10 to 12 hours a week [CONFIRM], with busier spells around review meetings.

The roles are best suited to people who already know the repository. You will need:

• Fluency with GitHub pull requests, both in the browser and locally with git or gh
• Some experience writing or reviewing CIPs or CPSs (applicants with none are considered only as a last resort)
• Working knowledge of Cardano's main development areas, and a willingness to learn the parts you do not know
• The ability to discuss proposals critically in English without AI assistance, record other people's views fairly, and judge when consensus has been reached

How to apply
Read through recent pull requests on the CIPs repository and ask yourself whether you would be comfortable writing reviews like those. If you would, email rphair@cosd.com with how you meet the skills above, a link to your GitHub profile, and anything else that shows you can meet the working commitments.

Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAP) updates

A new CAP has landed on the CAP portal this week, and it is a big one. The upcoming Dijkstra hard fork introduces a set of new protocol parameters, the settings that control things like how much the network can process, how quickly transactions settle, and how pools are rewarded. Under the current Constitution, only parameters that are explicitly listed in Appendix I can be changed through governance. The new ones are not listed yet, which means that once Dijkstra goes live they would be frozen at their launch values with no way for the community to adjust them.

CAP-12 aims to fix that. It adds every new parameter to the Constitution, in three steps for each one: it describes what the parameter controls, it places it in the right group so the correct voting rules apply (including an SPO vote for the security-critical ones), and it sets guardrails that define the safe range it can be moved within, enforced automatically by the Guardrails Script wherever that is possible. The change is purely additive. Nothing in the existing Constitution is altered or removed.

It is now open for consultation, and an initial editor review is on its way. If you are involved in the hard fork work or simply want to understand what the next era of Cardano will look like, this is a good one to read. Find the proposal here.

Governance accessibility

After a brief hiatus, the Tempo governance platform has returned with a refreshed appearance and snappier user experience with reduced page loading times, and September 29 saw the DRep Council pass their first vote and agree upon their Interim Charter v0.2. Follow the X account and visit the website for more details and to get involved.

The DRepTalk platform continues to add new features on a regular basis. On September 26, short links for DReps on the platform were announced. Allowing DReps to easily share their voting histories using a url “drep.link/<drep_name>”. On September 29, the completion of a Governance Review Archive was announced, allowing visitors to see a detailed overview of 2 years of Cardano governance history with epoch reports broken down into 42 reports across 147 epochs to date.

CardanoScan has also unveiled a range of new features to their explorer, including governance action UI updates. A deeper dive can be found under the ecosystem growth section below.

Live governance actions*

 

*data from 2026-10-02 at 11:30 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

Administration services updates

Intersect and Seven Labs have minted treasury withdrawals in USDM, through Moneta.

Two Cardano treasury withdrawals are now held in USDM, the USD stablecoin native to Cardano: Intersect's 2026/27 budget and Se7en Labs' proposal. Both were minted through Moneta, and the smart contracts holding the funds are now live on-chain.

Ada moves with the market, but budgets and contracts are agreed in fixed terms. Holding the funds in USDM means the work the community approved can be paid for as agreed, whatever the ada price does over the year. For Intersect, that covers the ada withdrawal the community approved in Q3, so the budget year runs on fixed terms from the start.

It is also all visible. Amounts and details are on the Intersect treasury dashboard, and all the live contracts can be checked by anyone on-chain, so you can follow treasury funds from the governance action through to the contract that holds them.

Ecosystem Growth*

RealFi is live on mainnet
RealFi launched on Cardano mainnet on October 1, opening what it calls its "Voyager Season" crediting community testers for getting it there. It names SundaeSwap, Lace and Liqwid as partners, with more features and community programmes to follow. Its USDrf and sUSDrf tokens are not available to people in the UK, US or EU, so check the terms before you take part. Read the announcement.

SundaeSwap v4 launch
Also arriving on October 1, Cardano decentralized exchange platform SundaeSwap announced their v4 launch. With updates being released on a phased rollout, a full feature set list can be found in the announcement here.

CardanoScan feature updates
Cardano explorer CardanoScan has recently revealed numerous updates to its platform, offering improvements across UI and UX. Highlights include; short names for SPOs and DReps - available at spo.me and drep.me, a new DEX page aiming to enhance Cardano DeFi visibility, and new, more detailed Blocks page. Follow their X account for all of the latest news and updates.

TrivolveTech hits a Mainnet transaction milestone
On September 26, TrivolveTech announced that their IndianChain project had surpassed 5,000 Cardano Mainnet transactions. This builds upon the announcement of the 100,000 transaction milestone achieved by their Forensic Management System (FMS) in June earlier this year.

*None of the above news reports should be constituted as endorsements by Intersect. They are provided simply for news and informational purposes only.

Membership updates

Intersect Board election 2026 results
Monday, September 28 saw the results of the 2026 Intersect Board Election confirmed (after independent audit) and published. Congratulations to Kavinda Kariyapperuma and Adam Rusch, who are re-elected to the Board as member-elected Directors.

Thank you to all eleven candidates who stood for two seats, and to the members who voted. See the full results here on our Knowledge base pages.

Something to look forward to!
A small teaser of a new benefit for Intersect members on its way, as in the next few days we’ll be announcing a brand new membership offer with Moneta (W3i). Watch ours and Moneta’s channels this week, and If you’re at TOKEN2049, ask the W3i team about it at the Cardano booth.

See you in Singapore: Intersect at TOKEN2049

Next week, on October 7-8, a large share of the industry will be under one roof at Marina Bay Sands for TOKEN2049. You’ll find Intersect at the Cardano booth, hosted by the Cardano Foundation. In attendance from Intersect will be our Executive Director, Board members, staff, committee members and Enterprise members, all there to have the conversations that are hard to have on a call.

If you are going, this is a rare chance to meet such a range of the people behind Cardano's governance, budget and growth work in person. Ask them anything.

Who you will find there:

Intersect leadership: Jack Briggs, our Executive Director, with Board members Mercy and Kavinda. Kavinda was re-elected to the Board last week, so come and say hello.

The Intersect team: Abhik (Product and Membership) and Fred (Ecosystem and Community).

Committee members: Nico (Civics Chair), Laura (Growth and Marketing Chair), Sam (Product Committee Chair), Kris K (Budget Committee and ISC), James (Product Committee and ISC), Thyme (Product and Growth and Marketing Committees), and Anuj (Membership and Community Committee).

Enterprise members: Cardano Foundation, Midnight Foundation, Tweag by Modus Create, W3i, PerpX, and others.

TOKEN2049 is where partnerships start: a conversation at a booth becomes an integration, a pilot, or a hire a few months later.

Projects across DeFi, real-world assets, stablecoins, AI agents, identity and infrastructure for the booth making it a useful place to see what’s being built on Cardano right now, whether you are looking for a partner, a supplier or just a sense of where things are heading.

For members, it’s also a place to put names to faces to the committees and board members you elected. Bring questions about governance, the 2027 budget, membership, or how to get involved.

The day before TOKEN is Node Diversity Celebration Day, October 6, Singapore, In person and online.

Before TOKEN2049 opens, node implementation teams are getting together to mark how far Cardano's node diversity has come. The day is organised by the Amaru team. If you run a pool, build a node, or want to understand why more than one implementation makes Cardano stronger, join in person or online. Register on Luma · Event details

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

Enterprise Membership

Enterprise member spotlight: Midnight Foundation*

The Midnight Foundation describes itself as “an organization dedicated to growing the Midnight network - a fourth-generation blockchain built for secure, compliant, and private decentralized applications - and supporting the global community around it.” They “help developers, creators, and privacy advocates build tools that protect personal data, support digital freedom, and power the breakthrough generation of blockchain innovation.”

The Foundation’s goal is “to make Midnight’s technology open and accessible to everyone. By breaking down barriers and encouraging collaboration, we’re helping to build a more fair, decentralised internet - one that’s trustless and respects individual privacy.”

The Midnight network marked a significant milestone today, on October 2, with the launch of permissionless smart contracts on Midnight Mainnet. Read the latest news in detail in the State of the Network - September 2026 publication.

There will be a number of Midnight side events taking place at Token2049 across October 7-8, followed by a Japan event in Tokyo on October 10. You can find more details and register your interest using the Midnight events calendar.

As part of our Enterprise Member Spotlight series, we're pleased to highlight Midnight Foundation to the wider Intersect community and provide an opportunity for members to learn more about their latest news.

*Enterprise Member Spotlights are intended to showcase the work and activities of Intersect Enterprise 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.

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.