Welcome to Intersect’s update #101.

This week we introduce a new format that credits contributors and organizes the report into five sections aligned with Intersect’s committees and working groups.

There’s the latest on the van Rossem update to the Cardano node, governance news from the Civics Committee, proposed updates to the budget process, information about projects overseen by Delivery Assurance, Python integration, 2026 Committee Elections, and news from Intersect and EMURGO in Tokyo about the 2026 budget process.

 Contributor: Bosko Majdanac, hard fork working group  

Cardano Node 10.7.0

• Target release within one week
• Mainnet hard-fork-ready candidate release – expected integration point for ecosystem tooling
• Will be used to fork Preview, PreProd and then Mainnet
• Dependent on performance results and integration testing, further minor releases may follow

Upgrading to 10.7.0

Release of Cardano node 10.7.0 will form the foundation for future ecosystem upgrades. This will be a major Cardano node release containing new features in addition to the hard fork capabilities. Expect iterative improvements beyond 10.6.x.

Once released, the ecosystem should begin integrating this node into their tooling. This integration and ecosystem testing are key for any major version release.

Meeting cadence and communications

Starting this week, the Hard Fork working group will be meeting weekly to maintain momentum as integration nears completion and the overall readiness increases.

To further increase reach, the group will begin to hold regular X spaces, each Thursday, started this week. The First one was held on March 5 at 3pm UTC.

Keep informed

Join the dedicated Upgrade Discord channel at #wg-hard-fork (on the Intersect Discord server). This channel is monitored by the working group, with updates being shared and questions answered. Alternatively, you can reach out to hard-fork@intersectmbo.org

The hard fork working group meetings are in the shared Luma Calendar along with the newly started X spaces for the next several weeks. The Cardano Upgrades GitBook contains important hard fork context, working group policies, readiness tracking, and working group meeting minutes.

Contributors: Larisa McFarlane, Civics Committee

Thomas Lindseth, Intersect

Civics Committee Update

The Civics Committee met this week to review progress across several active governance workstreams, including the Constitutional Amendment Process (CAP), governance education initiatives, and upcoming elections. The meeting also included decisions on committee structure and input into the wider ecosystem budget process.

Consensus was reached in support of the Constitutional Amendment Process Working Group, where the committee unanimously approved the proposed Phase 2 amendment form fields and consultation timelines. These define the information required when submitting constitutional amendment proposals and outline consultation periods depending on the scale of the change (for example, shorter periods for editorial updates and longer periods for substantive amendments). This process helps establish a transparent and structured amendment pathway for the Cardano Constitution.

The committee also approved the candidate registration fields for the upcoming Constitutional Committee elections, ensuring candidates provide relevant information about their background and understanding of the Constitution, improving transparency for voters evaluating candidates.

Members also acknowledged the submission of the Budget Process Information Action and heard working group updates to include progress from the Governance Education Working Group, which continues mapping existing governance learning materials and identifying opportunities to improve how information is presented to the community.

Governance actions

Status: No governance actions expired or were ratified since last week's update. On March 5, Intersect submitted a new Info Action outlining the proposed framework for how the Cardano ecosystem budget process may be structured and facilitated for the 2026 cycle and beyond.

Active Governance actions

1. Net Change Limit (Epoch 613–713)

Goal: Establish a 300M ada treasury withdrawal cap through July 2027. This constitutional "guardrail" is a prerequisite for any future treasury movements.

Expires: March 10

DRep status: 33.7%

Threshold: >50% DRep active voting stake

 

2. Amaru Treasury Withdrawal 2026

Goal: This governance action requests a 2026 treasury withdrawal (₳10,142,000) to fund Amaru, an open source, Rust based, fully interoperable block producing Cardano node, with milestones across 2026 to improve node diversity, accessibility, and network robustness. It also commits to transparent administration with public reporting, audits, and returning any unspent funds to the Cardano treasury.

Expires: March 10

DRep status: 38.78%

CC Status: 1 ⚪ (KtorZ), 2 ✅ (Cardano Curia, Tingvard), 4 ⏳ Pending

Threshold: 5/7 CC members + 67% DRep approval

 

3. Cardano Budget Process Framework (facilitated by Intersect)

Goal: Publish the structured framework for the Cardano ecosystem budget process administered by Intersect, outlining the stages for proposal submission, review, prioritization, and treasury withdrawal preparation for the 2026 and future budget cycles.

Expires: April 4

DRep status: 0%

Threshold: Informational action. No approval required, but DReps may signal support.

 Contributor: Budget Committee 

A Budget Process Info Action has been submitted on-chain proposing the framework for running a Cardano ecosystem budget cycle for 2026.

The action doesn’t approve funding or individual proposals. Instead, it asks DReps whether the ecosystem should adopt a structured process for collecting proposals, supporting community review, and consolidating approved initiatives into Treasury Withdrawal governance actions.

The proposed framework builds on lessons from the 2025 cycle and introduces several improvements designed to support clearer decision-making and reduce review overhead for DReps. These include standardised proposal templates, alignment with the Cardano 2030 Vision strategic framework, and a structured feedback and refinement phase before proposals move to vote.

Proposals that reach approval thresholds would be ranked by DRep support and evaluated against the Net Change Limit (NCL) before being consolidated into Treasury Withdrawal governance actions.

If the Info Action receives majority support from active voting stake, the 2026 budget process will proceed, with proposal submissions expected to open in early April, followed by community review, DRep voting via Ekklesia, and treasury submissions in June.

 Delivery assurance 

Contributor: Duncan Soutar, Intersect delivery assurance

Last week saw Go Maesto’s Web3 Developer Stack become the fifth project of the 2025 Treasury Funded Proposals to be completed.

Their seventh and final milestone was completed with Maestro's core indexer framework being open-sourced to the community. The indexer is compatible with Bitcoin and the indexer framework is optimized for self-hosting and with an extendable reducer data pipelines.

Maestro’s Web3 Development Stack Project provides a complete suite of developer-friendly infrastructure services and tools, including:

• Blockchain Indexer: For real-time blockchain data querying and insights.
• Mempool Monitoring: Enabling developers to detect transactions and on-chain events instantly, even before they are confirmed.
• Event Notification System: Allowing instant webhook alerts for on-chain activities, significantly enhancing the responsiveness of dApps.
• Wallet Manager: Facilitating secure, efficient wallet management, address derivation, and user transaction tracking.

These tools significantly improve the developer experience, dramatically reducing complexity and integration overhead. By abstracting away blockchain complexities, Maestro empowers developers to quickly build and deploy advanced DeFi applications, wallets, and Layer-2 integrations, directly utilizing Bitcoin liquidity.

More information can be found on GoMaestro’s website.

Contributor: Ryan Williams, Intersect

Pentad and Critical Integrations administration

Intersect is the acting administrator of the approved Critical Integration Budget on the behalf of the Cardano Pentad. Great progress has been made and is continued to be made towards the mandate of the Critical Integrations budget.

This week we will highlight the work to integrate Pyth to Cardano. Pyth is a tier one oracle, offering thousands of realtime price feeds to on-chain smart contracts. The team behind Pyth, Douro Labs have been working hard with support from Pentad, to add Cardano support. This integration will allow for Cardano applications to read and verify thousands of price feeds.

In collaboration with TxPipe and Input Output, the Douro Labs team has enabled a Pyth integration hackathon later this month in Argentina. This will be held the weekend of March 21 and 22, in warm, sunny Buenos Aires. See announcement from the TxPipe team on X which includes details for participation.

This Pythathon aims to showcase the use cases that Pyth’s integration enables for Cardano.

Contributor Valeria Devaux, Intersect

 Intersect Committee Elections Applications Open March 30 

“Any paid individual Intersect member is eligible to stand - could it be you?”

Intersect committees play a substantive advisory role across the Cardano ecosystem, contributing to governance oversight, budget review, ecosystem direction, and operational guidance. Committee members help shape real decisions with long-term impact.

What’s new this year?

Based on feedback from previous cycles, improvements include:

• Clear confirmation of responsibilities during application
• Greater visibility of applicant participation within Intersect
• Transparent voter participation (while individual votes remain confidential)
• Post-election surveys to strengthen future processes
• Multi-language application forms

Full details, eligibility criteria, and application guidance are available in the official blog post.

Membership and community committee

Contributor: Abhik Nag, Intersect

Join us for the next MCC Open Office Hours!

March 9, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

An open space to ask questions, share feedback, and discuss what’s happening across the Membership & Community Committee.

🎙 X Spaces:
https://x.com/i/spaces/1wxWjaRagomJQ?s=20

Don’t miss it 👋

If you missed the February Intersect Town Hall, you can watch the full recording here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/4gsGhKQE4ys

Key Takeaways

• Cardano is preparing for Protocol Version 11, also referred to as the Van Rossem Hard Fork, introducing improvements to node security, ledger consistency, and Plutus performance.

• Governance continues to evolve, with ongoing proposals and treasury discussions shaping how funding and ecosystem initiatives are managed.

• Intersect committees are progressing work across budget planning, governance education, and ecosystem development initiatives.

• Community engagement and developer growth remain a core focus for Intersect as it supports builders and contributors across the ecosystem.

• Global ecosystem activity continues expanding, with increasing participation from communities and organizations across multiple regions.

 The Emurgo DRep Budget Process event in Tokyo 

 Contributor: Fred Tanaka, Intersect 

From Chaos to Coherence: How Intersect is Shaping the 2026 Cardano Budget.

On February 25, in the heart of Tokyo’s Ginza district, the Cardano community gathered for a meetup to review the improvements to the budget process for 2026. Sponsored by Intersect, this Emurgo-led initiative brought together approximately 30 dedicated community members including Philip Pon, CEO, EMURGO, to discuss a fundamental shift in how we manage our shared resources: the transition from fragmented "grant-seeking" to a disciplined, commercially driven budget process.

The overarching context was clear: to compete with the best, we need an overhaul to how and what we spend, including whether we are willing to invest in building a recognizable brand profile.

The event opened with community members reflecting on the challenges of the 2025 budget cycle noting issues encountered and a process that had led to "DRep fatigue."

Intersect stepped up to inform the Japanese community that we are leading the charge to fix this, moving away from ad hoc funding and toward a structured framework that aligns every treasury ada with the Cardano 2030 Vision.

The Path to Cardano 2030:

Intersect has commenced the journey to the future with The 2030 Vision, the “strategic destination” that guides us so we are not simply spending money, but investing in our future. It anchors the 2026 Budget Process by filtering for proposals that align with long-term strategy. This vision allows us to prioritize meaningful initiatives, including major ecosystem infrastructure, stablecoins, institutional custody, and brand building, while strengthening accountability. By working backward from 2030, we can define the 2026 KPIs that truly matter.

The 2030 Vision, the Net Change Limit, and the Budget Process framework must be approved on-chain before the cycle begins. This process ensures we are not building the plane while flying it. The entire pre-on-chain process from submission to review to consolidation and execution is managed within a standardized system, improving clarity, consistency, transparency, and accountability.

Cardano has the technology, the capital, and the community to win. By replacing chaos with coherence and fragmentation with focus, Intersect is ensuring that the 2026 budget isn’t just a relationship-based grab bag but a commercial roadmap for global adoption.

 Inside the van Rossem Upgrade: Weekly Community Q&A 

 To further increase reach, the hard fork working group are holding regular X spaces, each Thursday, starting this week. The first one was held on March 5 at 3pm UTC, and you can view our shared Luma Calendar for working group meetings. 

That’s it for this week’s update. Thank you for reading. To learn more about Intersect’s work, explore our 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.

Your voice helps shape the future of Cardano governance.