Cardano’s first inception was in an essay, published in 2017. In that essay, the vision was for a public, permissionless, decentralized blockchain network that insisted on transparent governance by participants of the system as a fundamental requirement. The original roadmap of Cardano outlined a “Voltaire” milestone that would deliver this aforementioned future. You can read our article about Cardano’s full roadmap here: The Cardano Roadmap: the history, the future, and YOU .
Trivia: The Voltaire milestone was named after François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), known as Voltaire, an Enlightenment philosopher who advocated for individual liberties in a way that was revolutionary at the time.
CIP-1694 and the Birth of Cardano Governance
Fast forward six years to late February 2023, when Input Output Global (IOG)—the team initially contracted to implement Cardano’s roadmap—introduced Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) 1694. This proposal provides the technical framework for Cardano’s governance on the blockchain. Before releasing the proposal to the broader Cardano community, IOG invited approximately 50 community members, educators, and engineers to Longmont, Colorado, to review the draft and provide feedback. After this initial workshop, more than 50 workshops were conducted globally to refine the proposal. Competing governance proposals were also discussed, but CIP-1694 garnered the most support. The author of this article participated in the Longmont workshop and co-hosted a subsequent workshop in Minneapolis, USA.
The Cardano Constitution
While CIP-1694 defines the technical mechanisms of governance, a complementary non-technical document was needed to guide the community’s decision-making process. Enter the Cardano Constitution(s).
In March 2024, an interim version of the constitution was introduced. That version was then workshopped at 50 locations around the world plus some online sessions. The big idea was to mine the global hive mine for the Cardano community to inform a final draft that will serve to help Cardano Blockchain participants govern itself.
In addition to providing feedback ideas for what a Cardano Constitution should look like and say, each of the 50 physical workshops was also tasked with picking delegates. The delegates are tasked with synthesizing all the ideas into one unified document that could ultimately be presented to the entire Cardano community for ratification.
The road to ratification
Ratifying the constitution involves submitting a governance action—a special transaction with a hash of the constitution—to the Cardano blockchain. DReps (one of the three governance roles defined by CIP-1694) will vote on the proposal over six epochs (30 days). Approval requires a 75% majority of the voting ADA.
The road to ratification so far has been filled with lots and lots of conversations, even beyond the initial global workshops. Twitter spaces, zooms, and forum threads have all garnered a lot of emotions and ideas. The interim draft as well as most drafts of the constitution have been overseen by Intersect’s Civics Committee. Intersect is a Cardano Member Based Organization tasked with “Maintaining Cardano’s core technology and developing a roadmap for the future that attracts a diverse group of stakeholders.” They are one of the physical real world actors that can carry out the will of the decentralized Cardano network.
The delegates from the 50 global workshops are scheduled to approve and sign a final draft on Dec 5, 2024. However, conversations about the constitution are still buzzing with debate and other plot twists! ➡️
The 11th hour
With just 15 days to go before the signing, delegates received unexpected news: no visas had been issued for the planned convention in Argentina. As a result, instead of the unified convention in Argentina, there will be two conventions: one in Argentina and another in Nairobi, Kenya. There was palpable disappointment on the call but organizers have promised to make both conventions feel like one… continents apart, and with a 6 hour time difference.
Just 13 days before the two conventions the Cardano Foundation released a ”Cardano Foundation’s Proposal for a Cardano Constitution.” The idea was to “Present an updated proposal for the Cardano Constitution, contributing to the ongoing governance process.” The energy from the community is that this feels like a competing constitution, but the foundation has reiterated that this is not meant to be seen as a competing constitution. Rather, a helpful rendition to help the delegates in their synthesis process. They do not intend to propose this as a separate vote on-chain but hope the delegates will take some of the ideas and changes proposed to iterate on the Intersect constitution that have already been workshopped over 5 dozen times.
And just 9 days before the conventions in Nairobi and Buenos Aires, @MadOrkestra, a Cardano community twitter persona, released cgov.app, “a last minute attempt to get feedback on Drafts of the Cardano Constitution to your Delegates.” It works by connecting a wallet, selecting your Delegate, comments, and up/downvote sections, so everyone knows which parts need further discussions. On cgov.app, the community can see and provide comments on 9 different alternate drafts to the constitution. Delegates have special access to the site to see comments their constituents have left.
Conclusion
The long journey that was kicked off in 2017 is finally within days of the first book ending in a saga that will no doubt run for decades. The Cardano community is the most awake that we’ve noticed since the summer of 2020, when liquid, permissionless, self-custody staking was introduced to Cardano (and for the first time to any blockchain network).
Lido Nation will be at the signing ceremony represented by our co-dreamer Darlington, as the Nairobi delegate. Hopefully in a few weeks, a new constitution for a new era in blockchain will be proposed on the Cardano Blockchain. And maybe, a new experiment in governance, different from anything we’ve seen in any part of the world, will begin.
What are you looking forward to seeing happen in this new Era? How are you planning to participate? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
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