Cardano DRep Voting - Set 2025 Net Change Limit of 300M ADA
As Cardano DRep (Delegated Representative), I will inform everyone about my governance votes. For those unfamiliar with the Cardano ecosystem, DReps are like members of parliament who vote on governance decisions. This is my second vote.
Governance Action Type: Info Action. Proposal "Set 2025 Net Change Limit of 300M ADA, 2026 Net Change Limit of 250M ADA". I voted "No"
Context about my vote: Initially, I wanted to vote "Yes" just to support the idea that community members can suggest changes and budget regulations such as the "Net Change Limit." But after reading the Abstract, Motivation, and Rationale, I decided to vote "No."
As for me, I don't see the explanation of how "Net Change Limit" is correlated with potential significant opportunity losses for the Cardano ecosystem. For me, it looks like a secondary aspect of the whole budget process. More important is to understand how and by whom the budget will be formed, etc. There is no explanation of why 300M ADA. Where does this number come from? Why not 250, 200, 100 or 400? And also why plan so much ahead (for 2026) if we can't predict the $/ADA rate? Closer to the date it will be easier to plan because still we don't live in a world where everything is counted in ADA.
And last but not least. What influenced me the most was the line: "Just to clarify, we are not IOG, CF, EMURGO, PRAGMA, INTERSECT or their staff, we are just community members. We won't give names right now because we don't want to get caught up in any drama.".
I'm not a fan of listed organisations and I have no relations to them. Moreover, I criticized some of them in the past. CF never compensated me for meetups and Cardano events expenses (after promising to do so), Intersect never sent invitations to workshops or governance events. I consider most of these institutions as corrupted bureaucrats who get high salaries by abusing their monopoly on governance, budget control, etc. Probably except IOG, because this company is the main developer of Cardano and Charles Hoskinson has a long-term interest in Cardano which is more philosophical than financial. If governance will work well in a decentralized way - this is the long-term success of Cardano and IOG (as the main Cardano developer). But for bureaucrats - that's a threat to loose their ability to receive big financial gains. So I'm not afraid to provide criticism and as I see the role of DRep - constructive criticism is an important part of the work. DReps are not anonymous and I think DReps are important in the future governance construction. Otherwise, why would I be a DRep? Just to vote for voting and spend transaction fees? So I don't like the formulation "we don't want to get caught up in any drama". If there was some discussion on this which I missed - then it could be pointed out. I don't see any "drama" in putting your name or nickname under the proposal.
Just to check my intuition - I checked the vote results and for now bigger % of DReps and SPOs voted against it. Ok, so I'm not alone in this opinion. But of course their voting reasons are probably different. I decided to share my thoughts on it and I hope this short text was useful.
More details about this proposal and vote results on the Governance portal: