The results of the budget vote for Cardano 2026 were announced. Intersect, a member organization responsible for promoting the open-source development of Cardano, issued audit reports that disclosed the participation of the Hydra Voting phase of the current round, valid vote statistics and the ultimate support rate for the proposals.
The eligibility criteria for this round of balloting shall be the climax 636. A total of 113 voters participated, of which 112 were valid and 1 invalid. On the basis of voting rights, the total voting power of DRep is about 6009 million ADAs, of which the effective participation in voting rights is about 5071 million ADAs, with a final participation rate of 84.39 per cent.
Multiple proposals above 67% threshold
A proposal with a support rate of over 67 per cent was adopted in accordance with the rules. The project, which focused on infrastructure maintenance, technical tools and governance coordination, showed that community funding remained a priority for bottom-up development and networking.
TxPipe is the proponent of the highest support rate in this round. Its Pallas project was supported by 85.67 per cent, the highest of all individual proposals. The project is primarily responsible for the second year of maintenance of the Cardano Core Rust Library. The Dolos project was followed by 85.28 per cent to maintain light data nodes.
In addition, UTxO RPC submitted by TxPipe received 85.08% support, Oura 73.57% and Tx3 75.63%. As a result, TxPipe occupied a clear advantage in the current round of the budget vote, reflecting the recognition by DRep of its technical implementation capacity.
Intersect and Mithril also receive high support
Besides TxPipe, Mithril Protocol received 81.33% support. The project mainly serves the light client infrastructure. The proposal for “governance coordination and technology management” submitted by Intersect was supported by 80.91 per cent and successfully adopted.
The Wirex proposal, which relates to the payment scenario, was supported by 78.93 per cent and is one of the more performing non-infrastructure projects in the current round. The core MLabs tool maintenance and enhancement proposal was 72.62 per cent, the hardware wallet maintenance proposal 71.33 per cent and the Intersect Technical Steering Committee support proposal was adopted by 68.45 per cent.
It is noteworthy that all approved proposals are not reluctantly overlined. Even the proposals adopted, which had the lowest level of support, were above the threshold by a point of more than one percentage, indicating a relatively limited divergence of votes during the current round.
Audit completed by Intersect
According to Intersect, the audit covered eligibility to vote, valid vote judgement, participation based on voting rights, and final proposal results. The report provides a more complete data record for the current budget cycle.
However, the article also mentions that the vote was organized by Intersect and the audit was completed by Intersect, and that no independent third-party audit body was mentioned in the report. This means that external scrutiny of the process remains based primarily on the methods and data disclosed by Intersect itself.
As Cardano moves forward on the chain of governance under the Voltaire governance framework, the manner in which budget votes are implemented, audit transparency and certification mechanisms may continue to influence the governance expectations of subsequent rounds.