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Cardano Foundation has published details of its new budget proposal review framework for 2026, a system intended to organize and add transparency to the governance process that determines how funds are allocated from the network’s Treasury. The document sets out the criteria, voting logic, and lessons learned from the previous cycle.
The process starts when projects submit proposals through Intersect’s Hydra-voting tool. At this stage, initiatives are not formal on-chain actions; they are ideas that can receive feedback and improvements.
After off-chain voting ends, proposals that achieve more than 67% approval move to Treasury withdrawal actions. Those actions are separated by support level: proposals with approval between 67% and 75% are placed in one group, while proposals with approval above 75% are placed in another. If delegated representatives (DReps) vote in favor, funds are released from the Treasury and the work becomes financed.
Each proposal is evaluated independently by at least two internal reviewers using three criteria: ecosystem growth, budget viability, and strategic alignment with the Cardano 2030 framework. Reviewers are assigned based on their expertise across five pillars: infrastructure and research, adoption and utility, governance, community growth, and ecosystem sustainability.
If reviewers disagree, a third party serves as a tiebreaker. Final recommendations are expressed as one of three votes: yes, no, or abstain.
One notable addition for 2026 is the tracking of 2025 history. Reviewers can check whether a proposer who received funding in the previous cycle fulfilled its commitments, introducing an accountability element that the earlier process did not include.
Cardano said the first cycle revealed limitations, including the absence of comparable evaluations, limited domain specialization, and proposals that changed materially during the process without triggering new reviews. The updated framework addresses these issues by replacing purely narrative evaluations with Likert scales supported by justification text, using pillar-based assignment to ensure thematic expertise, and introducing a change-detection system that requires re-evaluation when a proposal is modified on the platform.
Cardano also announced it will publish a follow-up article detailing its positions and specific reasoning on each proposal. The goal is to make its role as a DRep as readable and auditable as any other actor in the ecosystem.
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