Introducing the Interim Constitution: Paving the Way for Community Governance

We are pleased to share that the Interim Constitution is now live and available to read.

This interim Constitution provides the basic rules needed to implement CIP-1694. It's temporary and will be replaced by a final Constitution, which Ada holders will ratify in late 2024 or early 2025. The final version may be quite different, depending on what the Cardano community wants.

You’ll find it on the new Constitutional Committee Portal, the information hub for the interim Constitution and the interim Constitutional Committee. We are also hosting a copy on our Knowledge Base and Github repository.

Making governance accessible to all

The publication of the interim Constitution and the technical guardrails marks the next step towards having a candidate node to bring on-chain decision making to Cardano. The Interim Constitution is not a fully elaborated constitution, but rather a set of essential rules that are designed to ensure Cardano maintains stability during the interim period. Later this summer, SPOs and the community will continue testing as nodes upgrade to enter the bootstrapping phase. Learn more about the Constitutional Committee in this video.

One of the core pillars of Intersect is to advance and champion on-chain governance, which includes funding opportunities to ideate and develop community tooling to support Cardano’s governance. Earlier this year, we launched three grants to fund the development of governance tooling, with Intersect member Bloxico selected to develop the Constitutional Committee Portal. Next up are the Proposal Discussion Forum and DRep Campaign Platform, developed by Intersect members WeDeliver and LidoNation respectively. These grants are a key component for enabling Voltaire to develop the tools to increase participation and access to Cardano’s on-chain governance, ultimately intending to drive better outcomes on-chain. You can read more about governance tooling here.

Next steps - drafting the final Constitution

The interim Constitution Committee will uphold the rules and guardrails set out in the interim Constitution, maintaining the safety and security of the chain through the remainder of the interim period. We are now in the final stages of the process to establish the interim Constitution Committee - voting via the Summon platform for the three community members to join Intersect and pioneer entities IOG, EMURGO and the Cardano Foundation and closes on June 23 - and the response from community members has been fantastic.

With this key security in place, the governance journey goes global! Over the past few weeks, we have been blown away by the response to the call for hosts to conduct a series of global consultation workshops, receiving 98 applications from 46 countries! Over the next few weeks, Intersect will award grants to workshop hosts to bring the community together. Look out for a workshop near you to get involved and have your say.

More ways to get involved

• Stay close to our socials to find out how you can attend one of 50 global workshops to input on the draft Constitution (confirmed workshops announced on July 3!).
• Keep testing the technical features by heading to SanchoNet to learn more, and to GovTool to participate with a user-friendly experience.
• Join Intersect and contribute through community-focused committees and working groups, including groups involved in creating a constitution draft that feeds into a broader community consultation process leading up to ratification.
• Apply for funding opportunities at Intersect to support the rollout through community tooling and other community initiatives.