Cardano is pioneering a novel model of blockchain governance where treasury funds, protocol upgrades, and ecosystem priorities are decided through on-chain voting by stake-based delegated representatives (DReps), stake pool operators, and a constitutional committee. But how do you align this decentralized civic structure with the real-world needs of open source maintenance, contributor onboarding, incident response, and project decision-making?
This session explores how Intersect the member based organization was created to steward Cardano’s core open source infrastructure in designing governance frameworks that reflect the ethos of decentralization without losing operational structure. We’ll walk through Intersect’s Open Source Committee, Contribution Ladder, lifecycle policies, security playbooks, and funding programs and show how they complement Cardano’s governance while solving practical challenges of scale, accountability, and sustainability.
Takeaways:
1) How structured governance can operate without undermining community agency
2) How to manage open source infrastructure without central structure
3) Tools and policies that enable accountability without centralization