Cardano Cuts Central Control With Major 220M ADA Delegation

The Cardano Foundation on Tuesday confirmed a significant governance update after delegating 220 million ADA in voting power to 11 newly selected community delegated representatives, known as DReps.

The move represents the first completed milestone under the Foundation’s updated governance roadmap and marks a clear shift toward broader, community-led decision-making across the Cardano network. 

Following the latest delegation, a total of 360 million ADA has been assigned to community DReps by the Foundation.

This means that the voting power of the centralized entity has been reduced, and the voting power of the builders, infrastructure, and other members of the ecosystem has increased. All delegations are now live and have an impact on the on-chain voting.

As a part of the same update, the Foundation has also made a change in the delegation of its voting power. Instead of keeping some ADA on auto-abstain, it self-delegated the remaining amount, which is 171 million ADA.

This is a higher amount than the previous estimate, but this will reduce the voting power of the Foundation by approximately 43 million ADA.

Also Read: Cardano (ADA) at Risk of Further Decline Amid Fading Buying Pressure

Governance Power Moves Closer to the Cardano Community

This is considered a practical change, not symbolic. The elected DReps do not have to share the Foundation’s views on voting and should vote independently on governance matters. This is considered a necessary part of a robust and decentralized governance system.

The Foundation distributes voting power to developers, builders, operators, and leaders who are concerned with adoption. This is to ensure that no group dominates others. It also wants the ADA that is delegated to be active and engaged in governance.

Adoption and Network Operations Take Priority

Some of the new DReps will focus on the expansion of the use of Cardano in the real world. These DReps include Ha-Nguyen from the Cardano Vietnamese Community, Patrick Tobler from NMKR, Masumi, Florian Volery from Liqwid, Goofycrisp from Snek, James Meidinger from USDM, and Phillerino from Flow Labs.

The areas of focus for the DReps include education, decentralized finance, NFTs, stablecoin infrastructure, and user experience.

Stake pool operators, tool developers, and infrastructure providers are represented on the operational side by delegates like Martin Lang, Dmytro Stashenko of Adastat, Ian Hartwell of the HEPY stake pool, Mike Fullman of Pooltool and Dave of DAVE Pool.

They are still focused on performance, transparency, and long-term stability of the network. The Cardano Foundation has urged ADA holders and their members within the community to actively participate in DReps as the network governance structure is still developing.

Also Read: Cardano (ADA) Faces Brutal 82% Upside Test Ahead