Issue #19 closed like this: “We now know that silence can break. A single case moved 37 points in one week. What remains is whether the same thing happens on the SPO side. The deadline is September 1.”
This week the question got an answer. It happened. The number of pools voting on minPoolCost went from 24 to 60, and SPO support moved from 2.63% to 15.78%. The Constitutional Committee renewal went from 9 pools to 32, from 1.71% to 8.07%. The path we described in #19 as “not natural growth” did in fact appear.
And in the same breath, it became just as clear that this is still not enough. The requirement is 51%. 15.78% is a sixfold increase, but the remaining gap is more than 35 points and there are roughly ten days left. The thing worth thinking about this week is why 2.5x the pools produced only 6x the percentage, and why six times over still leaves us short of a third. The answer is that the count of pools and the weight of delegation are two different things.
Executive Summary
- The SPOs moved. Pools voting yes on
minPoolCostwent 24 → 60, SPO support 2.63% → 15.78%. The Constitutional Committee renewal went 9 → 32 pools, 1.71% → 8.07%. Both expire September 1 (epoch 653) and both require 51%. - It is still not enough. Sixty pools voting yes produce 15.78%. 541 pools still have their reward delegation set to always-abstain, so doing nothing is counted as abstaining.
- The 120 million ada was actually paid out. AlphaGrowth’s Cardano PRIME was ratified in epoch 649 and enacted in epoch 650 — the answer to watch item 5 in #19.
- “von Bergen” expires today. DRep support is 59.5% (117 votes), but an info action requires 100%. And committee opposition went from 2 to 3.
- Leios produced measurements, not explanations. The Earth phase of the MusashiNet testnet completed after 41 days: 127,000+ blocks, participating pools 3 → 63, peak 26.8 TxkB/s against the 4.51 TxkB/s mainnet reaches with Praos alone.
- The ledger began carrying BLS keys. The BLS key registration we flagged in #19 as an SPO requirement at Leios bootstrap is now being built into the ledger’s pool distribution data.
- Dijkstra’s timeline carries a risk note for the first time. Intersect states the Haskell node teams aim for enactment in 2026, while noting the timeline carries risk around the availability of a node release candidate. Issue #124 had said scope and timing were unchanged.
- The market turned up. ADA gained +26.70% on the week ($0.178548 → $0.226213), recovering the −11.4% from #19.
1. Market Pulse
Morning fixed-point readings, August 15 to August 22.
| Asset | Aug 15 | Aug 22 | Week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADA | $0.178548 | $0.226213 | +26.70% |
| BTC | $62,768 | $78,459 | +25.00% |
| ETH | $1,875.23 | $2,511.72 | +33.94% |
| NIGHT | $0.0172702 | $0.02188096 | +26.70% |
The four August 22 readings were captured in a single request at 07:00 JST.
In #19 we wrote: “The treasury passed its largest item and the price fell. Expectation and funding can diverge in either direction.” This week both point up. But the gain is not ADA-specific: BTC is +25.00% and ETH +33.94%. ADA’s +26.70% sits inside the market’s own move. Neither governance progress nor its absence explains the price this week, and the reverse is equally unavailable.
NIGHT moving at almost exactly the same +26.70% continues the relationship visible in #19 (NIGHT −9.61% against ADA −11.42%).
2. The SPOs Moved — From 24 Pools to 60
The strongest point in #19 was that SPO votes were not moving. Two proposals expiring September 1 (epoch 653) both carry a 51% SPO requirement. At the time they stood at 2.63% and 1.71%.
Here is this week (captured 2026-08-22 07:12 JST, epoch 650).
| Proposal | SPO support | Pools (yes・no・abstain) | #19 |
|---|---|---|---|
minPoolCost to 75 ada + Plutus memory limits (Part 2) | 15.78% | 60・4・28 | 2.63% (24・1・—) |
| Update Constitutional Committee 2026 | 8.07% | 32・1・1 | 1.71% (9・1・—) |
Pools voting yes went 24 → 60 and 9 → 32. In percentage terms that is 6.00x and 4.72x.
DRep support moved the same way. minPoolCost went from 32.43% (68 votes) to 43.65% (97 votes); the Constitutional Committee renewal from 30.12% to 37.58% (89 votes). Both thresholds are 67%.
In #19 we wrote: “If ten pools is what one week produces, the path to 51% in the remaining two weeks is not natural growth.” This week produced 36 pools. Something other than natural growth was at work. What that was does not appear in the voting record, so — as in #19 — we stop at the fact.
One thing that happened in the same week is worth placing alongside it. On August 21 the Cardano Foundation restated that stake pool operators are a separate voting body in governance, with their own threshold on Constitutional Committee changes and critical protocol parameters. We are not claiming causation, but the votes moved in a week when that reminder went out.
3. And Yet It Is 15.78% — Count and Weight Are Different
This is the most important point of the week.
Pools voting yes went up 2.5x. The percentage went up 6.00x. Those two multiples differ because ratification is measured in delegated stake, not in votes. A pool is not counted as one; the stake delegated to it is counted. One large pool moving and ten small pools moving are not the same weight.
There is a second number at work. 541 pools still have their reward delegation set to always-abstain (565 on the Constitutional Committee renewal). Abstentions are excluded from the ratification calculation — and being excluded also means not counting toward yes.
So the board currently looks like this:
- Pools that actually expressed a position: 60 yes, 4 no, 28 abstain = 92
- Pools treated as abstaining because nothing was set: 541
Among the 92 that expressed a position, yes accounts for roughly 65%. Only four pools are opposed. That it still comes to 15.78% is because most of the board has not taken a seat.
In #19 we wrote about the DRep side: “What it takes to cross the threshold is not persuasion but participation.” The same structure is visible on the SPO side. Four pools are against. What is missing is not more persuasion — it is the stake sitting at the abstain default taking a seat.
This proposal lowers the fixed-fee floor from 170 ada to 75 ada, and it bites hardest at pools with the smallest total rewards. The vote that sets that floor is the one where the largest share of delegated stake has not moved.
Intersect noted this week that the action bundles two changes and that “both should be considered when deciding how to vote.” Lowering minPoolCost and raising the Plutus memory limits do not necessarily attract the same reasons for or against.
4. The 120 Million Ada Was Actually Paid Out
Watch item 5 in #19 read: “AlphaGrowth’s execution — the epoch in which 120 million ada is actually disbursed, and the shape of the reporting that follows.”
The epoch is now fixed. Enacted in epoch 650 (ratified in epoch 649). The ratification figures we confirmed in #19 were DRep support 80.1% (154 votes), voted-no 7.67% (39 votes), not-voted 8.5%.
By amount this is the largest item we have followed. As we wrote in #19, the execution will be watched more closely than the smaller cases before it. What can be confirmed this week is that the disbursement happened.
5. “von Bergen” Expires Today
The info action naming the Protocol Version 12 hard fork “von Bergen” expires in epoch 651, on August 22 — today.
Here are this week’s figures (captured August 22, 07:07 JST).
| Item | Value | #19 |
|---|---|---|
| DRep support (threshold 100%) | 59.5% (117 votes) | 52.49% (98 votes) |
| Voted no | 0.04% (2 votes) | 0.0% (1 vote) |
| Not voted | 36.14% | 43.13% |
| Abstain (outside denominator) | 22 votes | 18 votes |
| Constitutional Committee | 0 yes・3 no・3 not voted | 0 yes・2 no・4 not voted |
An info action requires 100%. With 36.14% not voted, no path to ratification remains.
In #19 we noted that “an action that only decides a name has two committee votes against it.” This week that is three. One of the members who had not voted moved to no. The reason does not appear in the vote itself.
What happens to the hard fork’s name if this action fails is not something the record answers. That waits for the next material.
6. The Constitution Portal’s “Six” Is Really Four
In #19 we reported four proposals in consultation on the Constitutional Amendment Portal (cap.intersectmbo.org). This week the on-screen count reads six.
That increase needs a note. Here is the actual breakdown (as of August 22).
| # | Type | Status | Title | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CAP | Consultation | Require Milestone-Based Treasury Disbursement and Return of Undistributed Funds | 3 |
| 2 | CAP | Consultation | Remove Article II section 7.4 | 2 |
| 3 | CAP | Consultation | Evolve the Net Change Limit into a Strategic Spending Plan | 10 |
| 4 | CIS | Consultation (author-ready) | The Bundling Gap in Constitutional Amendment | 6 |
| 5 | CAP | Withdrawn | Research note — ignore (AuditResearch1) | 0 |
| 6 | CAP | Withdrawn | Research XSS check | 0 |
| 7 | CAP | Consultation | Research XSS check 2 | 0 |
| 8 | CAP | Consultation | F-21 stored XSS author name research | 0 |
Entries #5 through #8 read, from their titles, as submissions made to test the portal itself. Two have already been withdrawn and two remain on screen in consultation. Intersect’s update this week describes the portal as open for alpha testing. A system under test has test submissions in it.
So the substantive amendment proposals are #1 through #4 — four, unchanged from #19. Reading the on-screen “6” as a proposal count would misstate the position.
Within those four there was movement. CIS #4, “The Bundling Gap in Constitutional Amendment,” has advanced to author-ready, and its comment count went from 5 to 6. The most-discussed remains CAP #3 (evolving the Net Change Limit into a strategic spending plan), now at 10 comments, up from 9.
As we wrote in #19, CIS #4 concerns how bundling multiple changes into one proposal should be handled. The situation described in section 3 — minPoolCost bundled with the Plutus memory limits, with Intersect noting that “both should be considered” — is exactly the structure that proposal is questioning. The thing SPOs are currently voting on at 15.78% is also, separately, a live question on the constitutional side.
7. Leios Produced Numbers Instead of Explanations
This week’s development report records that the Earth phase of MusashiNet, the Leios testnet, is complete — 41 days of operation from its June 23 start.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Blocks produced | 127,000+ |
| On-chain certificates | ~8,000 |
| Participating pools | 3 → 63 |
| Peak throughput | 26.8 TxkB/s (against 4.51 TxkB/s for mainnet with Praos alone) |
| Releases | 12 in 8 weeks |
That is roughly 5.94x. What matters here is that this is a figure measured on a testnet. Leios throughput has until now been discussed as a design expectation. What arrived this week is a measurement with stated conditions.
On the engineering side the report lists memory leaks under sustained load eliminated, certificate validation stabilised for syncing nodes, and the mempool redesigned to revalidate transactions off-chain so the forge loop cannot lock. These are operational faults, surfaced by 41 days of running.
And here is the part that matters most to pool operators. The ledger team extended pool distribution data to include BLS keys and per-pool BLS-attributed stake.
In #19 we wrote, from Intersect’s record: “After Dijkstra, Leios enters a bootstrapping phase, and SPOs will be asked to register BLS keys.” This week the ledger-side foundation for holding those keys began moving. No procedure has been published yet, so this reads as the destination being built before the instructions arrive.
Participating pools going 3 → 63 is worth noting alongside it. This week the same population of SPOs was counted in two places: 60 at the ballot, 63 on the testnet. The near-match may mean nothing in itself, but the operators who are moving show up in both places at once.
Hydra also posted large gains. Replacing blind sleeps with polling on the backend cut the full head lifecycle from over an hour to about 13.5 minutes, publishing from roughly 10 minutes to 32 seconds, and first seeding from about 30 minutes to 40 seconds.
8. Dijkstra’s Timeline Carries a Risk Note for the First Time
In Intersect’s weekly update #125 (August 21), the phrasing around Dijkstra changed.
Issue #124, which we quoted in #19, held that Dijkstra’s scope and target timing were unchanged. This week’s #125 states that the Haskell node teams aim for enactment within 2026, while noting that the timeline carries risk around the availability of a node release candidate. A note that stability and release quality remain the priority sits alongside it.
This is not an announcement of delay. But it is a change: the target has acquired a condition. Rather than extending the previous reading unchanged, the thing to do is check whether this phrasing persists in the next update.
Intersect has also produced the first version of a Dijkstra readiness tracker, with criteria to be refined.
One more point: this week’s update states that the Constitutional Committee renewal (September 1 deadline) is essential to governance continuity. Failure to ratify could interrupt Cardano’s governance continuity, and would affect Dijkstra’s progress. In #19 we wrote that failure would take the committee below its five-member minimum. This week the record goes further, into what stops next.
The figure 8.07% SPO support sits in that context.
9. Midnight Watch
What could be confirmed around Midnight this week.
Third-party developer data was published. Citing Electric Capital’s dataset, Midnight reports active contributors up +325% year over year and +693% over three years, full-time developers +226% over two years, and established developers +357% over three years. Resting the claim on a cross-ecosystem dataset rather than an internal count is what gives the announcement its character.
That said, contributor counts are neither shipped products nor users. The next thing to watch is how much of that headcount converts into applications running on mainnet and transactions passing through them.
The hackathon results came out. The Major League Hacking co-hosted hackathon drew 84 teams over 48 hours, with 7 taking prizes. The winners are detailed on the official blog.
An ecosystem partnership with CertiK was announced on August 21 — an audit firm moving to the privacy-chain side. This is at the level of an announcement from the official account; no official document setting out the scope or start date could be confirmed at the time of writing.
Nightforce leader positions opened in the US and Europe.
NIGHT gained +26.70% on the week ($0.0172702 → $0.02188096), essentially matching ADA’s +26.70%.
In #19 we noted that no first proposal under the Midnight Improvement Proposal process had appeared. That remains the case this week.
10. Risk Dimensions
Five points from this week’s material.
1. “The SPOs moved” still has not reached a third. 15.78% is a sixfold increase, but the requirement is 51%. Another week of the same rate does not reach the deadline. That it increased and whether it arrives in time are separate questions.
2. The Constitutional Committee renewal remains the heavier deadline. SPO 8.07%, DRep 37.58%. Intersect states that failure to ratify could interrupt governance continuity. A defeated minPoolCost leaves the status quo; here the status quo does not hold.
3. This week’s price is not explained by Cardano-specific material. ADA +26.70% against BTC +25.00% and ETH +33.94%. Tying governance progress to price will fail next week.
4. Dijkstra’s timeline acquired a condition. The note about a node release candidate appeared for the first time this week. One instance is not a trend, but it is a change to check against the next update.
5. On-screen numbers do not always match the substance. The portal’s “six in consultation” is four real proposals. In a system under alpha testing, displayed counts and actual counts can diverge for a while.
11. What to Watch Next Week
- SPO votes on
minPoolCost— how far it builds from 15.78%. Deadline epoch 653 (September 1). - The Constitutional Committee renewal — whether it moves from SPO 8.07%. Governance continuity depends on it.
- The outcome for “von Bergen” — today is the deadline. If it fails, how the Protocol Version 12 name is handled.
- Leios BLS keys — whether an SPO-facing registration procedure is published now that the ledger has begun carrying the keys.
- Dijkstra’s risk phrasing — whether the node release candidate language persists in the next weekly update, or disappears.
- CIS #4 — whether author-ready leads to concrete draft text on how bundling should be handled.
- The two new proposals (epoch 656) —
Governance Incentives Framework 2026currently shows DRep support of 0.74% (7 votes) against 25 no votes. Unlike the cases we have followed, here explicit opposition, not silence, has gathered first.
Summary
Issue #19 ended: “What remains is whether the same thing happens on the SPO side.”
It happened. Twenty-four pools became sixty; nine became thirty-two. Only four pools are opposed. The SPOs are, at minimum, not silent.
And yet: 15.78%.
Holding those two facts together is this week’s real subject. Participation is counted neither in people nor in pools, but in delegated weight. Sixty pools voting yes produce 15.78% if the stake gathered at those pools is small. And 541 pools still sit at always-abstain, in a design where doing nothing is recorded as abstaining.
What we wrote about the DRep side in #19 applies here unchanged: crossing the threshold took participation, not persuasion. What this week adds is that the participation is counted as weight. The 36 pools that moved did break the silence. They still have not reached a third of the board.
In the same week, 63 pools gathered on the Leios testnet and produced 127,000 blocks over 41 days. The ledger began carrying BLS keys. There are operators doing the work.
The vote that sets the fixed-fee floor, and the testnet that builds the base of the next protocol. Both have the same population as their subject. One of them drew 63. The other is stuck at 15.78%.
The deadline is September 1. Roughly ten days remain.
Sources
- Intersect MBO — Intersect weekly update #125 (2026-08-21; Dijkstra timeline risk, readiness tracker, the Constitutional Committee renewal as essential to governance continuity, voting status of the two September 1 actions, Board Elections 2026, the Constitutional Amendment Portal in alpha testing): https://www.intersectmbo.org/news/intersect-weekly-update-125-aug-21-2026
- Intersect MBO — Intersect weekly update #124 (2026-08-14; SPO BLS key registration at Leios bootstrap, Amaru mainnet target): https://www.intersectmbo.org/news/intersect-weekly-update-124-aug-14-2026
- Essential Cardano — Weekly development report as of 2026-08-21 (MusashiNet Earth phase complete, 41 days, 127,000 blocks, pools 3→63, 26.8 TxkB/s, ledger BLS key support, cardano-init, Hydra timings): https://www.essentialcardano.io/development-update/weekly-development-report-as-of-2026-08-21
- Input Output — weekly report announcement (2026-08-21): https://x.com/IOGroup/status/2090801092812493175
- Cardano Foundation — SPOs as a separate voting body (2026-08-21): https://x.com/Cardano_CF/status/2090793650833772841
- Intersect Constitutional Amendment Portal (proposal list, status and comment counts as of 2026-08-22): https://cap.intersectmbo.org
- Cardano governance actions (
minPoolCost, Constitutional Committee renewal, von Bergen, AlphaGrowth): https://gov.tools/governance_actions - Koios REST API —
proposal_list/proposal_voting_summary/tip(proposal state, SPO vote counts and percentages, epoch): https://api.koios.rest/api/v1 - AdaStat (DRep support on a delegated-weight basis, ratification denominator): https://adastat.net
- Midnight — Celebrating seven winners from MLH x Midnight July hack (2026-08-20): https://midnight.network/blog/celebrating-seven-winners-from-mlh-x-midnight-july-hack
- Midnight — CertiK ecosystem partnership announcement (2026-08-21): https://x.com/midnight_jpn/status/2090763595584037163
- Midnight — Nightforce leader positions (US and Europe): https://midnight.network/nightforce
- CoinGecko (ADA / BTC / ETH / NIGHT readings for August 15 and August 22): https://www.coingecko.com
Transparency Note
What surfaced this week but did not enter the article, and where the judgement calls were.
- The “September 11 submission target” for Dijkstra’s constitutional amendment. This date circulates in several write-ups, but reading the primary — Intersect’s weekly update — it is not there; the sourcing is secondary reporting. We do not print dates we cannot confirm. The article carries only what #125 states: that documentation work including constitutional modifications is under way.
- How the Constitutional Committee renewal’s figures were obtained. Because the action is of type NewCommittee, our usual retrieval path does not complete (the same known behaviour as in #19). The DRep and SPO values were taken from Koios aggregates and confirmed consistent with Intersect’s weekly update (DRep 37.9% / SPO 7.93%) before entering the article.
- The test submissions on the Constitution portal. That #5 through #8 exist is stated as an on-screen fact. We make no judgement about whether the portal has a vulnerability. Beyond “a system in alpha testing contains test submissions,” this article says nothing.
- The scope of the CertiK partnership. The announcement from the official account is as far as it goes; no document setting out scope or start date was reached. The article marks it as an announcement.
- Why SPO votes rose sixfold in a week. The record shows that votes increased and nothing more. The Cardano Foundation’s reminder in the same week is placed alongside it, but no causation is claimed.
- Why a third committee member voted against “von Bergen.” Not readable from the vote itself; only the fact is recorded.
- A third submission of the two defeated proposals (Scalus, dOSPO/OMF). Neither appears in this week’s proposal list.
- MusashiNet’s “roughly 6x.” The report’s 26.8 TxkB/s and 4.51 TxkB/s are presented as given. No interpretation of measurement conditions is added.
Not investment advice. For information and research purposes only.