A new ₳350M Cardano spending period opens, and the cut to the committee minimum is dropped

The 532 to 612 period closes with ₳2.97M unused, and a ₳350M ceiling opens for 613 to 713

The spending period that began at epoch 532 closed at the end of epoch 612, eight epochs later than originally planned, an extension the review of epochs 603 to 605 explains. It finished with ₳347.0M of its ₳350M ceiling drawn across 40 paid withdrawals, 99.1% of what it allowed, leaving ₳2.97M unused.

That remainder is not a credit. A ceiling caps what may leave the treasury inside its own period, and when the period ends the unused part ends with it. Net Change Limit (Epoch 613 to Epoch 713), endorsed at the start of epoch 612 while the old period still had that epoch to run, with 61.3% of DRep power, opens a fresh ₳350M for epochs 613 to 713, and the new period started at zero. Four of the seven committee members voted yes and three did not vote.

Its document takes the treasury’s inflows of 2025, ₳306.9M across epochs 532 to 604, and sets the ceiling at about 115% of them. The part above the inflows has a named purpose: the ₳50M stablecoin liquidity budget the DReps had approved in 2025, which nobody had yet drawn on when the ceiling was submitted on behalf of the budget committee at Intersect. The Cardano Foundation read the figure the same way, as “carrying over” the authority for that unspent budget, and voted yes because a valid limit “is a constitutional prerequisite for processing any treasury withdrawals”: without one, funding “would be blocked after Epoch 612”. YUTA voted yes while writing that it did not understand “the logic behind the 350M ada limit”, and that a limit set below the inflows over the period would not “destroy financial discipline”. The Eternl DRep Committee wrote that it is an upper limit and “can be changed any time by submitting a new proposal”.

hix_coffeepool☕️ wrote that the outcome of the large 2025 budget “hasn’t reviewed yet” and recommended ₳200M or less. A competing proposal for a lower ceiling was already on chain: Net Change Limit of 300 Million ADA for Epochs 613 to 713, a ceiling of ₳300M for the same epochs, was still open at the close with a deadline at the start of epoch 618. Its document starts from the same ₳306.9M of inflows and sets the limit at ₳300M, below them, which would leave ₳50M less room for withdrawals in total, the higher ceiling having been sized by its proposers to hold the ₳50M liquidity budget. The review of epochs 615 to 620 has the result.

The memory increase takes effect at epoch 614 with 86.5% of DRep power

Increase Transaction and Block Memory Units (Part 1 of 2) was ratified at the start of epoch 613 and took effect at epoch 614, with 86.5% of DRep power and 57.2% of counted pool stake behind it, both above their bars, and six committee members in favour.

Every Cardano transaction carries a budget for how much work a smart contract inside it may do, measured in memory units, and there is a second budget for a whole block. A transaction over the first limit is rejected, and a block cannot include scripts beyond the second. This change raises the per transaction limit from 14,000,000 units to 16,500,000 and the per block limit from 62,000,000 to 72,000,000, and touches nothing else. This first step raises the limits by 17.9% per transaction and 16.1% per block, the most the guardrails recommend while keeping four maximally sized transactions in one block, and a second linked action would bring both increases to 25% of the original limits. It also explains why it is called part one of two: a guardrail requires a change of this kind to be split across two linked actions.

The Eternl DRep Committee called it an “easy decision”, because two committees had signed off and monitoring would be in place. YUTA voted yes with a reservation: it had found no sign of critical drawbacks in the forum discussions and committee minutes it reviewed, but “surveys indicate that there is a non-negligible number of developers who believe that this change should not be implemented”, and it would keep watching.

The proposal to cut the committee minimum from 7 to 5 is dropped at epoch 614, not expired

Reduce minimum Constitutional Committee size (committeeMinSize) from 7 to 5 left the governance queue at epoch 614, and its outcome is neither ratified nor expired but dropped. That is a third possibility this series has not met before, and it means a proposal can lose without anybody voting it down.

A parameter change has to name the parameter change that came before it. That pointer is how the ledger keeps parameter changes in order. This proposal, filed in epoch 612, named the Plutus cost model change the review of epochs 526 to 528 covers, the most recent enacted parameter change at the time it was written. When the memory increase was enacted at the start of epoch 614, that was no longer true. The pointer was stale, the proposal could no longer be applied to the chain it claimed to extend, and the ledger removed it.

The Cardano Foundation voted yes while acknowledging “a technical conflict” with another parameter change, and spelled the conflict out: because every parameter change must reference the last ratified one, and the memory increase had already passed, “the current proposal will be technically invalidated”. It voted yes anyway, for a minimum that keeps the committee functional if two members resign. YUTA voted yes for the same reason, writing that with the committee at exactly its minimum size a single resignation would leave it “below the minimum threshold” and “non-functional”, urgent security updates included. SASA_nagamaru_ながまる did not see the committee “in a state of critical dysfunction” and wrote that a smaller minimum “may increase the relative influence of individual members” and, over time, the risk of centralisation. Army of Spies wrote that it wants “more decentralization, not less”.

When it was dropped it had 19.2% of DRep power against a 75% bar, and its voting would otherwise have run until the start of epoch 619. The attempt to lower the committee minimum followed a committee resignation covered in the review of epochs 597 to 599, which had shown what a committee at exactly its minimum does when someone leaves. A second attempt at the same change is in the review of epochs 639 to 641.

The next hard fork is to be named after Max van Rossem, at 83.6% of DRep power

Name Protocol Version 11 hard fork - van Rossem closed at the start of epoch 613 with 83.6% of DRep power behind it and 86 pool votes in favour, none against.

It asks for the next hard fork to carry the name of Max van Rossem, a community contributor who had recently died. Its text sets out why: he was a member and co lead of the working group that ran the first election of a fully elected constitutional committee, he represented his national community as a delegate at the constitutional convention that produced the constitution, and he was among the driving forces behind one of its articles. The Cardano Foundation wrote that Max “was a much-loved member of the Cardano community” and integral to that first election. Cardano has named upgrades after contributors who died before, and the edition on the Plomin rename covers the last time this series reported one.

Also in the window

A treasury withdrawal without a title in the record, titled Cardano DeFi Liquidity Budget - Withdrawal 1 in its own document, the ₳500,000 first payment against the stablecoin liquidity budget the new ceiling was sized to hold, expired at the start of epoch 614 after all six voting committee members found it unconstitutional, with 63.55% of DRep power behind it, itself short of the 67% a withdrawal needs. KtorZ, one of the six, called it “unfortunate timing for this proposal which arrives alongside a constitutional change”: its rationale document sat at a malleable address rather than a content addressed one, and its delivery period and refund conditions were not clearly stated. A second version with those items in it is in the review of epochs 615 to 620.

Amaru Treasury Withdrawal 2026 was filed in epoch 614, a ₳10.14M request for a second year of work on the alternative node, with a deadline at the start of epoch 621. Its document says the request had been held back because the limit then in force had no room for it, which is why it arrived one epoch after the new period opened. A fresh ₳350M was untouched at the close, with the first request against it already filed.

The window recorded 800 votes, 441 from DReps, 346 from pools and 13 from committee members, with final votes from 179 distinct DReps and 295 pools. Pools turned out for the memory change, which needs their stake as well as the DReps. The treasury reading rose ₳8.6M to ₳1.64B.