DD2

If you are a Cardano dRep, consider this: You do not need to be paid for the role to benefit from it. If you hold ADA, helping the ecosystem succeed gives you upside alongside everyone else. I oppose dRep compensation because it risks attracting people who see governance as an income opportunity. We need representatives focused on creating lasting value for ADA holders. I think @yutazzz understands this principle. Governance should align our interests. Quid pro quos, conflicts of interest, and incentives that reward political influence undermine that goal. I’m tagging several larger independent dReps because they have the influence to lead. Your time is appreciated, but political influence should not become something builders have to pay to access. Cardano cannot afford a system where securing individual compensation takes priority over growing the ecosystem. Whatever someone earns as a gatekeeper could be outweighed by losses on their ADA holdings if the broader ecosystem suffers. Either Cardano succeeds together, or it continues to weaken while individual organizations and politically favored projects protect their own budgets. Cardano is a blockchain ecosystem whose investors expect adoption, utility, and a credible opportunity for returns. If you hold substantial ADA, putting ADA holders first aligns with your own long-term interests. Putting your own income ahead of the ecosystem can undermine your larger investment. That applies to infrastructure providers and founding entities too. An organization can sustain its payroll by selling ADA while holders supporting that market lose money. Organizational sustainability does not demonstrate ecosystem success. Does that spending create enough adoption, demand, outside capital, and commercial activity to justify its cost? In my view, the results do not justify the current priorities. We need well-funded commercial builders creating useful products and attracting customers. The size of an institution’s payroll should reflect a clear need and demonstrated results. Large ADA holdings and liquid staking rewards provide spending power. They do not establish community support for every initiative those holdings fund. ADA holders deserve a strategy that gives capable commercial teams a realistic opportunity to grow. If expensive institutional structures consume resources while promising businesses struggle to access capital, the entire ecosystem bears the consequences. dReps, please use your influence to change these priorities. You have a responsibility to represent your delegates’ interests. As a former enterprise software consultant, I understand the value of quality infrastructure. I also understand that infrastructure needs customers. Technical delivery must connect to commercial adoption and measurable demand. Continuing to prioritize infrastructure spending while neglecting commercial growth is a recipe for failure. @Cardano_CF: You appear willing to commit substantial resources to your own staffing while taking a far more restrictive approach to funding independent commercial builders....slashing @Catalyst_onX and refusing to collaborate with builders outside of your narrow thesis around enterprise, compliance, and traceability. I believe your priorities are completely backwards. Please reduce overhead and direct more capital toward businesses capable of attracting users, investment, and demand for ADA. Where is the evidence that your enterprise infrastructure strategy can actually attract users and capital at the scale Cardano needs, within a commercially meaningful timeframe? I have not seen a convincing case. The public messaging I’ve seen from CF leadership emphasizes enterprise and public infrastructure while downplaying the financial applications of blockchain. I disagree with that direction. Enterprise applications can be valuable. But CF needs to explain how they translate into demand for ADA, attract investment, and create meaningful economic activity on Cardano. Endless PR announcements and integrations alone do not answer those questions. CF has had plenty of time and runway to execute their strategies, and they have not worked. It's time for fresh perspectives and new leadership....outside of the founding entities. The founding entities need to stop depriving new leaders of ecosystem resources. Cardano is not decentralized when founding entities use liquid staking reward system to dump on innocent cash investors to fund their bloat and inefficiency. Enough is enough. ADA holders are exposed to the commercial consequences of this strategy. Funding from existing ADA holdings and staking rewards should come with a clear explanation of costs, expected outcomes, and timelines. A dependable source of organizational funding does not justify an indefinite timeline for ecosystem growth. Excessive caution also has a cost when commercial teams and investment opportunities move elsewhere. Cardano is falling behind, and the founding entities bear responsibility. Stop blaming undercapitalized, independent commercial builders and the community for being upset about it. Please change course. Give commercial adoption, financial applications, and outside capital the priority and funding they need. If you refuse to collaborate with the talent, then give us the resources and get out of our way. You are failing ADA holders.e ADA holders should not have to accept indefinite spending with an unclear connection to the ecosystem’s success. R&D belongs in the budget. But so does a serious commercial growth strategy, with sufficient capital behind it. The 2026 spending was appalling. @IntersectMBO and @Cardano_CF can NOT be in charge of shaping funding. Period. These are paid employees or professional Cardano bureaucrats who aim to be paid whether ADA succeeds or fails. They can not be trusted with your capital. They are paying themselves with YOUR 🫵 money. They can keep funding payroll even while ADA holders lose money and independent builders run out of runway. That shields their operations from consequences that other participants face immediately. This is why they don't care if number go up. They get paid either way. They don't have to sell their genesis ADA. They have an endless supply of Cardano investor cash to spend. dReps have an opportunity to lead that change. Please direct funding toward adoption and hold major funding recipients accountable for results. As far as your anger towards indepdent commercial builders who fumbled the bag...please apply that same scrutiny to founding entities with bloated payrolls who continually dump their "free" liquid staking rewards on innocent cash investors with zero skin in the game. DReps. You need to stand up to this and put an end to it if you want Cardano to survive. If you quid pro quo with the FEs or try to profit off of Cardano's governance inefficience, then you will make far less money in the long run. The only thing worse than centralization, is centralization under the guise of decentralization. Independent Builders like are not the enemy. Good faith independent commercial builders are aligned with ADA holders, not the founding entities. Watch where your money goes. We are not the problem. We are the solution. The sooner you recognize this, the better. @IntersectMBO @jasonappleton @JaromirTesar @yutazzz @adamKDean

It was good to see @jasonappleton engaging with my post on his YouTube stream. Since I couldn’t respond live, here’s my response: youtube.com/live/w60hJYAa738… Jason, we agree on a lot. I understand your frustration with projects that promise compelling visions and then fail to execute or launch with poor tokenomics. Accountability matters. Where we disagree is how to create it, who should face it, and what will attract capable builders to Cardano. - Accountability The same scrutiny applied to small teams seeking funding should apply to the founding entities and major infrastructure providers. Staking rewards from large ADA holders can support ongoing operations outside treasury votes. ADA holders deserve clear reporting on spending, priorities, and results across those funding sources. How much new adoption, outside capital, and commercial activity is that spending producing? - Builder treatment Independent founders already carry substantial commercial risk. Funding conditions should help them build successful businesses. If accessing capital requires navigating endless political relationships and bureaucracy, capable teams will build where they can move faster and find better support. Cardano competes for those teams. - The role of dReps Delegated voting power does not automatically confer expertise in venture investing or operating a business. Good investors contribute capital, connections, commercial judgment, and relevant experience. Due diligence and reporting are reasonable. Giving dReps broad authority to direct independent businesses or seize underperforming projects would make the ecosystem less attractive to founders and outside investors. - Why venture funding is difficult Decentralization alone does not explain the difficulty Cardano projects face raising capital. Investors also evaluate the addressable market, users, liquidity, distribution, and potential returns. A product confined to a small market has a harder path to venture-scale success. Products that can reach customers and capital across ecosystems have a broader opportunity. - Funding structures matter Early-stage companies need capital to develop products, acquire customers, and grow. Revenue-sharing obligations can consume that capital before a business has reached scale. Any proposed structure needs to account for that. Funding terms should make promising companies more investable and give them room to succeed. - BTC Karma We built @btc_karma to bring Bitcoin capital to Cardano, and we have already demonstrated Phase 1 execution on mainnet. Our next phase requires institutional capital and partnerships. We are competing with substantially better-funded companies, so access to capital directly affects our ability to execute. I want that success to benefit Cardano. But we cannot make the business dependent on an indefinite political funding process. If the capital and partnerships are available on Ethereum or elsewhere, we will pursue them. That is a commercial decision founders have to make. Cardano needs successful businesses that attract users, capital, and revenue. Its funding approach should give capable teams a compelling reason to build and stay.

I understand your frustration, but this post makes no sense to me. Cardano needs competitive dapp builders, and right now there is no good economic reason for building here over other chains. Talented dapp builders need to be subsidized or should simply focus elsewhere. The amount of ADA the founding entities sell (from their staking rewards) needs to be offset by commercial gains....and independent commercial builders are the only ones that can help. Doesn't seem like you understand that. The founding entities employ hundreds of people. People who buy ada are paying for them with their own cash. This isn't sustainable. Why are there no VCs investing in Cardano projects? It's because it's not a good investment. Builders on Cardano have too much to overcome (massive infra spending, no users, bad marketing, etc). This is why we literally had to give treasury funds to a VC to even considering investment in Cardano projects. After five years of building here, I'm done betting on Cardano. It's time for Cardano to bet on me. As far as dReps go...they don't add value to ADA. Perhaps being a dRep requires having other economic incentives tied to the price of ADA, otherwise it makes no sense. If dReps are trying to use their political leverage to make money for themselves, they are doing ADA holders zero favors. If dReps continue to vote for the same things as they did in 2026, then Cardano will fail. Cardano needs competitively funded independent commercial builders to keep ADA in the fight. We've never had that. If you want me to share some examples of what project raise from VCs on other chains...I'm happy to share.

Cardano’s current spending problem goes beyond the $1B+ TREASURY. Let me explain: People buy $ADA with money they worked for. Founding entities received large $ADA allocations at launch. Those holdings can generate staking rewards, which can be sold to pay salaries and fund operations. Where does the cash come from? The people buying $ADA. These organizations can sell their rewards without reducing their original $ADA holdings. That gives them an ongoing source of funding without asking holders to approve their spending. Buying $ADA does not mean endorsing an organization’s salaries, priorities, or results. But buyers’ cash can fund those things anyway. This is why accountability matters beyond treasury votes. Organizations can keep funding themselves while ordinary holders lose money, even without direct treasury funding. Are these organizations bringing in enough new users, capital, and commercial activity to justify their costs? That is the question ADA holders should be asking. If not, spending needs to shift toward teams and initiatives that can bring users and capital to Cardano. This is what dReps should prioritize. Infrastructure spending needs to serve demonstrated commercial demand. In 2027, attracting users, capital, and revenue should take priority over building more infrastructure without a clear path to adoption. Large founding-entity holdings can already generate staking rewards that can be sold to fund operations. Those sales add selling pressure. ADA holders deserve transparency about how much is sold, what it funds, and what results it delivers. Treasury spending should prioritize initiatives that grow demand for $ADA, attract users, and build successful businesses. Founding entities should not receive more funding simply because they have the relationships to secure it. Founding-entity employees should not control treasury decisions that could benefit their own organizations. Conflicts should be disclosed, and those employees should recuse themselves from those decisions. The treasury belongs to $ADA holders and should be used for their benefit. Its purpose should be to improve their future, not guarantee anyone’s payroll. @IntersectMBO

Bringing Bitcoin TVL to Cardano is a major opportunity to attract new capital and grow the ecosystem. @btc_karma is building toward that opportunity. The next step is making Bitcoin productive in DeFi. Our goal is to give BTC holders access to strategies that generate returns paid in BTC or USDCx. Our planned Phase 2 model uses BTC as collateral to borrow stablecoins on Cardano, while the Bitcoin remains on the Bitcoin network. We’re exploring USDCx interoperability and @Circle’s CCTP infrastructure to access yield strategies across supported chains, with financing and repayment managed on Cardano. $KARMA connects both phases: rewarding users for committing Bitcoin to the ecosystem today and unlocking access to higher-yield opportunities planned for Phase 2. We’re in late-stage discussions with potential institutional partners about funding, liquidity, and integrations. Our next development milestone is a controlled pilot demonstrating the full journey from BTC collateral through yield generation and repayment. You can support that work by trying Phase 1 today: staking.btckarma.io Stake native BTC, earn $KARMA, and help grow Cardano’s Bitcoin ecosystem. BTC Karma charges no staking fees. You only pay Bitcoin network transaction fees. There’s no bridging or wrapping: your BTC stays on Bitcoin and is temporarily locked through a Bitcoin script. You can unlock at any time. This functionality is battle tested and has been live for months. Due to the abrupt cancellation of Catalyst fund 15, we funded the initial build ourselves. Phase 1 has not yet undergone an independent audit, and we’re seeking partner backing to support the next stage, including independent security review. Please understand the locking conditions before participating. Starting with a small amount is reasonable. docs.btckarma.io We’ve built a smooth staking experience and would welcome your feedback and participation. We’re also exploring a future community airdrop, but we'd really like to see broader community support first. We currently have 40 people staking, but we would like to see more. If you believe Bitcoin inflows can help grow Cardano, we’d appreciate you trying BTC Karma and sharing it with others. Thanks.🙏

DReps, as a VB with Cardano products, we strongly prefer independent professionals designing future budgets. @BCG @Deloitte, let’s bring in experienced consultants with disclosed conflicts, measurable targets, and accountability to $ADA holders. Spending with positive ROI only.