The Cardano Foundation has announced a major step in its governance roadmap, delegating 220 million ADA tokens—valued at approximately $77 million—to 11 selected Delegate Representatives (DReps). This move is designed to strengthen the network's resilience and diversity by distributing voting power more equitably among community figures focused on adoption and operations.
The new delegation, executed in a single on-chain transaction, targets two key pillars: Adoption and Operations. The Adoption DReps are tasked with representing real-world utility, enterprise needs, and ecosystem growth, including areas like DeFi and stablecoin infrastructure. The Operations DReps reflect the perspectives of stake pool operators, toolmakers, and infrastructure providers, ensuring practical network stability is considered in governance decisions.
This initiative expands upon the Foundation's earlier delegations to "Developer & Builder DReps" launched in 2025. With this latest allocation, the total amount of ADA delegated to community DReps now reaches 360 million tokens. Concurrently, the Foundation announced it will self-delegate its remaining balance of approximately 171 million ADA, rather than leaving it on auto-abstain as initially planned. This results in a net reduction of the Foundation's overall voting power by about 43 million ADA, with the clear majority of its holdings now empowering community representatives.
The Foundation emphasized that these delegations are a "show of trust" in the DReps' proven decision-making history and come with no expectations or directives on how they should vote. It explicitly welcomes differing opinions between the DReps and the Foundation itself, framing such divergence as evidence of "a healthy, decentralized governance system." The goal is to mitigate centralization risks and ensure critical decisions regarding the treasury and technical upgrades reflect a plurality of perspectives, moving away from models potentially controlled by venture capital.
The announcement also highlights the recent ratification of a 70 million ADA budget for critical infrastructure, including top-tier stablecoins and oracles. The swift approval of this fund by delegates is seen as a milestone, laying the groundwork for sustained institutional growth and deeper integration with the global blockchain economy in 2026.
