Cardano 2026 Budget Audit Confirms 11 Proposals Reached Support Threshold

Intersect has published the final audited Hydra Voting results for the 2026 Cardano Budget Process, confirming that 11 of 69 proposals reached the required support threshold and are expected to move into the on chain governance stage.

The audited results provide a verified record of participation, proposal support and voting outcomes after review of the Ekklesia Hydra voting ballot on Cardano mainnet. The process recorded more than 84% participation by active DRep voting power, while the audit confirmed the voting evidence chain and documented limited technical and eligibility findings.

Cardano Budget Results Move 11 Proposals Toward On Chain Governance

The 2026 Cardano Budget Process was facilitated by Intersect and used Hydra Voting to collect DRep voting input across 69 proposals. The voting window ran from May 26 to June 12, 2026, with 113 voters included in the proof package.

Intersect said 11 proposals reached the required support level based on the final audited Hydra Voting results. Those proposals are now positioned to be put forward on chain, moving the budget process from audited DRep signaling toward formal Cardano governance execution.

The published proposal list includes work connected to Cardano core infrastructure, technical standards, open source tooling, governance coordination, payments, wallet maintenance and developer support. Listed items include TxPipe proposals covering Cardano core Rust libraries, Dolos, UTxO RPC, Oura and Tx3, along with Mithril Protocol work, MLabs core tooling for Plutarch and Ply, Hardware Wallet Maintenance 2026, Wirex real world payments and Intersect technical steering support.

The result gives the next stage of the budget process a defined proposal set rather than a single undifferentiated package. The 11 proposals that reached the support threshold now carry audited voting data into the on chain phase, while the full result record shows how the remaining proposals performed during Hydra Voting.

Hydra Voting Audit Verifies the Cardano Budget Evidence Chain

The independent audit reviewed both cryptographic ballot verification and eligibility verification. Its scope included on chain datum decoding, ballot Merkle root reconstruction, results hash verification, proof package verification, per voter inclusion proofs, evidence file hashes, signed payload checks, vote history chains and independent tally recomputation.

According to the audit, the ballot content reconstructed the on chain Merkle root, the published results matched the on chain results hash and the proof package matched the committed evidence Merkle root. The audit also found that all voter inclusion proofs walked back to the committed evidence root, selected evidence files matched their committed vote hashes and vote history chains were intact and inside the voting window.

The internal audit reached the same broad conclusion on the integrity of the ballot. It stated that the cryptographic evidence chain was intact and independently reproduced, with on chain commitments, published results, the evidence Merkle root, per voter inclusion proofs and the full re tally of all 69 questions verified.

That audit framing separates the certified voting result from the operational issues found during review. The reports identify bounded defects in signing representation, settlement metadata and voter eligibility, while maintaining that the structural integrity and tabulation of the ballot were established.

Audit Findings Set Fixes for Future Cardano Budget Votes

The audit identified one multisig DRep voter where one co signer signature did not match the signed payload. The internal audit described the issue as a backend signing target defect, with one signer signing the correct signed payload Merkle root and the other signing an internal evidence voteHash derived from the same vote content.

The internal report said the discrepancy was representational rather than substantive, and that both signers were forensically confirmed to have authorized identical selections. At the cryptographic layer, however, the vote did not satisfy the all of two script verification as recorded. The internal audit referred the counting decision to governance handling, while the independent audit described the related COSE payload mismatch as disqualified from the final calculation.

A second issue involved a uniform ballot identifier mismatch. All 113 voters signed one ballot identifier, while the settled datum recorded a different fingerprint. The internal audit described the issue as a benign settlement metadata mismatch connected to Hydra middleware, with no effect on tabulation or ballot integrity.

The eligibility review found three voter related issues. One stake credential was excluded because the authorized voter set was limited to DRep credentials. Two DRep credentials carried valid signed evidence and intact vote history chains, but were not registered on chain and were assigned zero voting power. Their signed votes remain part of the evidence record, but do not affect the weighted result.

The corrective actions listed in the audit focus on backend signing flow, Hydra middleware, eligibility gates and audit tooling. They include serving co signers the correct signed payload Merkle root, verifying witness signatures before storage, enforcing native script threshold rules, preserving ballot identifiers during Hydra head re seeding and rejecting non DRep credential types in DRep scoped ballots.

The final audited results leave the 2026 Cardano budget process with two concrete outputs, a defined group of 11 proposals for on chain submission and a documented repair list for the voting system before future treasury cycles.