To provide transparency and context, here is a breakdown of GovTool-related costs to date, aligned with its evolving role in Cardano governance.
The budget broken down below was distributed to community builders: ByronNetwork, DQuadrant, WeDeliver, Bloxico, Lidonation
Early Bootstrapping: Pre-CIP-1694 Approval
Before CIP-1694 was approved, GovTool was bootstrapped to help users visualize and test the proposed governance process. This phase was sponsored by IOG and delivered in collaboration with two builder teams.
Initial development ( Core features and initial UX): ~$50K
End-to-end automated testing (GovTool + CIP-1694 use cases): ~$20K
Total: ~$70K
Post-CIP-1694: Foundation and Expansion (Jan–Jun 2024)
Following the approval of CIP-1694 and Intersect’s official role, development was directed by the Governance Tools Working Group, utilizing a distributed builder model and community-reviewed grants.
Evolution of Govtool v0 made before last 1694 workshop to Govtool v1 to fully support live voting, DRep registration, retirement, search and delegation, while keeping SanchoNet Govtool live on a production environment for continuous testing, feedback and improvements
To cover the whole governance process, envisioning needs ahead of betting to bootstrapping phase and increasing chances of participation and so success, a grant was opened and awarded via community reviews for a Constitutional Committee Portal to host a simple to read version of the constitution, a record of the Constitutional committee members, an easy way for them to create vote rationales and make them visible and available to ada holders.
₳128k = ~$64k (at 0.5)
Proposal Discussion Pillar: ₳135K (~$67.5K @0.5)
To cover the needs described in CIP-1694 about off-chain socialisation and discussion before a governance action is submitted on-chain, and to make it easy for people to submit a governance action with guided process to structure metadata too, a grant to add a Proposal discussion section was opened and awarded via community reviews
₳135k = ~$67.5k
Expanded testing: €84K (~$95K)
With refinement and feature growth, to ensure correctness of implementation and reliability the amount and type of automated tests for all the features connected to on chain cardano governance did evolve and expand
Beginning of January 2024 to end June 2024
84k euros = ~$95k
DevOps: CI/CD and hosting strategy: €8.5K (~$9.6K)
With addition of new part of the governance process such as expanded delegation features, proposal discussion and constitutional committee support, as well as the increase of network supported also the complexity of the CI-CD and hosting grew needed to define an overall
8.5k euros = ~$9.6k
DevOps strategy implementation and management: $52K
Following the initial DevOps strategy, hands on implementation of that strategy and management was needed
$52k
Total: ~$570K for the initial 6 Months
Maintenance & Maturation (Jul–Dec 2024)
As the tooling matured, emphasis shifted toward maintenance and refinement, ensuring stability during key phases like bootstrapping and the first governance actions.
To support full time the voting and delegation pillars, core to governance participation to reach the first community voted hard-fork and then full governance, a maintenance contract was awarded to cover from June 2024 to December 2024
Beginning of June 2024 to end December 2024
€136.8 = ~$155k
Ongoing testing 6 months support: €37K (~$42K)
Progressing from testnet to bootstrapping phase and then to full governance, while keeping up with recurrent node updates needed robust testing to support all the applications that make Govtool, for this a maintenance contract was awarded to cover from June 2024 to December 2024
To allow community to continue testing and participating in governance by making it easy to discuss and submit a governance action, on all networks, a maintenance contract was awarded to support the proposal discussion pillar and cover from June 2024 to December 2024
Beginning of June 2024 to end December 2024
€42k = ~$47k
Outcomes pillar grant: ₳76K (~$38K @0.5)
To close the governance process loop, and allow ada holders to see the outcomes of the governance actions, a grant was opened and awarded for the Outcomes pillar
₳76k = ~$38k (at 0.5)
DevOps + hosting for 6 months for all networks (SanchoNet, Preview, Preprod, Mainnet: €32K (~$36K)
To continue properly hosting and deploying all 5 pillars (applications) of Govtool on SanchoNet, Preview and Mainnet a devOps maintenance contract was awarded to cover from June 2024 to December 2024
Beginning of June 2024 to end December 2024
€32k = ~$36k
Total: ~$318K for the following 6 months
Sustained Maintenance (Jan–Jun 2025)
To support the roadmap ratification and Cardano’s first budget process, maintenance contracts were extended into 2025 at reduced cost:
Initial costs were high due to the innovative nature of GovTool — a platform designed from scratch to serve a governance model that had never been implemented before. However, recent figures are a more accurate reflection of ongoing costs to maintain and evolve a live, multi-network governance system.
