The People Have Spoken: Cardano Community Overrules Its Founder

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• A proposal to withdraw $1.8 million from the Cardano treasury to fund the planned Cardano Summit in Singapore has failed.

• DReps stood firm against the proposal despite a last-minute push by Charles Hoskinson and other leaders.

The Cardano community has voted against a proposal to withdraw nearly $2 million from the network’s treasury and fund the Cardano Summit in Singapore in a landmark move that pitted the community against its leaders.

The proposal was introduced by the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, the network’s commercial arm. It sought to withdraw 7.8 million ADA, valued at $1.81 million at current prices, from the treasury to finance the two-day event in Singapore.

The original proposal had requested 10 million ADA, worth $2.33 million. Following community uproar, the Foundation was forced to scale down the costs, cutting things like a proposed sponsorship of TOKEN2049, which kicks off on October 7 in Singapore. Hoskinson’s team had planned to have the Summit on October 5-6 to target the crypto crowd that would have already arrived in the city for TOKEN2049.

The revision had also included adding audits by independent experts and milestone payments that would be triggered on a public dashboard.

However, all this was not enough. Eventually, the proposal only gathered 2.76 billion ADA, which accounted for 65.21% of the votes. To pass, it would have needed to hit 66.67% of the votes, which it narrowly missed. 742.5 million ADA voted against the proposal, 200 million cast a ‘no confidence’ vote, while 538.6 million ADA abstained from the vote.

Voting results courtesy of ADA STAT.

Cardano DReps Defy Hoskinson

The vote was closely watched as a measure of the influence that Hoskinson and the leadership of the Foundation, EMURGO and Intersect hold over the community.

Hoskinson has attacked the DReps who have opposed his proposals over the past month. As we reported, he even threatened to quit Cardano altogether if the DReps did not vote in his favour.

He picked up the pace in his campaign for the proposals over the weekend, calling for the community to unite around a common goal.

Charles Hoskinson on X.

Frederik Gregaard, the CEO of the Cardano Foundation, also campaigned for the proposal, but his efforts proved insufficient to sway the DReps. Even Philip Ron, the CEO of Emurgo, called on DReps to support the proposal, but even he could not change their minds.

62% and getting close! We hope that all DReps are able to vote. Please don’t wait to the last minute. 🤣

— Phillip Pon (@phillip_pon) May 29, 2026

After the voting ended, the Foundation announced that it had accepted defeat and the Summit would not take place this year. It stated:

“The Cardano community has spoken and we respect the outcome…Despite this, we were heartened to see how close the vote came to being passed and how engaged the community was, and have read every bit of feedback left by the DReps who voted.”

In light of the failed proposal, Hoskinson is now pushing to host a ‘minisummit’ within Token2049. He wants the mini-event to have a hackathon with a large ADA prize, with some of the projects that will attend receiving partial financial support.