Cardano Reward System
/
The Holistic Reading
by
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Cardano Business Unit
PDF
☀
Welcome
Existing CIPs
Solution Evaluation
Four CIPs evaluated against the V2 milestones — bundle no-go; analytical directions discussed in the §4 of the synthesis
Intro & Conclusion of the 4 CIPs
Coverage matrix, cumulative findings, no-go verdict on the bundle
Stake-Cap Layer — Bind Pledge on σ′
CIP evaluation synthesis
Two stake-cap shapes, same intent
Index
CIP-0050 — Pledge Leverage
σ′ clip leaves A(ν, π) bottleneck unfixed
▼ No-go
CIP-0037 — Dynamic Saturation
Same as CIP-0050 plus 20 % floor — A still unfixed
▼ No-go
Fee Layer — Operator/Member Split
CIP evaluation synthesis
Pricing-as-viability conflation
Index
CIP-0023 — Fair Min Fees
minPoolMargin floor — subsumed by CIP-0082 stage 2
⊂ Moot
CIP-0082 — Improved Rewards Scheme
Margin swap + k-raises — inverts viability, regenerates 2020
▼ No-go
Roadmap
Induced Problems
Mainnet Diagnostic
Mainnet Diagnostic
What mainnet is actually doing — Reward-Flow evidence, the staking census, and the prior report
The Diagnostic
Full narrative — observations, problem induction, and sub-report links
The Staking Census
New
The four game player populations of Cardano's reward pipeline
Evidence
Reward Flow
Reserves
New
Treasury & pool-pot distribution
Stage 1
Pools
New
Distribution gaps across the pool population
Stage 2
Operators/Delegators
New
The operator's cut versus the delegator share
Stage 3
Sandbox
SPO Topology
New
Interactive map — every active pool's hosting provider, region, ASN, saturation tier
Play
Past Analysis
Nov 2025 — Analysis of Cardano's Incentive Mechanism
Lopez de Lara · prior mainnet diagnostic
SD-L
PDF
The Intended Game
The Intended Game
The intended mechanism — formal spec, narrative companion, and the academic antecedents the design rests on
Plain-prose narrative
New
Companion to SL-D1 — fills the narrative gap the formal spec left open
Delegation Incentives Design Specification
Kant · Brünjes · Coutts — 2019
SL-D1
PDF
Research Papers
Reward Sharing Schemes for Stake Pools
Brünjes · Kiayias · Koutsoupias · Stouka — 2020
RSS-2020
PDF
Incentives Against Power Grabs
Kiayias et al. — 2021
IAPG
PDF
Balancing Participation & Decentralization
Kiayias et al. — 2024
BPD
PDF
Reward Sharing in PoS with No-Pool-Choice Delegators
Kiayias et al. — AFT 2025
AFT-2025
arXiv
Constitution
Cardano Constitution v2
The governance document the protocol operates under (ratified at epoch 609) — every milestone in the V2 spec must comply with it
Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution
IntersectMBO — ratified at epoch 609 (v2)
CONST-2
PDF
Download the PDF
Local copy on this site
Download
Source on GitHub
Canonical markdown — IntersectMBO/cardano-constitution
Source
Constitutional framework in the Roadmap
How the Roadmap milestones cite the Constitution — three tenets + guardrails
In Roadmap
Mainnet Diagnostic
›
The Staking Census
›
SPO Topology
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