Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson: Accountability of Funding from Voltaire Does Not Need to be Centralized

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently explained in a video update regarding the accountability of the funding from Voltaire. Cardano’s Voltaire era would allow the network to become a fully self-sustaining system. 

As part of this journey, Cardano has previously introduced a treasury system combining proposal and voting procedures—Project Catalyst. A treasury system would enable a continuous source of funding to develop the Cardano blockchain. Decentralized software updates would guarantee the process is decentralized and will have open participation for fair voting on system updates., where all transaction fees would be pooled to provide funds for future development activities after the voting process.  

The voting system will allow the network to explore utilities, concepts, and experiments on how the network will agree on a “fair” and productive way for Cardano’s cryptocurrency ADA holders. 

IOHK elaborated that the Project Catalyst would focus on making the treasury stem a reality while sustaining the Cardano community’s democratic culture.

Voltaire is a side chain, which is currently independent of Cardano’s main chain. Currently, Cardano’s data is injected into Voltaire, and after the voting is complete on the Voltaire system, the data would be injected back into Cardano. This process over time would become fully automated, and over time, will be regulated by a smart contract. The Voltaire side chain can be rapidly updated, including the addition of new capability and exotic voting systems.

In August, the Voltaire team, responsible for the voting system, started its process of signing up voters and testing during the month. 

Hoskinson said, “The whole point of Voltaire is to resolve the ‘who pays’ and ‘who decides’,” and currently, Cardano lacks agency. Charles Hoskinson explained that Cardano does not have the ability to judge the return on the intention for the grants that it gives out. 

Cardano has broken the process down into a multi-stage process, which will then evolve into the final ballot, and voting. This then brings into the question of who is accountable for the final ballot. He added:

“The thing that people aren’t getting is that you actually do not need centralization for the ‘accountable’ step. What you can do is on a case-by-case basis, ballot-by-ballot, you can fund both entities at the same time.”

He explained that a third party could come in, for example, the Cardano Foundation, PwC, or a prominent member of the community or a large corporation, could act as an oversight, ensuring weekly or monthly reports to be produced. The third-party could also audit the code and verify claims being made are there.

For larger projects, Hoskinson believes that it is essential to have this mechanism, a counterparty who will hold the person receiving funding accountable. He added, “The good news is, this is a whole industry.”

Hoskinson also announced that Cardano is looking to hire a dedicated product manager to think about the business and social structures that are required for this. The Cardano founder also revealed that Input Output Global is also going to ask for a renewal of its contract.