Beyond MVG Project: December 2025 progress report

Standfirst: The Beyond MVG team shares December's progress update on the governance project

Author: The Beyond MVG team

Summary:

• The Beyond MVG team provides details on the work that will be completed during the governance data collection and aggregation milestone  of the project

• Feedback continues to be welcomed on the Report Outline published in Milestone 1

Collect and Aggregate Governance Insights: Milestone Overview

The Beyond Minimum Viable Governance team has drafted a framework and metrics for how to measure Cardano’s governance model, along with an outline for the state of governance report to be developed based on the data gathered throughout the project. These have been socialized to gather feedback, which the team is reviewing to create an iterative version of the framework and metrics.  Some highlights from the feedback included:

• Questions about when each measurement should be taken

• The relative importance of some metrics vs others

• Various ideas for improving governance, which can be useful to test if the proposed metrics would help a future governance improvement project to measure the outcomes of that improvement.

Following the submission of its first: Establish a Foundation for Governance Measurement, the Beyond MVG team is now progressing onto the second milestone. This milestone contains six deliverables:

• Develop tailored surveys and interview guides

• Collect representative community feedback

• Create a standardized workshop template

• Gather anecdotal insights from community leaders

• Aggregate on-chain and off-chain governance data

• Publish and gather feedback on the report outline

Timeline of Activities

Milestone 2 of the project is due to be submitted to Intersect, the administrator, by 22 February 2026. The team has begun work towards the completion of this milestone. Details of planned activities are below.

November - December 2025

The focus of the team before the beginning of the new year has been to collect feedback on the measurement framework, metrics, and state of governance report outline. These have been published along with a feedback form to gather insight from the community. The report outline is here, and the feedback that was collected via a survey is in the process of being reviewed to make improvements.

An additional focus before 2026 was to prepare for the collection of qualitative data from the community, which will take place in the new year. This has consisted of the creation of tailored surveys and interview scripts, and development has begun on the creation of a standardised workshop template.

The final focus for 2025 was to begin the on-chain data collection of each on-chain governance metric proposed in the measurement framework. Relevant data will begin to be gathered starting from the Chang Hard Fork, and this data will include visualizations and explanations of its relevance to defined governance metrics.

January - February 2026

In the new year, the team's focus will move to begin collecting qualitative data from the community through surveys, interviews, and some virtual workshops. Responses will be gathered from DReps, SPOs, Constitutional Committee Members, governance tooling and data providers, and community projects. Interviews will also be conducted with community leaders and tooling providers relevant to Cardano’s governance model. Responses will be published as part of Milestone 3 of the project, with analysis of the insights becoming part of the state of governance report.

Get involved

If you missed our November blog post, you can find the published documents for the first milestone as follows: 

• The report outline here

• Comprehensive Research and Governance Framework here

• Governance Metrics manual here.  

Community feedback has concluded on these first deliverables, and the team is working to make improvements accordingly. Overwhelmingly, the feedback was positive, indicating that we have a solid foundation to tweak. Next, we will be looking to hear from community members about their experience and views on Cardano’s governance system via surveys, interviews, workshops, and more - X and LinkedIn. We look forward to working closely with the community to ensure the project reflects the current state of governance on Cardano.

Disclaimer: Project timelines and deliverables are subject to change based on community feedback and technical feasibility.