The Beyond Minimum Viable Governance (Beyond MVG) project is now deep into Milestone 4, the recommendations phase. This update shares where things stand, what the workshops have surfaced, and what the community can expect as we move toward the finish line.

Author: The Beyond MVG team

Summary:

• Milestone 4 is the final deliverable for the project. It focuses on developing actionable recommendations for improving Cardano's governance system and taking the first step for the top improvements.

• The project is at the midpoint of milestone 4. A final series of community workshops has been run to develop and prioritize ideas for recommendation.

• The ideas have been analyzed for impact and cost, elevating the most impactful and practical.

• The team is beginning to make connections in the community and develop specific ideas to start moving top improvements forward.

Where we are: Milestone 4 in brief

Eight workshops in, the findings are both encouraging and instructive.

Across sessions, participants offered more than 100 ideas for improving Cardano’s governance. To identify a set of impactful, actionable ideas, the team conducted an analysis and narrowed the shortlist to 10.

The team is hosting one final round of conversations to further prioritize these 10 into just 5 ideas that will help to navigate from minimum to a full “V1” Cardano governance with a modest amount of effort. The final recommendations will be added to the ‘State of Governance’ report.

To wrap up the project, the team will package all the work into final versions so the community gets a final ‘State of Governance’ report, a Metrics Manual to help tooling providers consistently measure governance data, a project playbook so another team could repeat it in the future as needed, and the project data.

Most exciting, the team will also kick off each of the top 5 recommended ideas - whether this is a new CIP, contributing to existing work, or talking with tooling providers, is yet to be determined.

Already underway: the community is ahead of us

One of the most encouraging findings from this process is how much critical governance work is already in motion across the Cardano ecosystem.

Most of the high-priority ideas that emerged from the workshops are not starting from zero. Community members, working groups, and initiatives across the ecosystem are already discussing, prototyping, or actively building solutions to many of the same challenges this project has identified. This speaks to something important about the Cardano community: the instinct to self-organize around problems is genuine and strong.

Beyond MVG does not aim to duplicate that work. The final recommendations will give visibility and structure to what is already underway, surfacing the most critical efforts so they can attract the attention, contributors, and resources they deserve. Where genuine gaps remain, the recommendations will name those clearly too, and the project team will focus here to breathe life into areas where no attention is yet focused.

What comes next

The project will now move into the final prioritization phase. The shortlisted ideas will be ranked by impact and feasibility, and the project will take a first concrete step toward initiating work on each of the top recommendations: whether that means drafting a Cardano Problem Statement (CPS), a Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP), or connecting the right people to move existing efforts forward.

The final 'State of Governance' report, Metrics Manual, project data, and the Governance Process Playbook will follow, bringing together everything the project has learned into resources the community can continue to build on.

Get involved

The final report containing recommendations is coming soon. Keep an eye out, and when they land, don't just read them - the project link tree will point to the final report when it is published.  If you have expertise in governance design, tooling, community coordination, or any of the areas this project has been exploring, think about how you might get involved. The first step on each recommendation is just that: a first step. The real work of moving Cardano's governance forward belongs to the community members who show up to carry it.

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