Beyond MVG Project: November 2025 progress report

IOG shares November’s progress update on the Beyond MVG Project 

Author: The Beyond MVG team

Summary

• The first milestone, ‘establishing a foundation for governance measurement' will be submitted to Intersect within the next week

• Draft outline for the State of Governance report published and ready for community review and feedback

• An upcoming X Space will be taking place on 11th December, giving the community opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback on the first milestone

Project overview

The Beyond Minimum Viable Governance (Beyond MVG) project is a Cardano treasury-funded initiative designed to enable evidence-based decision-making for iterative updates to Cardano’s governance. Beyond MVG provides a structured approach to effective governance monitoring to identify critical improvements.

This project will define and gather data points from the Cardano blockchain and engage the  community through various channels, such as virtual workshops and targeted surveys, to generate insights. The goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of governance, formulate actionable recommendations, and pave the way for post-MVG evolution. Where appropriate, these recommendations progress to initial  Cardano Problem Statements (CPSs) drafts or Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs), directly reflecting the community's vision for a more robust and effective governance future.

Timeline

The project has four key deliverable milestones, as outlined within the original project proposal:

• Establish a foundation for governance measurement

• Collect and aggregate governance insight

• Analyze data to identify top governance improvement priorities

• Develop actionable recommendations for top governance improvements.

Each milestone has a delivery due date agreed with Intersect, the proposal’s administrator. 

Establish a foundation for governance measurement

Deliverables

The first milestone aims to establish a foundation for governance measurement. This milestone has four aspects to fulfill the acceptance criteria:

• Comprehensive research: conduct secondary research on best practices for measuring decentralized governance outcomes

• Governance measurement framework develop a clear framework specifically designed for measuring Cardano governance’s effectiveness.

• Defined governance metrics: clearly define the specific metrics that will be used to measure governance health and performance

• Initial ‘State of Governance’ report outline: create a structured outline for the final ‘State of Governance’ report, ensuring a clear roadmap for the project.

Team progress

The Beyond MVG project draws on the expertise of several community members and well-known organizations to deliver its work, as stated in the original project proposal.

Following the passing of key contributor Max van Rossem, the Beyond MVG team took time to grieve, realign responsibilities, and onboard support to restore momentum while maintaining our commitment to quality. We would like to send our thoughts to Max’s family, and we’ll continue  working on the project with equal passion and commitment that he brought to the team.

The team has carried out multiple activities as part of the first milestone, synthesizing over 10 secondary sources related to empirical evidence and best practices for measuring governance outcomes, from traditional democracies to DAOs. Using this, they have produced a tailored framework for detailed and comprehensive metrics to measure Cardano’s governance. The initial State of Governance report outline, which will be written throughout the project, has been created. The outline will be available here for community feedback.

Milestone submission

The Beyond MVG team, despite facing some unforeseen circumstances along the way, are now in the process of submitting this milestone. The milestone acceptance form is being submitted to Intersect, and being reviewed against acceptance criteria. 

Get involved

An X Space will take place on December 11, where you can tune in, get involved, and ask any questions about the first milestone.

The report outline has been published here, the Comprehensive Research and Governance Framework here and Governance Metrics manual here, and we are now looking for community feedback. Get involved and input your thoughts by reviewing and completing the feedback form here. Community feedback will support the project going forward, directly influencing the next milestones and recommendations.

In coming milestones, 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. There will be more updates in the coming weeks. We look forward to working closely with the community to ensure the project reflects the current state of governance on Cardano.