thecryptobasic.com
IOG Product Manager Carlos Lopez De Lara has reminded Cardano’s DReps and SPOs about an upcoming governance deadline that could affect the network’s ability to approve key protocol changes.
The initiative centers on voting for four newly elected Constitutional Committee members before the September 1 deadline.
According to Lopez De Lara, the vote is particularly important because Cardano needs a fully seated Constitutional Committee to approve an upcoming Constitution Update linked to the network’s planned Leios scalability upgrade.
He warned that failing to seat enough committee members could create a governance bottleneck. As a result, Cardano could be unable to advance certain proposals that require Constitutional Committee approval.
Low Participation Raises Governance Concerns
The reminder comes as participation in the vote remains below the required threshold. DRep support currently stands at 43.04%, compared with the 67% approval threshold. Meanwhile, SPO support is 15.32%, well below the required 51%.
If the vote fails, the Constitutional Committee could shrink from seven active members to just three. That would put the committee below the minimum required size of five members and potentially create a bottleneck for governance actions requiring constitutional oversight.
However, the potential setback would primarily affect Cardano’s governance process rather than the network’s basic operations. The blockchain would continue to produce blocks and process transactions normally, even if the committee could not perform certain governance functions.
Leios Upgrade Adds Urgency to the Vote
The urgency surrounding the vote is closely tied to Cardano’s planned Leios upgrade. The scalability-focused protocol enhancement is designed to increase the network’s transaction-processing capacity by enabling greater parallelism in block processing.
However, before the necessary governance changes can move forward, Cardano needs a properly seated Constitutional Committee to approve the Constitution Update associated with Leios.
Leios entered the public testnet phase in late June 2026, while its mainnet deployment is planned for later this year as part of the Dijkstra era.
Dijkstra Era Will Introduce Leios and Peras
The upcoming Dijkstra era is expected to roll out in two phases. The first phase will deploy Leios on Cardano’s mainnet later this year, while the second phase will introduce Peras.
After testing, both upgrades will require the appropriate governance actions to receive approval from Cardano’s DReps, SPOs, and Constitutional Committee before mainnet activation.
Therefore, seating the Constitutional Committee remains critical to Cardano’s upcoming upgrade process. Without the required constitutional oversight, governance could become a bottleneck and delay the approval of these major protocol changes.