Constitution

The Cardano Constitution sets out the principles that governance actions must respect, the guardrails for protocol parameters and treasury spending, and the roles of DReps, stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee. It was drafted in community workshops and finalized at a constitutional convention in Buenos Aires and Nairobi in December 2024, replacing the interim constitution that had applied since the Chang hard fork.

DReps ratified the constitution on-chain in epoch 541, shortly after the Plomin hard fork enabled the update-constitution action, and it took effect at the following epoch boundary on February 23, 2025. Part of its guardrails is enforced by the guardrails script, a Plutus script that every parameter change and treasury withdrawal must satisfy.

The constitution can be amended through the same governance action. An updated version, ratified with 79 percent of DRep stake, has been in force since epoch 609 (January 24, 2026). It tightened the requirements for off-chain documents and removed budget info actions, so treasury withdrawals must be fully self-contained. Further amendments, for instance to cover the parameters the Dijkstra era introduces, follow the same path. Read the full text at cardano.org/constitution.