Meeting Minutes September 17, 2025
Attendees:
Name
Attendance
Role
Voting Seat (Y/N)
Term
Kevin Hammond
Yes
Chair
Y
October 2025
Adam Dean
Yes
Vice Chair
Y
October 2025
Terence ‘Tex’ McCutcheon
Yes
Secretary
N
N/A
Lorenzo Bruno
Yes
Secretary
N
N/A
Markus Gufler
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
October 2025
Nicolas Biri
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
April 2026
Duncan Coutts
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
April 2026
Jonathan Kelly
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
October 2025
Sebastian Nagel
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
April 2026
Benjamin Hart
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
October 2025
Neil Davies
Yes
Member/Seat
Y
April 2026
Alexander Moser
No
Member/Seat
Y
April 2026
Community/Other Attendees
Andrew Aitken
Christian Taylor
Kris Bennett
Ryan Williams
Recording: Technical Steering Committee - 2025/09/17 - Recording
Transcript: Technical Steering Committee - 2025/09/17 - Transcript
Chat Transcript: Technical Steering Committee - 2025/09/17 - Chat Transcript
Intros
Adam: Guy who does stuff and things, TSC Voting Member, OSC Voting Member, DripDropz LLC, Adam Dean, LLC Alex: TBD Ben: TBD Duncan: Architecture, TSC voting member, partner at Well-Typed LLP. Johnny: Non-Custodial Co-Management SysOps Engineer (Tech Janitor) for 3 Mainnet Cardano SPO Clients. Keystone Ambassador. Voting Seat Member on Technical Steering Committee and Open Source Committee. Kevin: TBD Lorenzo: TBD Markus: SPO, Monitoring, operative Core Infrastructure, CEX-Support, TSC voting member, Self-Employed Neil: Performance and Network Architecture, TSC voting member, Parameter Committee (Networking) member Nicolas: Director of Software Architecture, TSC member. Sebastian: Software Architect, CEO nCoding GmbH, TSC voting seat member Tex: Open Source Program Manager (Intersect), GMC/MCC/OSC Secretary, Committee Liaison
Agenda 9.17.25
Feedback on Leios CIP - Adam/Nicolas
Next Hard Forks - Kevin
Development Status Update
Anticipated Hard Fork Dates
Reconvening the HF Working Group
Update from L2 Working Group - Sebastian
Update from Security Council
maxTxExecutionCost[memory] Parameter Change - Alex/Kevin
Governance action needs to be submitted on/after October 7th
Node Diversity Workshop in Toulouse, 22-23 September
Three TSC members will attend - Markus, Kevin, Sebastian
ISC Meeting on 22nd September at 1400 UTC
@Adam Dean, can you attend this?
(Update on “Fire Drill”) - Johnny/Kevin
(Chair Position) - Kevin
(Feedback on Committee remuneration) - Lorenzo/Kevin
Decisions/Actions
Decisions:
The new committee remit has been agreed upon, with seven members voting in favor and one abstaining.
The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) will move forward with a technical assessment of the Leios CIP and will not be directly involved in budget or contract management for this project.
The committee agreed to explore moving to a time-based release and hard fork schedule.
Actions:
Kevin and Adam will work on a revised wording for the candidate application questions, specifically to broaden the question about technical experience. The goal is to remove or modify the word "core."
Kevin will circulate a summary of the node diversity workshop when it becomes available.
Kevin and Adam will draft the metadata for the governance action to raise the "max tx execution units." This needs to be ready for an on-chain vote on or after October 7th.
Adam will create a dedicated discussion channel in the CIP editors' Discord to discuss the Leios CIP.
Adam will organize and chair a technical discussion session on the Leios CIP. The goal is to have this meeting next Thursday or Friday to prepare for the CIP editors' meeting in two weeks.
Adam will post the details of the technical discussion session to the Slack channel for other members to sign up.
The hard fork working group will be reconvened on a lightweight basis to plan for the upcoming hard forks.
Nicolas will take the lead on a proposal for a release calendar.
Adam and Sebastian will be the voice of the TSC and will work with the developers to promote the idea of a release calendar and see if they are on board with it.
Topic
Discussion
Notes
Roll Call and Welcome
Members joined and exchanged greetings. The meeting started with informal conversation, including mention of a long-standing issue with introducing a "Hello, my name is Sticky" tradition.
Members of the TSC should be sharing their names, affiliations, and conflicts of interest in the chat.
Agenda Items & Urgency
Kevin proposed an agenda and asked if there were any urgent items. Markus noted the agenda was long and suggested keeping discussions brief.
The agenda was shared in the Slack channel and chat.
Off-chain Vote on Remit
Kevin announced the results of an off-chain vote for the new committee remit. The vote passed with seven members in favor and one abstaining.
The new remit is agreed upon.
Candidate Questions
The committee reviewed the revised questions for new member candidates. A discussion arose over the wording of the first question, specifically the term "core Cardano blockchain technology."
Johnny, Neil, Sebastian, and Ben debated whether the word "core" was too exclusive, potentially discouraging candidates with other relevant experience. The consensus was to reword the question to be more inclusive. Adam questioned the relevance of technical expertise for the committee's remit.
Leios CIP & Technical Discussion
The committee discussed the status of the Leios CIP. Adam and Sebastian said they hadn't been able to discuss it in the recent CIP editors' meeting. They plan to hold a dedicated meeting for a technical discussion in two weeks.
Kevin proposed a procedure for handling major changes to the Laos project, which sparked a debate about the committee's role. Neil, Johnny, and Adam argued that the TSC's role is to provide a technical assessment of the CIP, not to manage budget or contract changes.
Procedural Authority
The conversation about the Leios project led to questions about who holds the executive authority for scope changes and budget proposals.
Neil asked who would run the change management procedure. Kevin clarified that any major change would have to go back to the DRep's for a vote.
Hard Fork Status
Kevin provided an update on upcoming hard forks. The next one is an intra-era hard fork scheduled for early 2026, followed by the Dystra hard fork later in mid-2026. The committee needs to reconvene the hard fork working group.
Adam raised concerns about the timeline and suggested moving to a time-based release schedule similar to what other blockchain ecosystems use. Duncan, Neil, Ben, and Sebastian supported this idea, arguing it would improve predictability and coordination.
Next Steps for Hard Forks
The committee agreed to move forward with planning a time-based schedule for hard forks. Adam volunteered to lead the initial coordination efforts.
The discussion will be continued with the hard fork working group and other relevant stakeholders.
Additional Agenda Items
The team briefly reviewed other items on the agenda. Kevin mentioned a summary of the node diversity workshop would be circulated. Sebastian gave an update on the Layer 2 working group.
The parameter committee needs to raise a parameter update for "max tx execution units" after October 7th. Adam and Kevin will start working on the metadata for this governance action.
Meeting Wrap-up
Kevin concluded the meeting due to time constraints and thanked everyone for their participation.
The remaining agenda items will be discussed in the next meeting.
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