Cardano governance: delegate, track, or become a DRep.

Cardano governance (CIP-1694, the Conway era) is the on-chain system for deciding protocol parameter changes, treasury withdrawals, hard forks and constitutional changes. Each governance action is voted on by three bodies: DReps, stake pool operators (SPOs) and the Constitutional Committee. ADA holders take part by delegating their voting power to a DRep or by registering as a DRep themselves.

Voltaire is the governance era of Cardano. The Chang hard fork in September 2024 introduced the Conway ledger era and CIP-1694, and the Plomin hard fork in January 2025 switched on full on-chain voting by DReps, stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee. Since then every protocol parameter change, treasury withdrawal, hard fork and constitutional change is decided through governance actions on-chain, which is what the Governance hub in GeroWallet shows.

Individual ADA holders do not cast votes on governance actions themselves under CIP-1694. You delegate your voting power to a DRep of your choice, or to the predefined Abstain or No Confidence options, and that DRep votes on your behalf. If you want to vote yourself, register as a DRep. In GeroWallet 2.7.1 a registered DRep votes from the action list and can select several actions at once.

A Delegated Representative (DRep) is anyone who has registered on-chain to vote on governance actions with the voting power delegated to them. DReps publish a CIP-119 profile and can attach a rationale to each vote explaining their position. GeroWallet lists every registered mainnet DRep, 1,684 at the time of writing, with their participation, rationale rate, vote pattern, focus areas and last vote.

It does not rank them for you. The directory covers every registered mainnet DRep and sorts across the whole register by participation, rationale rate or last vote. The default sort is participation, never voting power. There is no composite score, no named recommendations, and the match tool uses a seeded shuffle. A wallet that nudged you toward particular representatives would be an actor in governance rather than a window onto it. Where data is unknown, GeroWallet shows unknown, not zero.

Participation is how many of the governance actions a DRep could have voted on it actually voted on, computed from on-chain votes only. GeroWallet shows it for every registered mainnet DRep next to the rationale rate and the date of the last vote, and the directory sorts by participation by default so active representatives surface first regardless of their voting power.

The watchdog follows the DRep you are delegated to and alerts you on inactivity, retirement or a drop-off in published rationales. Every alert is computed from on-chain facts only. It states what happened and offers the DRep directory so you can choose again; it never suggests a replacement.

DReps publish rationales as CIP-100 and CIP-108 JSON-LD metadata and anchor the document hash on-chain. When you press Read why, GeroWallet loads the document (ipfs:// links go through Gero's proxy), recalculates the hash and compares it with the anchor. A green banner means it matches; an amber not verified banner means it does not match or no hash exists. The markdown is escaped before it is rendered, so a rationale cannot inject content into the wallet.

CIP-0149 lets you send your DRep a share of your staking rewards as compensation for their work. My governance shows whether you are currently doing this and lets you start or cancel it in one place.

Open Become a DRep in the Governance hub. The three steps are your profile, deposit and keys, and review and sign. The CIP-119 profile builder produces your metadata, GeroWallet verifies the hash byte for byte before the deposit is locked, and the registration certificate is signed in the wallet or on your Ledger, Trezor or Keystone. Once confirmed you appear in the directory and can vote from the action list. The deposit is fully refundable when you retire.

Yes. Vote delegation, DRep registration and votes are certificates or transactions that GeroWallet builds and your Ledger, Trezor or Keystone signs on its own screen. Trezor connects over WebUSB with no Bridge daemon. Your keys never leave the device, and GeroWallet's source is public on GitHub so you can check how the certificates are built.

Midnight is a separate, integrated partner chain with its own token model: NIGHT (and cNIGHT held on Cardano) generates DUST, the resource that pays for private transactions. GeroWallet handles DUST generation in-wallet. Cardano governance is decided with ADA on Cardano; see the Midnight wallet page for how NIGHT and DUST work.