Cardano Constitutional Committee: Why the Deadline Only Ends on September 6

The deadline that Cardano's self-governance is hanging on right now does not fall on September 1. It falls on September 6, 2026, at around 21:45 UTC. By then a governance action has to be ratified on chain that fills four of the seven seats on the constitutional committee. If that does not happen, the committee shrinks to three members and drops below the minimum size the protocol requires. From that moment on it can no longer confirm any governance action. This piece sets out what is actually happening, where the vote stands, and what you as an ADA holder can genuinely do in the days that remain. Cardano Constitutional Committee: What Really Expires on September 6, 2026 Every governance action on Cardano has a fixed lifespan. The protocol parameter govActionLifetime is set to six epochs: if an action is not ratified within that window, it lapses with nothing to replace it, and the 100,000 ADA deposit returns to the submitting address. The action at issue here is of the type NewCommittee. It was submitted in epoch 646 and carries epoch 653 as its expiry mark. An on-chain query of our own through the public Koios interface on August 27, 2026 at 00:38 UTC shows it still open: neither...