govtWool 🐏

The cosiest Cardano governance interface.

Built by @Ryun1 & @elenabardho originally for the 2025 Cardano Summit LayerUp hackathon.

Motivation

There are a few fully featured governance interface tools in the ecosystem. There has been a lot of community feedback on these tools.

We wanted to build a new governance interface tool, which hopefully addresses some of the community feedback.

Additionally, we wanted a tool we could use to quickly implement newer governance standards or ideas, to test them out.

Why Us?

We have experience using and building Cardano governance tools.

Aims for the project

Build a governance interface tool which;

• offers strong UI UX -- the governance model is complex, we want to present it in an approachable way
• is fully featured -- offers full support for browsing governance data, DRep and Ada holder interactions
• offers newer governance standards -- new standards are proposed but lacking adoption i.e. CIP-149, CIP-169?

Features

Key Features

• Wooly theme
• meme generator
• CIP-169
• CIP-149

Governance Action Explorer

• Clear timeline view of governance action lifetime
• Generate memes
• Differentiates 'budget' governance actions from Info actions
• Detailed metadata validation
  • hash checks
  • warning if author not using IPFS to host metadata
  • author witness validation
  • CIP-0169? | On-chain effects implementation
• Detailed voter participation tab with export to CSV
• Detailed voting tally summary

DRep Directory

• Full DRep metadata rendering
• generate memes
• Voting and delegator history
• Detailed voting statistics

Governance Interaction

• Wallet connect
• DRep registration
• DRep Update
• DRep retirement
• Vote delegation

Features we would like to add

• Get user feedback on UI UX
• Global governance search
• Properly connect all DRep and governance action filters
• Create a custom backend to stop reliance on data services
• Deep governance analytics
• Governance action submission

Tech Stack

Frontend

• Next.js 16 with TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS + custom component primitives
• Mesh SDK for wallet connectivity and transaction building
• Recharts & bespoke visualizations for governance data
• Framer Motion for premium interactions

Backend

• Rust (Axum + Tokio) service with layered provider abstraction
• Integrations with Blockfrost, Koios, and GovTools APIs
• Moka-powered caching and provider failover strategy

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20.9.0+
• Rust 1.75+ with cargo (install via rustup.rs)
• A Blockfrost API key for Cardano network access

Local Development

git clone https://github.com/Ryun1/govtwool
cd govtwool

Frontend (frontend/)

cd frontend
npm install

Fill in your .env, you can use the example.

npm run dev

Backend (backend/)

cd backend
cargo fetch

Fill in your .env, you can use the example.

cargo run

Environment variables such as BLOCKFROST_API_KEY, GOVTOOLS_ENABLED, and CORS_ORIGINS can be tuned as described in backend/README.md.

Access

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend API: http://localhost:8080 (see backend/API.md for endpoints)