Cardano is approaching a Sept. 1 deadline that could freeze most of its on-chain governance if tokenholders and operators fail to approve the renewal of four Constitutional Committee seats. Those four of seven seats expire at epoch 653, and without replacement the committee would fall to three members, below the protocol’s minimum size of five. Intersect said that would leave only limited actions available, while more consequential decisions such as hard forks, protocol-parameter changes, constitutional changes, and treasury withdrawals would be unable to advance until enough committee members are restored. A live Aug. 17 GovTool snapshot showed the proposal at 32.46% support from DReps and 1.95% from SPOs, versus the required 67% and 51%. The blockchain would continue processing transactions and producing blocks normally, but its ability to make major governance decisions would be constrained.