Cardano’s core development firm, Input Output Global (IOG), submitted nine treasury proposals for 2026 that request nearly 50% less funding than last year, a move designed to support the blockchain’s ambitious Leios scaling upgrade ahead of its planned mainnet launch.
"Cardano must scale from today’s approximately 800,000 transactions per month to over 27 million,” the consensus proposal stated. IOG said its combined funding request is just under half of its prior year's ask, with community voting on the proposals set to remain open until May 24.
The proposals detail funding for core infrastructure, developer tools, and economic model changes, all centered on the Leios upgrade. IOG projects the upgrade will deliver a 10x to 65x increase in transaction throughput while preserving Cardano's existing consensus mechanism. The roadmap targets a Leios testnet launch in June 2026, with a full mainnet deployment by the end of the year.
This scaled-back funding request comes as IOG aims to enhance Cardano’s capabilities to better compete with Ethereum and other high-throughput blockchains like Solana. The plan allocates 62.1 million ADA (worth approximately $15.8 million at a price of $0.2544 per ADA) for network maintenance, alongside initiatives to improve the developer experience, which IOG described as currently “fragmented.”
A significant portion of the plan addresses scaling and developer onboarding. The proposals include support for Layer 2 solutions like the Hydra and Midgard rollups, which IOG stated are essential for Cardano to have a "credible L2 story." Another initiative aims to streamline developer tooling to reduce high setup demands, with IOG noting it wants to avoid users needing "a PhD and three months of setup" to build on the network.
Other economic upgrades are also on the table, including "Babel Fees," which would allow transaction fees to be paid in supported tokens other than Cardano's native ADA. A separate proposal, named Pogun, aims to build a credit and yield layer for Bitcoin on the Cardano network, seeking to attract liquidity from what the document calls the world's "almost entirely idle" digital asset.
This focus on a secure, peer-reviewed development path, while slower, is central to Cardano's strategy. The upcoming upgrades represent a critical step in proving that its methodical approach can deliver a scalable and developer-friendly platform for DeFi, real-world assets, and enterprise applications.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
