Key Takeaways:
Input Output has put forward a 27.7 million ADA funding proposal to Cardano’s delegated representatives (DReps) to accelerate the development of Leios, the network's next major consensus upgrade. The proposal aims to mature the protocol from a public testnet prototype into a mainnet-ready release candidate.
“Cardano needs a step change in throughput to meet its 2030 ambitions, and Leios is how it gets there,” project authors Carlos Lopez de Lara and Sebastian Nagel stated in the proposal. “This proposal funds the path from public testnet to a mainnet-ready release candidate — delivering a 10–65x increase in transaction capacity.”
The ₳27,714,342 request would fund six to nine months of development work intended to deliver a significant scaling increase for the network. The project’s 2030 strategy targets growth from roughly 800,000 monthly transactions to over 27 million, a level that requires a substantial capacity upgrade. At press time, ADA traded at approximately $0.2661.
The funding request enters a highly scrutinized on-chain governance system. The proposal for Leios comes just as a prominent DRep, holding 17.82 million ADA in voting power, voted "no" on a separate IO Consensus Initiative. That rejection was based on concerns over a lack of "auditable cost transparency" and the absence of "artifact-based milestone gating," setting a rigorous precedent for large treasury withdrawals.
Leios is designed as an enhancement for Ouroboros Praos, Cardano's current proof-of-stake consensus protocol, not a replacement. It introduces endorser blocks and committee-based validation to boost transaction throughput while maintaining the security guarantees of the existing model. According to Input Output, this approach allows for a phased throughput increase from 2x to over 30x current capacity without making stake pool operations economically unviable. The ₳23.83 million development budget, representing 86% of the total request, is allocated to achieving a mainnet-ready release candidate by the fourth quarter of 2026.
The Leios proposal will be a key test of Cardano's governance framework, especially following recent DRep pushback on other large-scale funding. The DRep who voted against the earlier IO Consensus Initiative cited the need for clear cost records and verifiable work products for each payment stage. The Leios proposal appears to address some of these concerns by using Intersect’s treasury reserve smart contract framework, which allows for milestone-based disbursements and third-party assurance. However, the proposal still faces risks, including community readiness and potential governance constraints, which are explicitly noted in the document.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
