Input Output Global (IOG), the company behind Cardano’s core blockchain development, shared new details on Wednesday about how it plans to steer the network through the rest of the year.
The update lays out key proposals and a broader 2030-focused roadmap aimed at scaling Cardano’s transaction capacity from roughly 800,000 transactions per month today to as many as 27 million per month.
Cardano Ecosystem Prep For Leios
IOG framed the next phase as part of the 2026/27 cycle, with a key priority on moving the Cardano Leios upgrade from an early-stage prototype into readiness for mainnet deployment.
The work is organized around progressing through what it calls Software Readiness Levels 5 to 8, a framework intended to ensure the upgrade is not only built, but tested and hardened step by step.
Rather than focusing on a single outcome, the firm’s statement describes three main objectives that shape the engineering and validation process. A large portion of the effort will go into what IOG calls a “Release Candidate.” In the company’s description, this is the critical path for Leios.
That work also involves major changes under the hood, including a substantial rewrite of consensus components and bringing the Leios block structure into what IOG refers to as the Dijkstra ledger era.
On the verification side, the Cardano developer points to completing the conformance test suite against an Agda formal specification and then integrating the update into the primary node implementation.
Beyond getting to a release candidate, IOG also highlights “High Confidence,” which focuses on validation rather than just completion. The company says the approach will combine parameter exploration with continuous load testing, along with adversarial testing on the public testnet.
In practical terms, that means studying timing parameters and size limits, then building a parameter graduation plan as the system matures.
Expecting Higher TVL And More Adoption
The third objective is “Hard-fork Enabling Leios,” which IOG describes as work within its own control to make the hard fork possible. Importantly, the firm behind Cardano’s growth stresses that this objective is not defined by the hard fork itself happening on mainnet, but by finishing the preparatory work required for it.
That includes stabilizing client interfaces, producing implementation-independent technical documentation, and coordinating developer workshops to ensure the wider ecosystem is ready.
Additional elements include a mainnet parameter graduation plan, contingency procedures, and preparation of updated guardrails script and rationale documents for governance. In IOG’s framing, the success criteria are centered on completing these enablement tasks, not on the timing of the mainnet activation.
The company also links the upgrade to broader Cardano network growth, pointing to downstream effects such as increased total value locked (TVL) and improvements in revenue and adoption.
The idea is that expanding throughput capacity for the whole Cardano network can support fee revenue growth as the Reserve diminishes, strengthening long-term sustainability. IOG’s Carlos Lopez de Lara noted:
We have been researching and prototyping Leios for years. The science is done. Now we deliver it. When this ships, Cardano’s throughput story changes permanently.
At the time of writing, Cardano’s native token, ADA, was trading at $0.25, having recorded gains of 2% and 4% over the last 24 hours and seven days, respectively.
Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
