The Cardano Foundation has released a six-point roadmap that reorients resources toward decentralized finance, Web3 integrations, real-world assets, marketing, and deeper governance decentralization, framing the plan as the “next phase” of its adoption strategy. Dated September 23, 2025 and signed by CEO Frederik Gregaard, the plan concentrates on liquidity, standards, and organizational focus areas that the Foundation says will shape efforts “in the near to mid future.”
Cardano Foundation Pushes Forward Adoption Roadmap
At the core is a push to unlock DeFi usage by directly addressing stablecoin liquidity. The Foundation commits what it describes as “an eight-figure ada amount in liquidity to key Cardano stablecoin projects through multiple channels,” adding that while this goes beyond its original mission, the initiative is needed “to improve the on- and off-ramps into Cardano.”
It expects the impact to become visible “over the next six to twelve months.” The organization also signals support for community-led proposals that aim to bolster DeFi liquidity and adoption, citing the “Stablecoin DeFi Liquidity Budget” initiative as an example it will continue to collaborate on.
A second track targets Web3 adoption. Acknowledging that Cardano’s “technical uniqueness” can create integration complexity versus EVM-based stacks, the Foundation says it is expanding its Web3 team by two roles focused on “integrations, listings, real-world assets (RWA), and more.”
The third pillar formalizes venture support. After piloting the Cardano Venture Hub this year, the Foundation plans to scale it into a Venture Program for startups and an Enterprise Enablement Program for established businesses, with “direct investments and loans, technical advisory services, coaching, network advisory consultancy, integration support” and other services. The Foundation “is committing up to 2 million ada to the Venture Hub in 2026,” and says it will keep working with Draper University, Techstars, and CV VC to expand adoption-oriented programs.
On real-world assets, the Foundation says Cardano’s native-asset model, deterministic fees, and sustainability profile make it well-suited to the segment, noting it “announced the launch of $10M in RWA on Cardano” via a collaboration with MembersCap. It ties near-term progress to standards work, prioritizing completion and promotion of CIP-0113 and CIP-0143 to bring “interoperable, programmable tokens to Cardano,” and flags work with Masumi to adopt the x402 payments framework for agent-to-agent payments.
Marketing and demand generation are set to expand. Pointing to shifting regulatory and industry conditions over the last year, the Foundation says it will increase its 2026 demand-generation budget by 12% across inbound, content, paid, media, and events. Plans include Cardano booths at TOKEN2049 and Consensus, collaboration on Africa Tech Summit 2026 and a Digital Asset 2026 event in London, and a coordinated developer-onboarding pipeline with post-hackathon support.
Governance decentralization is the sixth prong. Building on a previous “delegation of 140M ada to seven Builder DReps,” the Foundation will “delegate a further 220M ada to eleven selected DReps” across new Adoption and Operations categories, while reducing its own DRep self-delegation to 80M ADA. Methodology details are to come, but the thrust is to widen the set of informed governance actors.
To finance the shift, the Foundation outlines an operational change: sunsetting its longstanding SPO delegation strategy and instead delegating to its own fully-pledged Foundation pools “over the next few months.” After five years of bootstrapping SPOs, resources will be redirected toward “accelerating the larger Cardano ecosystem,” with continued support for operators even as the delegation framework changes. The post closes by thanking “the almost 400 pools” that have received Foundation delegation and reiterates a commitment to transparency as the plan rolls out “over the next three years.”
Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, offered a brief public reaction on X to the Foundation’s announcement, highlighting his long-standing demand for a independent Foundation: “It’s a good start and I’m glad that social pressure has improved the risk appetite. We still need a community elected board. This is the last mile to reconciliation.”
At press time, ADA traded at $0.81.
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