Cardano News

A structured framework for the 2026 budget cycle proposes aligning treasury spending with Cardano Vision 2030 and measurable ecosystem KPIs. This Info Action asks DReps to validate a process featuring standardized templates and a minimum proposal size of 100,000 ada. The framework aims to ensure treasury resources are deployed responsibly while maintaining the long-term economic sustainability and transparency of the network.

Applications for the 2026 Intersect committee elections officially open March 30, inviting paid members to help steer technical and budgetary oversight. Candidates have until April 17 to step up. This year introduces a 500 ada monthly service reward and sharper transparency for voters. It’s a prime opportunity to bring diverse global voices into the room where Cardano’s substantive governance decisions are made.

Cardano Summit 2025 surpassed major KPIs, hosting 1,460 in-person attendees in Berlin and 26,000 global online viewers. High-level engagement from enterprises like Volvo and Mastercard underscored the network's increasing institutional appeal. As the first flagship event funded entirely by the treasury, it showcased the ecosystem's decentralized maturity. With the 2025 journey concluded, preparations are already in motion for the 2026 Summit in Singapore.

USDCx is now live on mainnet via Circle’s xReserve, providing native, 1:1 backed liquidity to the ecosystem. The Cardano Foundation has assumed stewardship of Project Catalyst and is transitioning cardano.org into a multilingual platform. Technical updates include the release of Cardano-Signer 1.35.0, while enterprise adoption scales through projects like Petrobras and Plastiks. Additionally, the community welcomes Bernard Sibanda as a new ambassador focused on developer education.

USDCx has officially launched on the Cardano mainnet, providing native liquidity backed 1:1 by USDC through Circle’s xReserve infrastructure. By utilizing the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), this integration enables seamless "burn-and-mint" capital flows and eliminates traditional third-party bridge risks. This advancement strengthens the network's financial rails, significantly enhancing interoperability with other blockchains and simplifying asset movement between ada and centralized exchanges.

MoneyGram has joined the Midnight network as a federated node operator, while the Cardano Foundation officially assumed stewardship of Project Catalyst. Yoroi now supports dual rewards for ada and night tokens. Additionally, performance benchmarks for node v.10.5.4 and v.10.6.2 were released, and the Leios team demonstrated a working prototype capable of producing endorser blocks under high load. Mithril also advanced its development of succinct SNARK proofs.

Hydra has officially transitioned into its adoption phase, with the core team focusing on production feedback and real-world use cases. The upcoming v.1.3 release introduces critical memory optimizations, fee calculation fixes, and partial fan-out functionality to improve head management. Projects like DeltaDeFi and Masumi are already demonstrating high-performance trading and scalable micropayments, while the working group prioritizes infrastructure hardening to support enterprise-grade deployments.

Node v.10.6.2 is live, featuring structural enhancements and preparing the network for the version 11 hard fork. The ledger team progressed with nested transactions and account address improvements, while Hydra v.1.3 focuses on production adoption. Coinbase now accepts ada as loan collateral, and the Leios prototype successfully minted endorser blocks under load. Finally, Messari released the Q4 2025 report alongside Intersect's committee election announcement.

LayerZero integration has been approved, connecting the network to over 150 blockchains to expand cross-chain liquidity. The Cardano Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi showcased regional adoption, while node v10.5.4 introduced critical networking enhancements for resilience. Additionally, the Midnight mainnet is on track for a late March launch, coinciding with the official debut of ada futures on the CME Group exchange.

Node v.10.5.4 has been released, introducing critical patches to enhance the robustness of the diffusion layer. The consensus team integrated network packages for the upcoming node v.10.7 and further advanced the Leios prototype. Meanwhile, the Mithril team implemented new succinct proofs and SNARK-friendly certificate chains. Simultaneously, the Leios team moved toward finalizing protocol parameter recommendations through extensive research and simulations to analyze network traffic under load.