The development report highlights the consensus team's work on the first public draft of the Leios CIP, LSM-tree support, and KES agent integration. The Plutus team improved the evaluator and deserializer and added support for built-in units and pairs. In ecosystem news, MLabs launched feeswap.io, the Cardano Foundation rebuilt the Developer Portal, and World Mobile Chain's $WMTX token began trading on KrakenFX.

Research and development efforts focus on transforming foundational studies into practical advancements using a structured, evidence-based methodology. Recent progress includes Ouroboros Peras for achieving fast finality and Ouroboros Leios to enable high throughput. Additionally, the Cardinal protocol is being developed as a trust-minimized bridge between Bitcoin and the network to ensure robust and scalable interoperability.

The Halo2-Plutus verifier is an open-source tool designed to bring zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to the network. Developed by Input | Output Research, it enables on-chain verification of Halo2 proofs within Plinth smart contracts. This innovation enhances privacy and scalability, with its primary application being the Midnight-Cardano zk-bridge, while also supporting confidential transactions.

The ledger team is focused on enforcing stake pool VRF key uniqueness and integrating Plutus V4 into the Dijkstra era. Plutus Core has added support for built-in lists, while Midnight partnered with Copper for institutional custody of the NIGHT token. Additionally, the Governance Education Working Group has launched, and the Halo2-Plutus verifier is now available to support on-chain zero-knowledge proofs, primarily for the Midnight-Cardano zk-bridge.

The development report highlights the Lace wallet v.1.26 release, which includes performance improvements and bug fixes. The consensus team focused on LSM-tree backend integration and continued Leios prototyping. The Mithril team completed the mock DMQ node implementation, and ecosystem growth reached 2,008 projects. Midnight announced a partnership with Block-rewards, and Liqwid Labs launched a new UI.

The development report highlights the ledger team beginning work on CIP-112, known as 'Required Guards,' and refactoring the stake pool state. The performance team released benchmarks for Cardano node v.10.5. On the scaling front, the Leios team advanced its CIP documentation and demonstrated Linear Leios performance under various Plutus workloads, resolving key simulation discrepancies.

The development report highlights the full mainnet release of Cardano node v.10.5.1. The consensus team advanced on multiple fronts, including LSM-tree integration and drafting mini-protocols for Linear Leios. The Plutus team is expanding case analysis support and preparing all built-in functions for the next hard fork. Ecosystem news includes partnerships for Midnight Network with Blockchain.com and Wanchain's bridge to the SUI Network.

The journey toward decentralized governance has spanned three years, marking a transition from foundational community workshops to a fully autonomous, on-chain democratic system. Key milestones included the establishment of the Constitution and the introduction of elected representatives. This framework empowers ADA holders to shape the protocol's future through direct participation and voting.

The development report highlights a major refactoring of the ledger codebase's reward account state, removing pointers in the Conway era to improve performance and pave the way for future features like the Leios protocol. This update also introduced a feature for reporting the pre-image of script integrity hashes on validation failures. Ecosystem news includes the launch of the Cardano Foundation's Tool Compass and the release of Midnight's tokenomics whitepaper.

The development report highlights the release of node v.10.5.1, featuring networking enhancements and tracing metric fixes. The consensus team is integrating the Dijkstra era and advancing the Haskell Leios simulator. Lace wallet v.1.25 introduced a partnership with NFTPrintLab and support for Bitcoin transaction metadata. The Plutus Core team expanded functionality by introducing case analysis on lists and refined the Plutus Core specification.