Cardano News

A Roundtable Talk, features a discussion from the Cardano Berlin Hackathon on the evolution of developer tooling. Participants discussed the shift from early limitations to modern solutions like Aiken and open-source SDKs. The conversation also covered the role of the Plutus Pioneer Program and the importance of developer onboarding in securing Cardano’s long-term accessibility and global adoption.

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.

Intersect has deployed the first on-chain vendor smart contract, funding a proposal from TxPipe. This marks a significant milestone for Cardano's treasury management, moving from a theoretical framework to practical implementation. The contract holds the approved ada budget in escrow and automates milestone-based payments. This new system ensures transparent, secure, and accountable management of community-approved funds, representing a major step forward for decentralized governance.

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 ledger team is working 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. Additionally, the Governance Education Working Group has launched, and the Halo2-Plutus verifier is now available to support on-chain zero-knowledge proofs.

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.

A blog post from August 7 clarifies the process for treasury withdrawal actions. A proposal must first be ratified by achieving a 67% DRep supermajority and CC approval at an epoch boundary. It is enacted at the following epoch, at which point funds are transferred. Intersect then signs a legal contract with the vendor and deploys a smart contract to transparently manage milestone payments.