Cardano News

A Roundtable Talk on February 25, 2025, focused on the Cardano budgeting process and the implications of the proposed Net Change Limit. The session aimed to educate the community on this treasury governance mechanism, which sets a yearly withdrawal cap. Experts discussed the risks of allocating budgets without a predefined limit and fostered an open discussion to empower community members in shaping structured and sustainable on-chain financial governance.

The network has reached 1,985 projects and 106.5 million transactions. The consensus team achieved a 9% CPU reduction benchmarking the UTXO-HD in-memory backend. Lace 1.20.0 launched with a new Governance tab, while Plutus Tx was rebranded to Plinth to improve smart contract development. Additionally, a Hydra explorer was released for enhanced network monitoring.

The Cardano Foundation released the "Cardano Economic Parameters" whitepaper by Professor Massimo Morini, analyzing how parameters like k (desired pool count) and a₀ (pledge influence) shape stake pool rewards. It explores the impact of pool size, pledge, and ecosystem reserves while clarifying reserve distribution between rewards and the treasury. The paper provides insights for stake pool operators and governance participants to support informed decision-making on Cardano’s long-term sustainability.

Cardano Buidler Fest #2 is scheduled for April 24–25, 2025, in Da Nang, Vietnam. A key proposal by Andrew Westberg suggests reducing the treasury tax rate from 20% to 10% to adjust fund allocation. Additionally, Intersect MBO has released draft budget proposals for feedback, covering Research and Growth and Marketing strategies to encourage community input.

This installment of the Cardano Developer Office Hours explores the Cosmos-Cardano Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) bridge project. The session provides an overview of the architecture, current development, and key components driving the project. Topics include the IBC protocol, blockchain interoperability, and the integration of Cosmos SDK with Cardano. A live demo showcases how to send messages between the Cosmos network and a local Cardano node. The session also covers real-world use cases like token transfers, cross-chain swaps, and more.

The ecosystem has reached 1,985 projects, 10.68 million native tokens, and 106.19 million transactions. The ledger team optimized Plutus script computations, reducing memory usage for better performance. Mithril activated the 'Pythagoras' era at epoch 539, advancing incremental database certification. Leios focused on cryptography benchmarking, while the interim council voted to officially adopt the Cardano Constitution.

The Cardano Foundation's recent research paper, "Serial Monopoly on Blockchain with Quasi-Patient Users," co-authored with IOG Research, examines transaction fee mechanisms and their influence on validator incentives. Accepted for presentation at the 29th International Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2025 conference, the study introduces a model bridging impatient and patient users, termed "quasi-patient" users. This approach analyzes how users' varying tolerance for transaction delays impacts fee strategies and blockchain security, offering insights into optimizing transaction fee mechanisms to balance cost efficiency and timely inclusion.

The network has benchmarked node v.10.2, alongside UTXO-HD and Genesis performance updates. The consensus team removed EBBs and fixed block replay issues, while the Plutus team rebranded Plutus Tx to Plinth and refined the script context API. Hydra v.0.20.0 improved memory usage, and Mithril prepared for the Pythagoras era at epoch 539. Additionally, the Leios team enhanced efficiency by reducing certificate sizes.

This 13th installment of the Cardano Developer Office Hours is presented by Thomas Kammerlocher, Senior Full Stack Developer at the Cardano Foundation. Thomas discusses the Java implementation of Rosetta, a tool developed by Coinbase for exchanges to integrate with Cardano. Rosetta simplifies multi-chain support with its blockchain-agnostic API, and the transition from TypeScript to Java enhances performance and reduces resource consumption. Upcoming updates include support for staking rewards tracking, off-chain data integration, and more improvements to scalability and efficiency.

Insights into decentralization post-Plomin hard fork and a comprehensive guide to stablecoins are featured. Project Catalyst has released its 2025 roadmap, while an interview with the FluidTokens CTO explores Bitcoin DeFi and liquidity. Updates also include EMURGO's latest developments and the 2025 Ecosystem Guide, encouraging engagement in ongoing governance actions.