The Cardano Foundation and the University of Brasília (UnB) have partnered to launch Latin America’s first Cardano Project Development Lab. Focused on blockchain, AI, and IoT, the hub will drive public sector innovation. The collaboration includes academic curricula and policymaker training to enhance transparency and digital trust across Brazil's government.

Nine 2026 treasury proposals from IO are now live, focusing on scalability and performance with DRep voting open until May 24. The consensus team advanced the Leios prototype by adding throughput metrics and investigating storage latency to ensure protocol stability. A significant update from the Plutus team introduced script optimizations for the UPLC executable, which can reduce execution costs by an average of 10%. Additionally, the Mithril team prepared for SNARK circuit production readiness, while Intersect committee elections are underway with 105 candidates competing for 37 seats.

Nine 2026 treasury proposals from IO are now live, focusing on scalability and performance with DRep voting open until May 24. The consensus team advanced the Leios prototype by adding throughput metrics and investigating storage latency to ensure protocol stability. A significant update from the Plutus team introduced script optimizations for the UPLC executable, which can reduce execution costs by an average of 10%. Additionally, the Mithril team prepared for SNARK circuit production readiness, while Intersect committee elections are underway with 105 candidates competing for 37 seats.

Intersect is shifting to a flexible 2026 strategy focused on five pillars, including infrastructure stewardship. Key to this is a new 3% administration fee, replacing flat budgets to provide on-demand support for treasury projects. They also launched the Administration Hub for transparency and are preparing for a multi-client future to boost network resilience.

Yoroi Wallet is rebranding to SecondFi, a neofinance platform bridging everyday spending with on-chain services like trading, earning, and global card payments. The transition is seamless: existing assets and staking remain safe, and the app updates automatically. While the platform evolves, the Yoroi brand will persist independently as a dedicated DRep to support Cardano governance.

Nine 2026 treasury proposals have been finalized, outlining the roadmap for Cardano’s core protocol and scaling initiatives. Technical teams successfully integrated Leios endorser blocks and optimized Node v10.7 for the upcoming Van Rossem hard fork. Innovation continues with a new decentralized AI and healthcare lab in Greece, while the Intersect committee elections move into the voting phase on April 20.

The High Assurance team released PlutusCoreBlaster, a full formalization of Plutus Core in Lean 4 for enhanced smart contract verification. The Plutus team improved compiler usability and added UPLC optimizations to increase execution efficiency. Mithril completed the review of its recursive SNARK circuit prototype and finalized the client CLI for Cardano blocks. Lastly, Intersect noted only seven days remain for 2026 committee election applications, closing April 17.

The Cardano Foundation and Draper Dragon launched the $80M Orion Fund to drive institutional adoption through Real-World Assets (RWA), DeFi, and bridging Bitcoin liquidity to Cardano. Supported by Draper University, the fund uses an equity-first approach to return value to the Cardano treasury via a specialized vehicle (Arouet Holdings).

The performance and benchmarking team ran benchmarks on node v.10.6.2 and began developing tx-centrifuge, a service for generating high network workloads. Lace reached a major milestone by integrating Midnight mainnet access, allowing users to manage private assets directly in the wallet. Mithril successfully activated the SNARK prover on a developer network, while Intersect opened applications for the 2026 committee elections, with seats available across seven standing committees until April 17.

The Pentad has transitioned to delivering Critical Integrations, headlined by the live launch of USDCx, which boosted Cardano's stablecoin supply by 40%. Pyth Network oracles are now code-complete for a Q2 launch, while Dune Analytics and LayerZero integrations are currently in progress. Furthermore, the design phase for Pentad V2 has begun, focusing on expanding infrastructure and capital flow.