Cardano News

The April 28, 2025, Cardano Community Digest highlights an explanation of how Bitcoin can interact with Cardano using zero-knowledge cryptography without custodians. It recaps BuilderFest #2 in Vietnam and covers recent Roundtable Talks discussing Interim Constitutional Committee learnings, development priorities, and stablecoin liquidity. Updates include LidoNation's blog on decentralized storage, EMURGO's guidance on budget voting, and Intersect's news on governance developments and upcoming committee elections.

The April 25, 2025, development report highlights core technology updates, including ledger team work preparing for future eras and the pre-release of node v.10.3.1 focusing on performance improvements and lightweight checkpointing support. Ecosystem growth continued, and key updates include DRep delegation going live on Yoroi Wallet, Kinka minting its first XNK tokens on Cardano, a new EMURGO partnership announcement, and the launch of ChadSwap.

EMURGO has published a guide to help ada holders navigate the process of voting on Cardano budget proposals. This resource explains the mechanism for community participation in allocating treasury funds, a key aspect of Cardano's decentralized governance. The guide aims to clarify the steps involved, empowering users to make informed decisions and contribute to shaping the ecosystem's future development and project funding through the established budget process.

The April 18, 2025, development report highlights core technology advancements, including consensus team progress on Genesis testing and collaboration with the Ouroboros Phalanx team. Networking focused on transaction submission features, while performance benchmarked node v.10.3.1. The Plutus team delivered several improvements to Plinth, enhancing the smart contract compiler and libraries. Work also continued across scaling solutions, wallet development, and governance features.

Input Output Global (IOG) published an update on Ouroboros Leios, presented as a major redesign of Cardano's consensus protocol aimed at significantly increasing transaction throughput and scalability. The post explains how Leios utilizes a novel concurrent structure with specialized block types (input, endorsement, ranking) to enable parallel processing while preserving the security and decentralization of Ouroboros Praos. Currently in the research and development phase, Leios is positioned as a transformative upgrade for Cardano's long-term capacity.

The April 14, 2025, Cardano Community Digest highlights Peter Bui’s latest Cardano News Update, addressing staking wallet issues and Iagon’s new decentralized compute and storage integrations. It previews Roundtable Talk #11 on April 15, where representatives from various councils will discuss experiences and lessons from the Interim Constitutional Committees. The Cexplorer blog offers a deep dive into Midgard versus Ethereum Rollups, emphasizing Midgard’s UTxO model for scalability and conflict resolution. Additionally, Intersect MBO announces that voting for the Constitutional Committee elections will commence on April 16.

The April 11, 2025, blog post from IOG introduces Ouroboros Peras, an upgrade to the Ouroboros Praos protocol aimed at accelerating transaction settlement on Cardano. Peras reduces settlement times to around two minutes, increasing confidence in transaction finality. It introduces a voting-based chain selection process and certificate system to reach rapid consensus while maintaining security and decentralization. This advancement supports Cardano’s scalability and responsiveness to network demands.

The April 11, 2025, development report highlights Cardano’s steady growth with 1,990 projects, 1.33 million delegated wallets, and 10.75 million native tokens. Smart contracts reached 130,282 Plutus and 6,217 Aiken scripts, with 108.36 million total transactions. Governance participation expanded to 1,238 DReps. Highlights include Charles Hoskinson’s keynote at Paris Blockchain Week, a node diversity workshop, and Draper University selecting 20 builders for its residency. Zekret Protocol will build on Cardano, and Eternl wallet launched a new version with UI upgrades and multi-sig support.

EMURGO's recent workshops in Tokyo and Fukuoka highlighted key challenges to Cardano's commercialization: limited liquidity, low transaction volume, and underdeveloped DeFi infrastructure. With Cardano ranking 20th in total value locked (TVL) among blockchains and its stablecoin market cap at $30 million, the ecosystem lags behind competitors. Contributing factors include scarce listings of Cardano-native tokens on major exchanges and minimal engagement with external market makers. Addressing these issues is crucial for enhancing Cardano's infrastructure, attracting institutional capital, and achieving its vision of a resilient, inclusive financial platform. EMURGO plans to propose solutions in an upcoming blog post.

The Cardano Foundation published an article explaining the Net Change Limit (NCL), a constitutional parameter within Cardano's governance framework. The NCL defines the maximum amount of ada that can be withdrawn from the treasury over a specific period, typically annually. This mechanism serves as a crucial safeguard for fiscal responsibility and long-term treasury sustainability, balancing ecosystem funding needs with monetary stability. Ratification of the NCL via DRep vote is a required step before budget proposals and treasury withdrawals can proceed.