Cardano News

The 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 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.

A Roundtable Talk on April 15, 2025, reflected on the learnings from the Interim Constitutional Committee (iCC) following its eight-month term. The discussion reviewed the iCC's crucial role in upholding the Cardano Constitution since the Chang Hard Fork in September 2024. This session provided insights into the committee's foundational experiences and challenges, setting the stage for the new elections scheduled for May 2025.

The 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.

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.

Alex Nemish and Oleksii Khodakivskyi from Lantr introduce Scalus, a smart contract framework built with Scala 3. They walk through the vision, roadmap, and show how it simplifies development on Cardano, including a live demo of a payment splitter contract. This session is ideal for devs exploring new tools to build on Cardano.

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.