In a "Let's Talk Cardano" episode summary from September 17, 2025, the Cardano Foundation's Veridian digital identity platform was explored. Authored by Laura Mattiucci, the post details how Veridian, built on Cardano and the KERI protocol, tackles digital trust issues. It features quantum-resistant key management and decouples identity from public keys for interoperability, using the blockchain as a root of trust for its global security monitoring service.

The September 12, 2025, development report highlights the ledger team's progress on CIP-112 and features for the next intra-era hard fork. A major Voltaire milestone was reached with the first fully community-elected constitutional committee now in place. In scaling, the Mithril team updated the DMQ protocol CIP. Ecosystem news includes the release of Yoroi Extension v.5.13.0 and new partnerships for Sundial Protocol and Midnight Network.

The September 05, 2025, development report highlights the consensus team's work on the first public draft of the Leios CIP, LSM-tree support, and KES agent integration. The Plutus team improved the evaluator and deserializer and added support for built-in units and pairs. In ecosystem news, MLabs launched feeswap.io, the Cardano Foundation rebuilt the Developer Portal, and World Mobile Chain's $WMTX token began trading on KrakenFX.

A blog post by Nicolas Biri on August 25, 2025, details Input | Output's research and development process for turning foundational research into practical advancements. It highlights recent progress on Ouroboros Peras for fast finality, Ouroboros Leios for high throughput, and the Cardinal protocol for a trust-minimized bridge between Bitcoin and Cardano. The post emphasizes a structured, evidence-based methodology to ensure robust, scalable, and relevant innovations.

On August 25, 2025, a blog post by Kris Bennett introduced the Halo2-Plutus verifier, an open-source tool for bringing zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to Cardano. Spearheaded by Input | Output Research, this project enables on-chain verification of Halo2 proofs within Plinth smart contracts. This innovation is crucial for enhancing privacy and scalability, with its primary application being the Midnight-Cardano zk-bridge, while also supporting broader use cases like confidential transactions.

The August 29, 2025, development report highlights the ledger team's work on enforcing stake pool VRF key uniqueness and integrating Plutus V4 into the Dijkstra era. Smart contract development progressed with Plutus Core adding support for built-in lists. Ecosystem news includes Midnight's partnership with Copper, the launch of the Cardano Governance Education Working Group, and the release of the Halo2-Plutus verifier for zero-knowledge proofs.

The August 22, 2025, 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 August 15, 2025, 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 August 08, 2025, 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 by Ivan Irakoze on August 3, 2025, details Cardano's three-year journey towards decentralized governance. It chronicles the key milestones, from community workshops to the establishment of the Cardano Constitution and elected representatives. This process culminated in a fully autonomous, on-chain democratic system, empowering ada holders to shape the future of the protocol through direct participation and voting.