A blog post by Kris Bennett on October 21, 2025, introduces Ouroboros Phalanx, an extension of the Ouroboros Praos consensus protocol. Phalanx strengthens Cardano's security by using verifiable delay functions (VDFs) to make randomness "grinding attacks" economically infeasible. This enhancement not only deters adversaries but also improves network performance, reducing transaction settlement times.

On October 20, 2025, Intersect announced that protocol parameter updates proposed by the Technical Steering Committee have entered the Preview testnet. These changes, which include increasing the block size to 128KB and raising Plutus script memory units per transaction to 20M, are designed to enhance network throughput and support more complex DeFi applications on Cardano.

The Cardano Foundation's Q3 2025 report, published on October 17 by Laura Mattiucci, details a focus on adoption, resilience, and education. Key activities included the 2025 Asia Tour, the application process for .ada and .cardano gTLDs, and preparations for the Cardano Summit in Berlin. The quarter also saw major governance milestones, including the seating of the first community-elected Constitutional Committee.

The October 17, 2025, development report highlights the Hydra team's release of version 1.0.0. The consensus team advanced the Leios CIP, while the performance team benchmarked node v.10.6 and the LSM-tree backend. The Plutus team finalized the implementation of CIP-0153, introducing the Value built-in type. In the ecosystem, Project Catalyst Fund14 voting concluded, and the Cardano Foundation launched its Summit 2025 PR campaign.

The October 10, 2025, development report highlights steady ecosystem growth, with transaction volume reaching 114.56 million and an increase in active DReps. The IOG team concluded its Asia tour in Tokyo. Yoroi wallet launched v6.0, integrating DexHunter and Minswap. Additionally, Midnight Network partnered with CSWAP to develop privacy-first DeFi solutions, and the Hydra-node v1.0.0 pre-release is now available on GitHub.

The September 12, 2025, development report highlights the ledger team's progress on CIP-112 and features for the next intra-era hard fork. The first fully community-elected constitutional committee is 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.

On October 1, 2025, Intersect announced the results of its 2025 board elections, with Adam Rusch and Jack Briggs being elected as new members. This election is a significant milestone for Cardano's governance, as it marks the first time a majority of the Intersect board has been directly elected by its members. The result, determined by a 26% voter turnout, reinforces the ecosystem's commitment to decentralized, community-led decision-making.

The September 26, 2025, development report highlights the consensus team's work on the KES agent audit and refactoring the hard fork combinator to be Peras-aware. The Plutus team is preparing for the intra-era hard fork by enabling sums-of-products and built-in functions across all Plutus versions. In the ecosystem, IOG announced a partnership with zkFold to build a trustless ETH-Cardano bridge, while Minswap's "Wen" token generator is now live.

On September 23, 2025, Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard unveiled an updated roadmap focused on accelerating global adoption. Key initiatives include injecting eight figures in ada liquidity into DeFi, expanding the Web3 adoption team, and committing up to 2 million ada to the Cardano Venture Hub in 2026. The plan also prioritizes Real-World Asset tokenization, increases the 2026 marketing budget by 12%, and boosts governance decentralization by delegating an additional 220M ada to select DReps.

The September 19, 2025, development report highlights the consensus team drafting an architectural design for Leios (CIP-0164). The Plutus team progressed on implementing the Value built-in type (CIP-0153) and merged multi-scalar multiplication primitives for the next hard fork. In scaling, the Mithril team created a new pre-release, supported Cardano node v.10.5.1, and completed a SNARK proving circuit prototype. IOG also kicked off its 2025 Asia tour.