Input Output Global has submitted nine treasury proposals for 2026 that outline an upgrade plan for Cardano as it finalizes the rollout of its Leios network-scaling upgrade.
In a Wednesday post on X, IO Global said its total funding request is “just under 50%” of last year’s, and voting will stay open through May 24. The proposals cover everything from core infrastructure and developer tooling to new economic models, with the Leios launch at the center of the roadmap.
“The 2030 Vision sets a clear target: Cardano must scale from today’s approximately 800,000 transactions per month to over 27 million,” the consensus proposal states, framing Leios as “the mechanism purpose-built to get there.”
Leios is expected to reach the testnet phase in June, with a mainnet launch targeted by the end of 2026. However, IO’s public Leios development tracker suggests the efforts are still in the mid-development stage, with specifications largely complete but testnet progress at roughly 24%.
Need to scale
The Leios upgrade aims to “deliver a 10x to 65x throughput increase” while preserving Cardano’s consensus mechanism, a step IO sees as necessary to support DeFi, real-world assets, and enterprise use cases.
This effort also involves its Layer 2 strategy, including Hydra and the Midgard rollup. The proposal sees the two as complementary, noting that “only with both does Cardano have a credible L2 story.”
Input Output also proposed 62.1 million ADA, the equivalent of over $15.8 million, for ongoing network maintenance that would go towards node upgrades, monitoring, and security, with the IO Global stating that “everything else depends on it.”
Developer issues
Several proposals involved developer experience, which IO described as “fragmented” and a barrier to growth.
A six-month initiative looks to address tooling and onboarding, after internal research found many developers abandon the ecosystem due to a “high onboarding cost.”
IO Global is also looking to expand formal verification and improve the Plutus smart contract platform, with one proposal aiming to make verification tooling accessible without requiring “a PhD and three months of setup.”
Economic models
Another set of proposals aims to change how users interact with the network.
Planned upgrades include “Babel Fees,” which would allow transaction fees to be paid in tokens other than ADA, and other changes that would allow wallets to collect micro-fees, opening new revenue models for developers.
A separate proposal named Pogun targets bitcoin liquidity, describing BTC as “the world’s most valuable digital asset” that is “almost entirely idle,” and sees Cardano as a potential credit and yield layer for that capital.
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