IOG cuts Cardano treasury ask to fund Leios scaling

Input Output Global (IOG) has submitted nine treasury proposals for Cardano’s 2026 budget that request just under half of last year’s funding. The proposals center on the Leios network-scaling upgrade, with voting open through May 24, a public testnet targeted for June and a mainnet launch aimed by the end of 2026.

The combined request is substantially smaller than IOG’s 2025 ask, the filing says, with the largest single allocation set at 62.1 million ADA, roughly $15.8 million. That sum is proposed for ongoing network maintenance, including node upgrades, monitoring and security work, which IOG described as foundational and warned that “everything else depends on it.”

Leios is presented as an upgrade designed to raise transaction throughput while keeping Cardano’s existing consensus mechanism. A consensus proposal states: “The 2030 Vision sets a clear target: Cardano must scale from today's approximately 800,000 transactions per month to over 27 million,” and calls Leios “the mechanism purpose-built to get there.” IOG estimates Leios could deliver a 10x to 65x increase in throughput.

IOG’s public development tracker shows many Leios specifications are complete, but testnet implementation progress sits at about 24%, placing the project in mid-development. The team plans a public testnet in June and aims for mainnet by the end of 2026.

The proposals outline a Layer 2 strategy that includes the Hydra protocol and the Midgard rollup. The filing characterizes the two as complementary and says both are needed for “a credible L2 story.”

Several proposals focus on developer experience. IOG describes current tooling and onboarding as fragmented and says a high onboarding cost drives developers away. One proposal would run a six-month initiative to simplify onboarding and improve tooling. Other proposals seek to expand formal verification and enhance the Plutus smart contract environment, with the filing noting verification tooling should be usable “without requiring a PhD and three months of setup.”

The package also proposes changes to fee handling and network revenue. Planned features include “Babel Fees,” which would let users pay transaction costs in tokens other than ADA, and changes that would allow wallets to collect micro-fees, creating new revenue paths for wallet providers and developers. A separate proposal called Pogun aims to mobilize idle bitcoin liquidity by positioning Cardano as a potential credit and yield layer for BTC holders, describing large amounts of bitcoin as largely inactive and available for financial primitives on Cardano.

Voting on the nine treasury proposals is open through May 24. If the proposals are approved, the funding would direct IOG’s development priorities for the coming year as the team advances Leios and related infrastructure, developer tools and economic features for the Cardano network.