The Cardano community has greenlit a major funding proposal for Input Output Engineering (IOE), allocating 96 million ADA, around $70 million. Announced on August 2, the approval came after a community vote, where 74% of participants supported the strategic development initiative.
The funds will support IOE’s roadmap, which focuses on scalability, better developer tools, and cross-chain functionality. Proposed upgrades include Ouroboros Leios, Hydra, Mithril improvements, Nested Transactions, and Project Acropolis, each aimed at improving Cardano’s efficiency, user accessibility, and network performance across the board.
Massive funding to power Cardano’s growth
Ricky Rand, IOE’s General Manager, called the approval a “vote of confidence” in Cardano’s future. He stressed the importance of transparency, integrity, and alignment with community expectations in executing the upgrades, signaling that serious work lies ahead in delivery and oversight.
Tim Harrison, EVP Community & Ecosystem at IOE, hailed the milestone, stating this is the first time Cardano’s core protocol development is directly funded by its community. He further added that shared responsibility and openness are now central to the blockchain’s development journey.
The team will disburse the grant in structured phases rather than a lump sum. Moreover, Payments will be released based on milestone achievements, ensuring that progress remains measurable and tied to real deliverables.
Oversight mechanisms and community involvement
Intersect, a Cardano-backed community group, will manage the funding as an independent administrator. It primarily ensures appropriate fund allocation, adhering to milestones and delivery standards without centralized control.
To ensure accountability, IOE has pledged to publish monthly progress reports, including development updates, annotated engineering timesheets, and budget summaries every quarter. These steps will assist the community in monitoring treasury fund expenditures and accountability by development teams.
An oversight committee, as well as smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain, will track and monitor expenditures. These initiatives intend to safeguard the appropriate utilization of community resources and incentivize decentralized governance during the upgrade period.
Transforming Cardano with the key upgrades
The focus of development work is to improve the performance and scalability of Cardano. These initiatives consist of Mithril to speed up bootstrap syncing, and Hydra to make real-time transactions quicker and cheaper. While increasing their quantity, as well as Ouroboros Leios to enhance throughput.
There is an opportunity to invite outside contractors. Particulary, those belonging to the Cardano Developer Ecosystem Coalition, to join during the construction stage, fostering greater decentralization and allowing the infusion of new talent and ideas.
Therefore, the approval of the community is a defining milestone, as it allows them to fund the protocol in a decentralized manner with defined objectives and transparent progress tracking.
