The Cardano (ADA) community just made history. For the first time, the community has directly approved core development funds and led a new era of decentralized governance.
Cardano’s Chang and Plomin upgrades led a fully decentralized, self-supporting network with community-driven governance, empowering ADA owners.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded to this milestone and offered gratitude to the ADA community.
Thank you for your support and trust. Let’s accomplish that. https://t.co/z7cabwhg54
– Charles Hoskinson (@iohk_charles) August 3, 2025
At the major milestone, with overwhelming community approval, the Input Output Engineering (IOE) Protocol Roadmap Proposal has been approved for funding from the Cardano Ministry of Finance.
The Cardano community has officially voted in favor of the IOE fundraising proposal (voting 73.93%), taking a step forward with a journey towards community-driven delivery and a long-term protocol advancement.
By taking this step, the ADA community has approved not only a series of technical upgrades, but also a consensus vision for Cardano’s future. The roadmap, created to match community priorities and adopted earlier this year, outlines one of the chain’s most ambitious development stages in history.
What’s coming?
Core Development Funds supports major upgrades of scalability, developer experience, and interoperability. These include Usoboros Leios, a basic performance upgrade that allows faster throughput without compromising security or decentralization.
Hydra is an ultra-fast, low-cost transaction protocol that is ideal for microtransactions and real-time applications. Mithril expansion reduces bootstrap times and provides lightweight client support for more adoption.
Nested transactions build a technical basis for advanced smart contracts and interoperability.
Project Acropolis enables modular research on Cardano nodes, increasing flexibility for new core developers and speeding up onboarding.
Performance optimizations include reducing synchronization times, lower RAM usage, and lower operating costs for stake pool operators.