Cardano Allocates 96M ADA for Major 12-Month Development Roadmap—Here’s What Comes Next

• The funding approved for the Cardano upgrade will be distributed based on milestone achievements, with Intersect acting as an independent administrator.
• Oversight will include smart contracts, a dedicated committee, and mandatory monthly updates, timesheets, and quarterly budget reports.

The Cardano Core development team secured the proposal to spend 96 million $ADA to proceed with the proposed upgrades on the blockchain network over the next year. Input Output Global (IOG), the core development team behind Cardano, has successfully passed a governance proposal seeking funding equivalent to $71 million in $ADA. The proposal received strong community support, with 74% voting in favor.

The approved funding will support a 12-month development roadmap focused on enhancing scalability, improving the developer experience, and advancing interoperability across the Cardano ecosystem, as mentioned in our previous report. However, some community members raised concerns over costs, transparency, and overall accountability.

Here’s What the Cardano Upgrade Brings

Funding for this Cardano development proposal shall be distributed on milestones. Intersect, a member-based organization within the Cardano ecosystem, serves as an independent administrator, according to Input Output Global (IOG).

IOG stated that payments will be released upon the successful delivery of upgrades, with oversight managed through smart contracts and a dedicated oversight committee. Besides, the team also needs to publish monthly updates, engineering timesheets, and quarterly budget reports.

Among the major initiatives in the proposal are Hydra, a protocol aimed at enabling fast and low-cost transactions. Another one is Project Acropolis, a modular re-architecture of the Cardano node to improve developer onboarding and network flexibility.

Current data from blockchain analytics firm Messari shows that Cardano’s average transaction cost stands at 0.34 $ADA, with blocks produced every 20 seconds. IOG also plans to reduce RAM usage and operational costs for stake pool operators. It also plans to lay the groundwork for more advanced smart contracts and improved interoperability.

Community Voices Concerns

Tim Harrison, vice president of community and ecosystem at Input Output Global (IOG), said Saturday that this marks the first time Cardano’s community has directly approved funding for core protocol development.

Ahead of the vote, some members of the community raised concerns regarding the overall cost of the proposal, the transparency of fund allocation, and the mechanisms for ensuring accountability. Others suggested that the proposal might have been more effectively structured by breaking it into smaller, goal-specific components, each subject to separate budgeting and individual votes.

A competing proposal from Cardano’s Technical Steering Committee (TSC) was submitted but did not receive backing from Intersect. In an April 28 post on X, Intersect board member Adam Rusch emphasized that it was up to the community to determine which proposal to support.