IO trims 2026 Cardano treasury ask to $38.9M

Input Output (IO), the engineering organization behind Cardano, submitted nine treasury funding proposals totaling $38.9 million for 2026. The proposals were posted to Intersect, Cardano’s member-based governance platform, and delegate representatives (DReps) have until May 24, 2026 to vote.

The 2026 package reduces IO’s request by nearly half from the $97.5 million it sought last year. IO said the reduction is deliberate as it plans to shrink its treasury ask each year while shifting operational responsibility to a broader set of community contributors. The nine proposals were selected from more than 25 evaluated initiatives and include milestone-gated funding tied to delivery.

The largest technical effort in the slate is Leios, a consensus upgrade intended to increase Layer 1 throughput by an estimated 10- to 65-times with a target of more than 1,000 transactions per second. IO plans to launch the Leios testnet in June 2026 and aims for mainnet deployment by the end of the year. A node optimization called UTXO HD is paired with Leios to keep Cardano nodes operational on residential hardware.

On the Bitcoin side, IO is backing Pogun, an end-to-end Bitcoin DeFi engine for Cardano. Pogun bundles a non-margin credit market, yield infrastructure and a trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge. The Pogun credit market is scheduled to go live on Cardano mainnet in the second quarter of 2026.

Other proposals cover developer and protocol work. Plutus script optimization targets roughly a 25% reduction in script preparation overhead. Layer-2 scaling work includes Hydra and contributions from Midgard Labs. Formal verification tooling is proposed through the High Assurance consortium, and Blockfrost API infrastructure would be scaled to handle Leios-level throughput. Three protocol changes are on the slate: CIP-159 to add native micro-fee support, CPS-23 to enable a native multi-asset on-chain treasury, and Babel Fees to allow users to pay transaction costs in stablecoins without holding ADA.

Several proposals will be delivered in partnership with outside teams. VacuumLabs will contribute to Plutus optimization, Midgard Labs will handle Layer-2 work, and Pragma and the Cardano Foundation will support developer relations. IO is discussing the creation of a dedicated Haskell engineering entity to help execute parts of the portfolio.

All nine proposals are administered through Intersect and include milestone-based release of funds. Jeff Watson, Head of Technology at IO’s Cardano Business Unit, described the proposals as tied to ecosystem growth and noted IO’s ability to move quickly on delivery. Charles Hoskinson, a Cardano co-founder, is expected to release a video message for DReps ahead of the vote.

If DReps approve the package by the May 24 deadline, the funding will support final stages of planned performance upgrades and transfer operational duties to a wider set of contributors as IO reduces its ongoing funding requests.