Cardano builder seeks smaller funding slice of $46.8 million for scaling and Bitcoin DeFi

The engineering organization behind Cardano submitted nine proposals totaling $46.8 million for the 2026 voting cycle, down from $97.5 million last year.

What to know:

• Input Output, the main engineering firm behind Cardano, has cut its 2026 funding request from the community treasury to $46.8 million, about half of last year’s $97.5 million ask, as it begins phasing out reliance on community money.
• The company is seeking support for nine proposals centered on a major consensus upgrade called Leios, which it says could boost Cardano’s throughput to more than 1,000 transactions per second, and Pogun, a system designed to bring Bitcoin-based decentralized finance to the network.
• A vote by roughly 1,000 elected delegates runs through May 24 and will test whether Cardano’s expanded governance treats Input Output like any other grant applicant now that alternative development and funding structures are in place.

Input Output, the private engineering company that built and continues to develop the Cardano blockchain, is seeking about half the funding it requested last year from the project's community treasury.

The company submitted nine proposals totaling $46.8 million for 2026 on Tuesday, down from $97.5 million in 2025. Several of the proposals focus on scaling Cardano to increase its transaction processing capacity and expanding into Bitcoin DeFi.

Cardano, like most major blockchains, maintains a shared pool of money funded by network fees, which community representatives vote to allocate toward development work. Input Output historically has been the largest recipient because it employs most of the engineers building the underlying software.

The reduced ask is the first concrete step in a plan to phase out that dependency. Input Output said it now aims to shrink its annual request each year until the company can sustain itself on its own revenue, with community funds going instead to a broader set of smaller engineering groups.

By the end of 2026, Input Output expects smaller, more specialized teams to take on most of the work it currently does in-house, including firms such as VacuumLabs and Midgard Labs that focus on specific layers of the Cardano software.

Scaling and bitcoin DeFi

The nine proposals group into two themes. The larger funds a consensus upgrade called Leios, which Input Output claims will increase Cardano's transaction processing capacity by 10 to 65 times, targeting more than 1,000 transactions per second.

For context, that would move Cardano from a relatively slower chain to one competitive with Solana and the fastest Ethereum layer-2 networks on throughput alone. Leios is scheduled for a test release in June and full deployment by year-end.

The second flagship proposal funds a system called Pogun, which aims to bring Bitcoin-based decentralized finance to Cardano. In practice, it would let bitcoin holders borrow and earn yield on their holdings through Cardano without giving custody to a centralized intermediary. Pogun's lending component is targeted for public release in the second quarter.

Smaller proposals cover performance improvements to Cardano's smart contract engine, security testing infrastructure, developer tools, and expanded API services.

Each proposal names specific delivery leads and ties funding to delivery milestones rather than releasing money upfront. Imagine paying a contractor in stages as different parts of a house are completed, instead of handing over the full budget at the start of construction.

Voting opens Tuesday and runs through May 24. The decisions are made by roughly 1,000 elected delegates known as DReps, who represent ADA holders much as proxy representatives do in a publicly traded company. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Input Output, is scheduled to release a video this week making the case directly to those delegates.

The vote will test whether Cardano's governance, which has expanded significantly over the past two years, treats Input Output like any other grant applicant or continues to approve its requests largely on a basis of deference.

Last year’s $97.5 million proposal passed, but in the interim the Cardano Foundation has taken over the project’s grant-funding arm, and Intersect, the governance organization running this vote, has assumed stewardship of core Cardano software. Both shifts mean alternatives to Input Output now exist in a way they did not when previous votes went through.

Meanwhile, Input Output also cited progress in the ecosystem in its release. A new Cardano stablecoin, USDCx, reached 14.6 million tokens in circulation within weeks of its launch. Total assets deposited on Cardano, a common measure of a network's usage, rose from $137.5 million to $142.7 million over the same period.

Whether the full slate passes, gets partially funded, or is reshaped entirely by DReps will signal how much the Cardano community's thinking has shifted now that the tools to fund development without Input Output exist.

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Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

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