Check this week’s highlights and get the latest on core technology, wallets and services, smart contracts, and scaling and governance developments. essentialcardano.io/development-up…
Here are the development highlights from this week:
🔬 CORE TECHNOLOGY: The networking team released Dynamic P2P networking to mainnet, the ledger team expanded APIs & worked on governance features, and the consensus team worked on UTXO-HD refactoring, testing & VRF improvements
💳 WALLETS & SERVICES: The Daedalus team improved the starting screen and work is ongoing on Lace desktop development. The Adrestia team extended the multi-signature feature, extracted the transaction balancing library, and optimized cardano-services.
💻 SMART CONTRACTS: The Marlowe team fixed bugs, assessed various conditions in the #Marlowe semantics validator, and implemented a transaction detail view for Marlowe Explorer.
🚀 BASHO (SCALING): The #Hydra team worked on hydra-node mainnet compatibility and prepared for the mainnet beta release. The Mithril team implemented migration of aggregator stores, stake pool store adaptation, and refactored multi-signer to sign multiple concurrent messages.
👥🌐🗳️GOVERNANCE: Check out updates to CIP-1694 and contribute directly on GitHub. Join the community conversation on March 30 to discuss CIP-1694 and future workshops. See the full report for details.
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Input | Output has completed its assessment of 39 Treasury Withdrawal actions for the Intersect administered budget. We’re happy to share that we have found these actions to be constitutional.
Find our rationale in the thread below
1/8
Input | Output has thoroughly reviewed all 39 actions and, based on their common character and format, we have prepared a standard rationale, which we address to each of the 39 actions:
Rationale Summary
Input | Output finds these governance actions constitutional, fulfilling all requirements for a Treasury Withdrawal Action.
Rationale Statement
The following points confirm the constitutionality of the proposed treasury withdrawal, in accordance with the articles and appendices of the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution:
• The proposed governance action has been reviewed and is found to be in alignment with the foundational Tenets of the Cardano Blockchain (Article I, Section 1).
• The governance action adheres to the mandated standards for transparency and legibility, including a URL and a hash of all documented off-chain content. Furthermore, the content of the on-chain governance action matches the expectations set forth in the corresponding budget info action (Article III, Section 5).
•This withdrawal from the Cardano Blockchain treasury is set to enact a Cardano Blockchain ecosystem budget that is currently in effect (Article IV, Sections 1 and 3). You can find the budget info action associated with this Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action here, on chain: gov_action1u9x73kwufaxa70lfy59g4ynwyrcsaxdcd0gxzzmh67s9fxq4j8hqqk2phgh
• The amount of ada specified in this withdrawal does not cause the Cardano Blockchain treasury balance to violate the net change limit (NCL) that is currently in effect, even assuming that all treasury withdrawals presently live on chain are passed(Article IV, Section 3). You can find the net change limit governance action here, on chain: gov_action1nd3t833j7v5sz65k3tp9yyvztw60sjcjgcgjr37682s3m7frwrusqmd2k80
• The funding request for this governance action includes a specific allocation of ada to cover the costs associated with periodic independent audits and the implementation of necessary oversight metrics. Additionally, the contractual obligations governing the use of these funds can be expected to stipulate clear dispute resolution provisions (Article IV, Section 4).
• The terms of this withdrawal mandate that any ada received and held by an administrator prior to its final disbursement must be maintained in one or more separate, auditable accounts. These accounts shall not be delegated to a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) but must be delegated to the predefined "auto abstain" DRep (Article IV, Section 5).
• This Treasury Withdrawal is denominated entirely in ada, as required by the Guardrails (Appendix I, Section 3, TREASURY-03a).
Therefore, based on the analysis above, this Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action fulfills all applicable requirements with one contingency. Treasury withdrawals may be made from the Cardano Blockchain treasury as necessary from time to time to give effect to the Cardano Blockchain ecosystem budget or budgets then in effect (Article IV, Section 1). Additionally, treasury withdrawal requests that do not violate the then applicable Net Change Limit and are not inconsistent with the previously approved budget to which the withdrawal relates satisfy constitutional requirements. Accordingly, our view is that the role of DReps in approving a Treasury Withdrawal Governance Action is to confirm its adherence to the budget in effect, including funding for the administrator. If funding is not approved for the administrator, any Treasury Withdrawal under that budget may become unconstitutional if there is no administrator or the designated administrator is unable to perform its required duties as a result of lack of funding. If DReps wish to reject a Treasury Withdrawal based on merit, this should instead be done by amending the budget. Subject to the foregoing, at the time of writing, this Treasury Withdrawal is found to be consistent with the Cardano Constitution.
For the following treasury withdrawal actions the below applies:
• Withdraw ₳26,840,000 for Input | Output Research (IOR): Cardano Vision - Work Program 2025,
• Withdraw ₳69,459,000 for Catalyst 2025 Proposal by Input | Output: Advancing Decentralised Community Innovation Funding & Infrastructure,
• Withdraw ₳96,817,080 for 2025 Input | Output Engineering Core Development Proposal
• Withdraw ₳592,780 for Beyond Minimum Viable Governance Governance: Iteratively Improving on Cardano Voltaire
• Withdraw ₳1,300,000 for Blockfrost Platform community budget proposal
We note that Input | Output (including our affiliate, Input | Output Engineering), teams within Input | Output, and an independent entity associated with Project Catalyst, Catalyst FC, submitted proposals that are included within various treasury withdrawal governance actions and, as such, would be eligible to receive funding from the Cardano treasury in accordance with the terms of separate vendor contracts to be entered into to give effect to their budget submissions.
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Find the vote transactions and rationales on-chain using the link below
We’ve made remarkable progress in Cardano’s first year as a fully decentralized ecosystem.
We always knew this journey would be challenging. As a community, we’ve moved fast, and yes, too fast for some. Missteps and bumps in the road were inevitable. And yes, even the odd pivot.
But zooming out, we’ve come a very long way in a short time. All thanks to the engagement, commitment and grind from so many across the ecosystem. Now, at the midpoint of the year, it’s time to pause, reflect, and recalibrate. 🧵
1/5
As a prequel to Rare’s Governance & Dev Day, Input | Output will be sponsoring two days of focused reflection and forward thinking — to assess the governance journey so far and start to align on what comes next.
This additional workshop event over 5th & 6th August is an opportunity for community leaders and builders to come together and ask big questions, like:
❓How can we improve both on-chain and off-chain budget/decision-making processes?
❓What new channels or working methods could help drive constructive debate and build consensus?
What other difficult conversations still need to be had — and how can we have them constructively?
❓How do we balance the need for fiscal responsibility with bold, confident investment in the ecosystem?
❓Where should we focus our energy and funding to help Cardano grow into 2026?
By bringing together a representative cross section of DReps and other stakeholders from across our decentralized ecosystem, these two days aim to:
🔎Capture an after action review (AAR) that details constructive, actionable feedback from the diverse perspectives of all stakeholders on the 2025 budget process. And start to shape a more efficient, more refined version for 2026.
⚖️Identify and align on the key governance and constitutional topics requiring clarification or amendment, feeding into a community-validated roadmap for proposed changes to the constitution in 2026.
⚙️Discuss the creation of an executive function for Cardano, including structure, accountability, and decision-making roles. How do we leverage the power of a decentralized community in a coherent, strategically aligned way?
But we want to shape the agenda together. We will be reaching out to community members over the week ahead and gathering feedback on what other topics should be discussed and included. So please drop us a comment below to let us know what you’d like to see included?
3/5
Cardano’s next chapter will be shaped by all of us.
In an ongoing series of threads, IO shares its proposed roadmap with the community, focusing on scalability, usability, and interoperability. These aren’t standalone ideas, but together, they help drive us towards a vision for where we take Cardano next.
Grinding attacks, where network leaders manipulate block additions for re-election advantages, pose a threat, and existing Ouroboros anti-grinding measures can impact settlement times. 2/7🧵
The anti-grinding feature, proposed as part of node improvements, focuses on improving Ouroboros by making grinding attacks harder for adversaries, with minimal overhead for honest participants. 🛡️
3/7🧵
The age of Voltaire brings on-chain governance to Cardano! The community, along with DReps, SPOs, and committees, are now stewards for Cardano's development, guided by the constitution.
Informed and active participation is key to shaping Cardano's future. Discover 10 useful resources that help drive transparent and inclusive governance! 🧵
1/12
A New Dawn
A curated hub highlighting Cardano governance. A New Dawn offers educational content on delegation, participation, and viewing proposed enhancements while spotlighting ecosystem builders.
A platform for budget reconciliation polling, Ekklesia helps DReps support treasury proposals. It has been key to the 2025 budgeting process, encouraging early, transparent coordination.
Cardano's EUTXO model brings determinism and predictability to blockchain! It builds on Bitcoin's UTXO but enhances it for smart contracts and complex apps without sacrificing security or simplicity.
So what does it mean?
1/7
@IOHK_Charles says EUTXO is ‘hand-in-glove built for isomorphism between the off-chain and on-chain.’
Essentially, equality between the two. This means what you see off-chain is what happens on-chain.
2/7
A Bitcoin wallet is like a jar holding coins (UTXOs). To spend $30, you'd use a $50 coin and get $20 change – a new UTXO. Cardano extends this by adding data and logic, creating more versatile UTXOs beyond simple value storage.
3/7