Cardano Developers Reduce Community Funding Applications to $46.8 Million, Advancing Scaling and Bitcoin DeFi Strategy
According to CoinDesk, Input Output, the core development company behind Cardano, has submitted nine funding proposals totaling $46.8 million to the community treasury for fiscal year 2026—a sharp reduction of approximately 52% compared to last year’s $97.5 million—marking its first step toward gradually reducing reliance on community funds.
The nine proposals center on two key initiatives: First, the Leios consensus upgrade, expected to boost Cardano’s transaction throughput by 10x to 65x and target over 1,000 transactions per second (TPS); testing is scheduled for June, with full deployment planned by year-end. Second, Pogun—a Bitcoin DeFi system enabling Bitcoin holders to borrow and earn yield via Cardano without entrusting assets to centralized custodians; its lending functionality is slated for public release in Q2.
Voting is being conducted by roughly 1,000 democratically elected representatives (DReps), with ballots closing on May 24. The outcome will test whether the Cardano community now views Input Output as just another ordinary funding applicant. Meanwhile, Cardano’s newly launched stablecoin USDCx has achieved a circulating supply of 14.6 million tokens within weeks of launch, and the network’s total value locked (TVL) has risen from $137.5 million to $142.7 million.
