Summary of key updates
- Acropolis status: development to cease in April 2026. This team of engineers will move on to chain abstraction projects, which remove technical hurdles for developers and users.
- Tiered Pricing cancellation: new research into the Leios scaling model – a way to significantly speed up the network – ultimately makes the old Tiered Pricing design obsolete.
- Treasury stewardship: ₳4.1M (₳1.4M and ₳2.7M for the Acropolis and Tiered Pricing initiatives respectively) in funding is being returned to the Treasury. We believe it is more responsible to return these funds than to spend them on development that is no longer optimal or needed.
- Open source: all Acropolis code written to date remains open-source and available on GitHub for the community to use or develop further.
Building infrastructure that lasts sometimes requires a change in direction when technology evolves. Other recent research and development work in the ecosystem means continuing Acropolis and Tiered Pricing does not provide the best value for the Cardano community.
Acropolis: a foundation for the community
Acropolis was built as a Rust-based node – an alternative way to run the Cardano network. This project has already delivered a Data Node that allows users to sync with the blockchain in just one hour, rather than the four days it used to take. Sundae Labs is using Acropolis in a version 2 iteration of the “Scooper” software that executes each SundaeSwap order.
Node diversity remains an important goal. However, our more immediate priority is making Cardano easier to use. We are therefore shifting the skilled engineers currently working on Acropolis over to focus on chain abstraction. This technology hides the complexity of the blockchain, allows developers to build apps that feel like regular web software, and opens up new use cases that can help compound growth. The Acropolis codebase is live on GitHub for any community members who wish to continue its development, and ₳1.4M of the remaining allocated budget will be returned to the Treasury.
Aligning with the Leios roadmap
The Tiered Pricing mechanism was originally designed to manage network traffic. However, the upcoming Leios upgrade changes the very foundation of how Cardano handles transactions.
Continuing with the old Tiered Pricing design would create technical debt – essentially building a tool that is outdated before it is even finished. While never ideal, it is not unusual to see one piece of technology ‘overtaken’ by another when creating complex systems. To be responsible with community funds, we have agreed with Intersect to cancel this work and release the entire ₳2.7M allocation back to the Treasury.
Our commitment to transparency
We'd rather return funds and be straight about why than quietly continue work that no longer makes sense. That's what working with community funds demands — not just delivering, but knowing when to stop and redirect. We're coordinating with Intersect to close out both initiatives cleanly, and the returned ₳4.1M goes back to the Treasury for the community to allocate through governance. Our focus now is on the work that compounds: removing the friction that sits between Cardano and the developers and users who haven't arrived yet.
Making Cardano easier to use directly removes the biggest barrier to adoption. Every developer who can onboard faster, ships a product sooner, and every product that ships attracts users. More developers means more products. More products means more users. More users means more transaction volume, more liquidity, and more economic activity flowing through the network. That virtuous cycle is what moves TVL, MAU, and real-world adoption in a way that no single infrastructure feature can match. Ease of use is not a nice-to-have at this stage of Cardano's growth, it is the growth lever.
