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IOR releases Cardano Vision 2025 End-year reports

Reviewing Cardano Vision's first year of science-led innovation

Summary:

  • Cardano Vision year 1: 2025 marked the inaugural year of this five-year research initiative led by Input Output Research (IOR) to strengthen Cardano’s scalability, sustainability, and security.
  • Draft reports open: IOR has submitted two comprehensive draft end-of-year reports – Fundamental Research and Technology Validation – to Intersect. Community feedback is open on the Cardano Forum until January 23, 2026.
  • Exceeding targets: IOR surpassed its 2025 research goals, publishing 24 peer-reviewed papers and advancing 20 Fundamental Research streams alongside seven Technology Validation streams.
  • Research progress: major breakthroughs were delivered across seven of nine thematic areas, including Ouroboros, Tokenomics, Interchains, and Zero-Knowledge (ZK) research.
  • Implementation ready: several innovation streams reached readiness, including Leios, which was formally handed over to engineering. A Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) was submitted for Leios and Anti-grinding, alongside the delivery of a Jolteon Substrate pallet prototype, RSnarks prover and verifier tools, and a proof-of-stake prototype.
  • 2026 planning: work is now underway for the next phase of Cardano Vision, with community feedback playing a vital role in prioritizing 2026 research and validation goals.

Input Output Research (IOR) is excited to share their achievements from the foundational year of the five-year Cardano Vision research initiative. Designed to secure the blockchain’s long-term leadership in scalability, sustainability, and security, Cardano Vision would not exist without the continued trust and support of the community, for which we are grateful.

IOR has submitted the draft 2025 end-of-year reports for Fundamental Research and Technology Validation to Intersect in December 2025. These comprehensive reports detail the progress, milestones, and strategic direction achieved through our science-led approach to solving the most complex problems in blockchain and placing Cardano at its forefront.

We now invite the Cardano community to review both drafts and share feedback on the Cardano Forum until January 23, 2026, during a three-week consultation period prior to final submission.

The engine of innovation: scientific rigor and implementation readiness

Cardano Vision launched in January 2025 with Work Program 2025 (WP25), establishing a structured innovation funnel to guide breakthroughs from theoretical concept to deployment. Our methodology is evidence-based, rooted in peer-reviewed science and formal specification, ensuring correctness, security, and reliability.

The research and development funnel

To manage this process, we divided our work into two distinct phases with two individual reports for community review:

  1. Fundamental Research (FR): this is the what & why science-based research that focuses on formalizing ideas, models, and rigorous proofs (software readiness levels (SRL) 1-2). These work streams represent the ‘long arc’ of science with an expected market impact in 3-5 years. In 2025, IOR advanced 20 FR streams and published 24 peer-reviewed papers.
  2. Technology Validation (TV): this is the how & when implementation-based research that serves as the critical bridge by prototyping, simulating, validating, and specifying early concepts into implementation-ready designs (SRL 3-5). These work streams target deployment in 1.5-3 years. 8 TV streams delivered significant advances in 2025.

We are proud to report that IOR published 24 papers during WP25, exceeding the contractual target of 20 research outputs for the year, reinforcing Cardano’s position as a leader in blockchain science. Significant progress continued across all eight Technology Validation workstreams, exceeding the 2025 target.

Core progress in Cardano Vision: from breakthrough papers to working prototypes

The 2025 End-year reports detail progress across seven of nine thematic areas, demonstrating substantial progress in evolving Cardano into a decentralized compute and storage platform – a ‘world’s operating system’ – where blockchain networks interoperate effortlessly, much like the seamless connectivity we experience in Web2.

To help you navigate the feedback process, we have categorized the year's highlights into Fundamental Research (the science) and Technology Validation (the innovation).

1. Fundamental Research

These streams delivered the peer-reviewed scientific foundations that guarantee Cardano’s future security:

  • World’s Operating System (WOS): Decentralized storage (WOS-4) advanced the formal treatment of adaptively secure decentralized storage networks (DSNs) and explored Byzantine-resilient primitives for distributed hash tables (DHTs). This research is foundational to creating a truly decentralized and censorship-resistant storage layer for Cardano. Additionally, Location-based services (WOS-6) introduced a novel mechanism to incentivize geographic diversity in decentralized networks, strengthening network resilience and opening new innovation opportunities.
  • Ouroboros Omega (OO): Significant progress was made across six streams, including fast settlement, scalability, and economic efficiency. Peras (OO-1) advanced toward a fast-settlement protocol with formal proofs of safety, liveness, and self-healing, alongside engineering evidence that integration with Praos is feasible with minimal disruption. Leios (OO-2) reached a major milestone with a Crypto ’25 paper demonstrating scalable throughput under realistic assumptions, followed by work on concurrency and conflict resolution in parallel block production. Fair transaction processing (OO-3) delivered a top-tier Asiacrypt ’25 paper formalizing bounded unfairness in transaction ordering. Minotaur (OO-5) initiated multi-resource consensus research using Ethereum and Bitcoin re-staking, exploring deterministic committee selection and liveness recovery. Proofs of Useful Work (OO-6) extended Ofelimos into a practical consensus design (under submission) and demonstrated early proof-of-deep-learning feasibility. Congestion control (OO-7) advanced predictable service and multi-resource fee models, including a WINE ’25 paper on multidimensional pricing and a thesis proposing derivative-based service guarantees.
  • Tokenomicon (TO): Tokenomics design (TO-1) developed new equilibrium models for Cardano’s economy, extending previous work to cover reserve policies, adoption dynamics, and resilience. This included large-scale surveys of 11,000 participants across four countries, providing first-of-its-kind behavioral data. Rewards sharing and transaction fees (TO-2) introduced a Shapley-value–based pooling scheme as an alternative to proportional sharing, compared on-chain and off-chain pooling trade-offs, and designed incentives for applications such as Mithril certificate signing.
  • Democracy (D4): Next-level governance protocols (D4-1) finalized a UC security framework for layer 2 governance and, using it, designed a protocol with strong guarantees and minimal footprint. Governance incentives (D4-2) published Reward Schemes and Committee Sizes in Proof of Stake Governance (FC ’25), modeling how rewards, delegation, and effort shape DRep outcomes.
  • Internet Hydra-ted (IHT): Hydra Tail (IHT-1) developed a rollup-style multi-party state channel protocol, with the design and high-level code largely complete, and a research paper with a full security proof planned for 2026. Inter-Head (IHT-2) delivered the first UC framework for multiparty isomorphic state channels, proving Hydra’s security and submitting results in ‘Universally Composable Treatment of Multi-Party Isomorphic State Channels’ (under submission). Optimization Tools (IHT-3) surveyed techniques like fund rebalancing, routing, and synchronization, producing a roadmap for adapting them to Hydra in 2026.
  • Interchains (IC): Key advances across bridges, light clients, tokenomics, and consensus were delivered. State proofs and blockchain bridges (IC-1) produced Bridge Games (under submission), the first formal security framework for cross-chain bridges, alongside ZK research on efficient Merkle openings (ICCCN ’25). Light Client Infrastructure (IC-3) introduced Cavefish, a highly efficient light client protocol for UTXO blockchains requiring only two rounds of interaction. DApps tokenomics (IC-4.1) advanced ‘tokenomics for system launches,’ modeling equilibria in airdrop-based participation and integrating behavioral insights from surveys. Consensus innovation (IC-4.2) progressed formal verification of Jolteon (safety proofs complete, liveness underway) and developed a new game-theoretic model explaining PoS block-minting incentives. In addition, anti-grinding has been thoroughly investigated.
  • Core Zero-Knowledge (ZK): Under Core zero-knowledge capabilities (ZK-1), a UC framework for TEEs was introduced (CSF ’25), while UC-Secure Zero-Overhead SNARKs (TCC ’24) proved Groth16 can achieve UC security without efficiency loss, strengthening the foundations for Cardano’s ZK infrastructure. Applied work enhanced Mithril with more succinct aggregation via BLS signatures and Merkle proofs, while early post-quantum research on lattice-based SNARKs and folding schemes included a SoK survey to guide future directions.

2. Technology Validation

These streams moved theoretical concepts into the ‘validation’ phase, producing code, simulations, formal proofs, and Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs).

  • Ouroboros Leios: TV-1 successfully advanced the design to implementation readiness, delivering a 1,000-node prototype, refined simulators, and a cost model for stake pool operations (SPO) resource use. This innovation was formally handed over to Input Output Engineering (IOE) in Q4 2025 for full implementation, complete with a CIP submission.
  • Anti-grinding (Phalanx): TV-2 developed a Praos-compatible extension to prevent grinding attacks, enabling faster settlement. The design is captured in a CIP that has been merged into the CIP library.
  • Jolteon liveness: TV-3 produced a TRL4 prototype and completed the mechanized safety proof, with work underway on the liveness proof, setting a new benchmark for provably secure consensus for partner chains.
  • RSnarks: TV-4 achieved the first on-chain execution of a large recursive Halo2-BLS verifier on Cardano via transaction splitting. A CIP introducing a built-in Multi-Scalar Multiplication (MSM) function – critical for performance – is already in implementation.
  • Proof of restake (Minotaur): TV-5 reached SRL4 with a Rust library, specifications, simulations, and a Jolteon-integrated proof of concept, while work on final protocol design and formalization continues.
  • Intent-based processing system (Cavefish): TV-6 focuses on developing a resource-efficient light client prototype using privacy-preserving cryptography. The project started in September 2025.
  • Committee bridges: TV-7 establishes a secure, efficient mechanism for Cardano to verify the rotating consensus committee of any partner chain. This is achieved by creating a cryptographic ‘chain of trust’ combined with SNARKs (Halo2 proofs) for efficient on-chain verification, ultimately enabling trustless cross-chain interoperability. This work is due to be completed in Q1 2026.
  • Analyze and model Linear Leios: TV-8 stems from discussions during the CIP publication discussion. delivers a computable resource-constraint model with strict hardware bounds, a precise mathematical characterization of optimistic-case conditions for maximum throughput. Investigation and potential remediation for vector attacks and formal safety/liveness proofs, enabling safe parameter selection for high-performance deployment while preserving decentralization and low barriers for independent stake pool operators. The work started in November 2025 and is due to be completed in Q2 2026.

Communication and dissemination

IOR has been engaging with the community through a multichannel approach to actively share research updates through IOG channels such as the IOG blog and library of research papers, social media, including X and LinkedIn, community-focused events, and academic conferences, thus fostering transparency and collaboration, as well as impact across the ecosystem.

The IOG blog highlights IOR’s groundbreaking contributions to blockchain innovation, featuring in-depth explorations of advancements and thought leadership pieces. Some notable posts from 2025 include:

IOR launched the Cardano R&D Sessions featuring thematic discussions on Layer 2 expansion, Cardano tokenomics, Ouroboros Omega, Interchains, as well as an update on the Technology Validations portfolio. Session video recordings are available on a YouTube playlist and via the Cardano Forum, with more sessions planned for 2026, so watch out for updates coming soon.

Technology Validation streams also provided updates with the community on early prototypes through to formal handovers, with supporting blogs (ie, From idea to implementation), social media updates, forum discussions, open GitHub repositories, a new Leios development tracking website, and a Leios documentation site. Additional communications include Introducing Ouroboros Phalanx, the Halo2-Plutus verifier (RSnarks), as well as a Cavefish repository and project board, as the team continues to provide transparency in its approach.

Looking ahead to 2026

With the successful completion of the first year of Cardano Vision, IOR is now engaged in planning and prioritizing which research and technical validation streams to advance in 2026. Your feedback on these End-year reports is vital to ensuring that our work remains aligned with the community's priorities as we look to build on this first foundational year in 2026 and beyond.

Please review the draft reports and share your feedback on the Cardano Forum prior to January 23, 2026:

We look forward to your valuable insights as we continue to accelerate Cardano’s delivery of secure, scalable, and future-ready capabilities. All 2026 plans and features are research-driven and subject to change.


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