Cardano’s core development team has received approval from the Ministry of Finance to pay 96 million ADA to advance the proposed upgrade to the network.
Cardano’s main development team – Input Output Global (IOG) has submitted a proposal equivalent to Cardano (ADA), which is 74% of Cardano (ADA), according to the governance lawsuit.
The 12-month development plan focuses on improving scalability, developer experience, and interoperability.
However, the proposal attracted community concerns about costs, overall accountability and transparency.
sauce: Input Output
Upgrades include faster transactions, better onboarding
Funds are milestone-based and Cardano’s membership-based organization acts as independent administrators.
According to the IOG, payments will be released once an upgrade is made and other oversight is made through smart contracts and dedicated committees.
IOG is also working to publish monthly updates, engineering timesheets, and quarterly budget breakdowns.
Important projects in the development of IOG proposals include Hydra, a fast, low-cost transaction protocol, and Project Acropolis, a modular reorganization of Cardano nodes for flexibility and easy onboarding for new core developers.
The average transaction cost for Cardano is currently 0.34 ADA. According to blockchain research firm Messari, an average of 20 seconds per block.
Furthermore, IOG aims to reduce RAM usage, reduce operational costs for stake pool operators through performance optimization, and implement the technical foundation for more advanced smart contracts and seamless interoperability.
Cardano Community Audio is a concern about cost and transparency
Tim Harrison, vice president of IOG’s Community and Ecosystem, said in a statement Saturday that this was the first time the community has directly approved Cardano’s core development funding.
Before voting, however, community members expressed concern about funding costs, how they use the team, the costs of funding, and transparency into accountability to provide what they promised.
Others questioned whether proposals should be broken down into smaller goals, including individual budgets and individual votes for each item.
There was a competing proposal from the Cardano Technical Steering Committee (TSC), but ultimately not approved by Intersect.
Intersect’s board member Adam Rusch said in a post on X on April 28th that the community will be left to support the proposals.
sauce: Adam Rush
Other blockchains have also been upgraded
Cardano is not the only blockchain working on upgrades this year.
Solana Network raised its limit to 60 million computing units (CUs) with plans to increase its block capacity by 20% on July 22nd and expand it further by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s gas limit rose to less than 4,492 million on July 22nd. High gas limits allow Ethereum to process more transactions per block.
Ethereum’s Pectra Hard Fork was also released on May 7th, increasing the number of data blobs per block and the validator staking limits among other upgrades. The next upgrade, Fusaka, is scheduled for the end of 2025.
