Cardano signals a fundamental shift from the network’s roots in academic research to a commercially driven “operating system” model.
On Dec. 17, the Intersect Product Committee released a report titled “Vision 2030” outlining a series of rigorous performance benchmarks aimed at redefining how the market evaluates networks.
Intersect, a member-based organization tasked with maintaining network continuity, aims to secure Cardano’s status not only as a cryptocurrency but also as a critical digital infrastructure. This strategy clearly moves away from vague hiring promises.
In return, it commits the ecosystem to achieving key performance indicators (KPIs) of 324 million annual transactions, 1 million monthly active wallets, and approximately $3 billion in total value locked (TVL) by the end of the decade.
This document marks a turning point, as blockchain networks have traditionally prioritized formal verification and peer-reviewed code.
However, Vision 2030 is completely focused on the metrics that business customers and institutional investors recognize: uptime, revenue, and capital efficiency.
Notably, these goals also reveal a stark contrast between Cardano’s methodical approach and the explosive growth of its competitors, raising the question of whether “trustworthiness” alone can close the gap with market leaders such as Ethereum and Solana.
Cardano’s “Operating System” Vision
A core theme of the Vision 2030 draft is that layer 1 blockchains must function with the reliability of an operating system, not the instability of a startup.
The commission specifically rejects the “speed at all costs” argument that drives competitors like Solana and Sui. Instead, this document anchors network success to a service-level reliability benchmark of 99.98% uptime.
The drafters defined this metric with unusual specificity using a Poisson model with an expected block generation time of 20 seconds.
In this framework, the network classifies a 5-minute interval without blocking as a “meaningful failure event.”
Therefore, Cardano’s goal is to completely eliminate these gaps over a six-epoch window, providing the kind of statistical guarantee that infrastructure buyers such as banks and government agencies require before deploying capital.
This emphasis on reliability drives network capacity planning.
The roadmap targets a base layer throughput of approximately 27 million transactions per month. The authors acknowledge that this limitation is intentional, as this strategy designates the mainnet primarily for high-value payments and control traffic.
We envision high-frequency transactions such as day trading and gaming moving to a Cardano-based “first-class” layer 2 network. These L2s handle the computational load while anchoring the ultimate security to the mainnet.
However, this design choice highlights a significant departure from the broader market. The goal of 27 million monthly transactions is significantly lower than the goals of high-performance networks like Solana, which routinely processed 70 million transactions per day.
Nevertheless, proponents of blockchain networks argue that Cardano is the best option for high-value users who are willing to pay a premium for payment certainty. They make this claim even though their competitors offer much better throughput for mass market applications.
Governance and finance
Beyond technical specifications, Vision 2030 proposes a fundamental overhaul of how the ecosystem allocates capital.
This document introduces ‘Treasury Seasons’, a structured budgeting framework designed to impose fiscal discipline on the network’s decentralized treasury.
In this new model, the ecosystem will no longer distribute subsidies based on open-ended offers. Instead, the Treasury will operate through a central public funding channel.
This strategy requires workstreams to justify their budget requests using the roadmap’s three key utility metrics: TVL impact, transaction volume contribution, and wallet active growth.
The Intersect Product Committee calls these KPIs “gate factors.” If a project fails to improve adoption or reliability during one season, a governance process allows the community to reduce or stop funding in the next season.
The draft proposal positions this mechanism as a safeguard against a “permanent grant mode” that ensures resources flow only to initiatives that deliver tangible benefits.
This financial restructuring also extends to roles within the ecosystem. The plan outlines specific incentives for delegates (DReps), stake pool operators (SPOs), and constitutional committees.
The system introduces “turnout-aware thresholds” for governance votes, a mechanism designed to prevent small and motivated minority groups from imposing decisions that lack widespread support.
By formalizing these checks and balances, the Commission aims to provide financial institutions with an auditable governance log that mirrors the corporate governance structures found in publicly traded stocks.
Earnings status check
This document combines its operational objectives with specific economic outlooks.
The strategy outlines a path to financial sustainability in which protocol revenue, defined as transaction fees collected by the network, covers security and development costs. The authors aim to achieve at least 16 million ADA in annual protocol revenue by 2030.
This forecast assumes that average trading fees will stabilize at approximately 0.05 ADA as trading volumes reach the annual target of 324 million.
However, the report also includes a “scenario analysis” of the statutory value of that revenue. This document cites $5.00 as an “example” price for ADA to illustrate the network’s earning potential. At this valuation, the protocol would generate approximately $81 million in annual revenue.
While these numbers point to a path towards sustainability, they pale in comparison to the current economic situation of market leaders.
This year, Ethereum generated about $600 million in transaction fees alone, nearly six times the amount Cardano aims to make annually by 2030.
Furthermore, ADA’s reliance on a $5.00 token price, an increase of approximately 500% from its current price level, suggests that the network’s business model remains highly dependent on speculative asset appreciation rather than organic fee demand.
Execution risks and L2 dependencies
The roadmap concludes with a frank assessment of the risks associated with this transition.
The authors highlight that “invisible” user experience improvements such as fee abstraction and session keys are a prerequisite for reaching the 1 million active wallets goal. They recognize that current user journeys are often too complex for the enterprise compliance use cases they are trying to understand.
Additionally, this strategy highlights the economic tensions inherent in the Layer 2 model.
The document clearly warns against value leakage, noting that once activity moves to L2, basechains risk becoming a low-yield payment layer. In particular, Ethereum faces major challenges with its proprietary Layer 2 network.
To alleviate this, Intersect argues that future bridge designs and tokenomics must “put value back” into layer 1.
The draft proposal calls for stake pool operators to expand their role and proposes running the infrastructure for these L2 and ancillary services to capture value across the entire technology stack.
Essentially, the Vision 2030 document represents a clear desire to professionalize Cardano. By setting tough targets for uptime, adoption, and revenue, the ecosystem is pushing the market to judge by execution rather than philosophy.
The proposed “operating system” model provides a consistent path to relevance, even if financial projections suggest there is a steep hill the network must climb to capture the industry’s revenue giant.
