Cardano has reached a pivotal moment in its scaling roadmap with the public submission of a Cardano Improvement Proposal for Ouroboros Leios, the network’s most ambitious throughput enhancement to date. The proposal, now available for community review, represents years of research and development aimed at dramatically increasing transaction capacity while preserving the blockchain’s core security principles.
CIP Enters Formal Review Process
Input Output’s director of software architecture Nicolas “BeRewt” Biri announced the milestone on August 27, marking the transition from internal development to public scrutiny. The pull request, catalogued as PR #1078 and titled “CIP-???? | Ouroboros Leios – Greater Transaction Throughput,” has been assigned to the “Category: Consensus” with an initial “State: Triage” designation.
The submission’s current triage status indicates it has entered the formal editorial pipeline but awaits permanent CIP numbering. According to feedback from CIP editors, the document appears “practically ready for merge,” with number assignment expected at the next CIP meeting following standard review procedures.
Technical Architecture and Innovation
Leios represents a fundamental redesign of Cardano’s Ouroboros consensus mechanism, introducing a concurrent structure built around three specialized block types: input blocks, endorsement blocks, and ranking blocks. This architectural innovation aims to parallelize network operations without compromising the separation of concerns that defines Ouroboros Praos.
The proposal addresses algorithmic dependencies that have historically bottlenecked throughput in previous Ouroboros variants. By re-architecting these core components, Leios targets substantial increases in both data and CPU throughput while exploring additional features such as tiered fee service levels and accelerated synchronization paths.
However, the upgrade comes with explicit trade-offs. The research acknowledges increased resource requirements and potentially higher transaction latency as necessary compromises within the security model. These considerations reflect Cardano’s commitment to transparent engineering decisions rather than pursuing raw performance at any cost.
Community Debate and Philosophy
The CIP submission has reignited familiar discussions within the Cardano ecosystem about the balance between throughput and decentralization. When questioned about the significance of this milestone, Biri emphasized the achievement of “a solid and safe design for high throughput on Cardano.”
The debate intensified when community members raised comparisons to faster blockchains like Solana. Biri’s response underscored Cardano’s philosophical approach: “It ain’t and can’t be, because of the different security and model. If we want to compete speed wise with the fastest chains, we need to agree on giving up some decentralisation, cost, or reliability dimensions.”
This stance reflects the network’s continued prioritization of security and decentralization constraints over pure speed metrics, a position that has defined Cardano’s development trajectory throughout its evolution.
Implementation and Roadmap
The CIP documentation includes comprehensive implementation materials, featuring formal specifications and mini-protocol descriptions. Intersect’s listing as an implementor highlights the coordinated approach between research, engineering, and standards processes that characterizes Cardano’s protocol development.
Biri revealed that the team had internally targeted a pull request submission by the end of August, a deadline they successfully met. The current draft incorporates feedback addressing failed transaction handling while striving for minimal impact on decentralized applications built on the network.
Market Context
As the Leios proposal advances through the review process, ADA continues to trade at $0.817, reflecting market sentiment amid ongoing network development. The cryptocurrency market’s reception of scaling solutions has historically influenced token valuations, particularly for platforms competing in the smart contract space.
Looking Ahead
The public submission of the Leios CIP marks a transition from theoretical research to practical implementation considerations. Community feedback during the review period will likely influence final specifications before potential network deployment. The proposal’s emphasis on maintaining Cardano’s foundational principles while achieving meaningful throughput improvements positions it as a test case for scaling blockchain networks without fundamental compromises.
As Biri noted in his announcement, while it may be “too early to celebrate,” the CIP submission represents “a huge milestone” in Cardano’s scaling journey. The coming weeks of community review will determine whether Leios can deliver on its promise of high-throughput blockchain infrastructure built on uncompromising security foundations.