Executive Summary
Cardano Vision launched in 2025 with Work Program 2025 (WP25), a five-year research initiative designed to secure Cardano’s long-term leadership in blockchain. Enabled by community support and grounded in peer-reviewed science, it tackles the hard challenges—sustainability, scalability, interoperability, and security. This Mid-Year Report provides a transparent update on progress, milestones, and priorities for this first year.
Evidence-Based methodology
Input | Output Research (IOR) applies an Evidence-Based methodology to ensure correctness, security, and reliability in blockchain systems—where exhaustive testing alone is insufficient. Rooted in peer-reviewed science and formal specification, each research stream progresses from well-defined problems through models, proofs, and executable artifacts, aligning theory with real-world implementation. An agile, iterative process enables early issue detection, efficient resource use, and continuous refinement. Progress is tracked through Software Readiness Levels (SRLs):
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Fundamental Research (SRL 1–2): formalizing ideas and proofs, 3–5 years to market
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Technology Validation (SRL 3–5): prototyping, validating and specs, 1.5–3 years
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Targeted Implementation (SRL 5+): guiding engineering into production, 0–18 months
This structured funnel supports a steady pipeline of innovation, with more than 100 research outputs expected over five years, with 30 advancing to validation and implementation. Building on Cardano’s proven record, it provides the assurance needed for secure, scalable, and future-ready capabilities.
Fundamental research
In 2025, IOR is advancing 20 foundational research streams under Cardano Vision, already delivering promising outputs that reinforce Cardano’s position as a leader in blockchain science. These streams formalize new ideas beyond the current state of the art, combining clear problem definitions, formal modeling, and rigorous security proofs to produce high-assurance solutions.
Outputs typically include technical reports, peer-reviewed papers, and formal specifications – critical evidence for later prototyping and validation. Recognizing the exploratory nature of early-stage research, IOR applies a flexible portfolio approach. This report includes three change requests reflecting updated stream prioritizations to ensure resources are focused where impact is greatest.
Cardano Vision
Cardano Vision is a five-year research agenda focused on sustainability, scalability, and interoperability—recognizing that transformative blockchain technologies require long-term, science-led investment rather than short-term market demand. By advancing high-potential areas today, Cardano ensures continued innovation, global competitiveness, and broad societal benefit.
Building on Cardano’s record of 100% uptime, the program is structured around nine thematic focus areas. At its core, Cardano Vision seeks to evolve blockchain into a global operating system for decentralized compute, storage, and identity, enabling seamless interoperability and supporting new digital institutions for identity, governance, and trust.
Impact and outputs
The first year of Cardano Vision is progressing strongly, with a balanced portfolio of long-running and newly launched research streams—some already delivering outputs and others advancing cutting-edge directions—supported by three prioritization change requests, and with IOR on track to exceed its contractual target of over 20 research outputs in 2025 (see Appendix B).
World’s Operating System (WOS): In 2025, WOS-4 advanced both a formal treatment of adaptively secure decentralized storage networks (DSNs), and Byzantine-resilient primitives for DHTs and DAS, exploring PoSpace/PoStake Sybil defenses and potential DAS–RDA unification. WOS-6 introduced a novel mechanism incentivizing geographic diversity, with experimental validation and work on integrating verified location claims into cryptographic protocols.
Ouroboros Omega (OO): Major progress includes OO-1V, a forthcoming Peras paper proving safety, liveness, and self-healing, supported by engineering reports confirming integration feasibility. OO-2 Leios achieved a key milestone with a Crypto ’25 paper on throughput scalability, while follow-up work addresses concurrency and conflicts. Additional outputs span a OO-3 paper being presented at Asiacrypt ‘25 on adaptive security for fair transaction processing, OO-5 multi-resource consensus with Ethereum/Bitcoin re-staking, OO-6 new consensus design and early Proof-of-Deep-Learning results, and OO-7 publications on congestion fees, space tokenization, and pricing models.
Tokenomicon (TO): TO-1 advanced economic models for Cardano (AFT ’25), extending earlier work to reserve policies and resilience, complemented by large-scale surveys of 11,000 participants and new frameworks for algorithmic monetary policies. TO-2 introduced a Shapley-value–based pooling scheme (AFT ’25), explored pooling trade-offs, and designed incentives for Mithril, with results disseminated at major conferences.
Democracy 4.0 (D4): D4-1 finalized a UC security framework for L2 governance and designed a minimal-footprint protocol. D4-2 modeled DRep incentives, and explored participatory budgeting for Catalyst, with results presented at FC ’25 and ALGA ’25.
Internet Hydra-ted (IHT): IHT-1 developed a rollup-style protocol with design complete and a security proof due in 2025. IHT-2 delivered the first UC framework for multiparty state channels, with extensions for channel composition in progress. IHT-3 mapped mechanisms like fund rebalancing and routing, producing a roadmap for Hydra enhancements in 2026.
Interchains (IC): IC-1 delivered the first formal bridge security framework, alongside ZK advances on efficient Merkle openings (ICCCN ’25) and ongoing TEE bridge work. IC-3 introduced Cavefish, an ultra-efficient light client for UTxO chains. IC-4.1 advanced tokenomics for system launches (IJCAI ’25) with behavioral insights of investors vs gamblers (CRETE ’25). IC-4.2 progressed Jolteon formal verification (safety complete, liveness underway), developed a game-theoretic model of PoS incentives, and an anti-grinding paper (AsiaCrypt ‘25).
Core Zero-Knowledge (ZK): ZK-1 advanced foundational UC frameworks, with AGATE (CSF ’25) formalizing TEEs, UC-SNARKs with transparent wetup (Crypto ‘25) and a follow up paper on TEE-based ZK proof servers. Applied work improved Mithril via succinct aggregation (BLS, Merkle proofs), while post-quantum ZK efforts produced an SoK survey on lattice-based SNARKs and folding schemes to guide future research.
Communication and dissemination
IOR actively shares research to ensure transparency, collaboration, and impact across the Cardano ecosystem:
IOHK Channels: The IOHK website, YouTube, blog and social media provide a comprehensive library of papers, videos, and thought leadership. Notable posts covered consensus evolution, smart contract verification, cryptographic tools, Leios, airdrop games, SPO research frameworks, and Peras.
Cardano R&D Sessions: IOR relaunched its community engagement in June with monthly thematic discussions featuring invited guest speakers from the community. Highlights include Layer 2 Expansion – Beyond Hydra (June) on L2 protocol research, rollups, ZK bridges, and interoperability; Cardano Tokenomics (July) on incentives, pledge mechanics, stablecoins, and CIP-50 Rebirth; and Technology Validation (August) featuring Phalanx, Jolteon, RSnarks, Minotaur, Cavefish, and Committee Proofs.
Academic Conferences: In the first half of 2025, IOR presented research at major venues including FC ’25, FMBC ’25, CSF ’25, IJCAI ’25, ITC ’25, Crypto ’25, and others, contributing to blockchain science and advancing Cardano Vision’s goals.
