Executive Summary
WP25 launches Cardano Vision—a five-year program advancing 20+ research and six technology validation streams to tackle core challenges like scalability, interoperability, governance, and security. Made possible by the Cardano community’s support, this Mid-Year Report shares milestones, early findings, and next steps, highlighting IOR’s commitment to world-class research and transparent engagement despite the challenges of working at risk.
Evidence-Based methodology
IOR applies an evidence-based methodology built on peer-reviewed science, formal specification, and iterative refinement to ensure designs move from theory to secure, real-world implementation. Progress follows Software Readiness Levels (SRLs):
-
Fundamental Research (SRL 1–2): formalizing ideas and proofs, 3–5 years to market
-
Technology Validation (SRL 3–5): prototyping, validating and specs, 1.5–3 years
-
Targeted Implementation (SRL 5+): guiding engineering into production, 0–18 months
This structured funnel is expected to deliver 100+ research outputs over five years, with ~30 advancing toward validation and deployment.
Technology Validation
Technology Validation bridges research and deployment, turning early concepts into implementation-ready designs through rapid prototyping, simulations, and formal verification. Workstreams deliver specifications, benchmarks, and CIPs to guide adoption, while rigorous tooling and testing ensure alignment with formal models and real-world needs.
-
Formal Verification: Executable specs prove safety, liveness, and correctness while enabling continuous testing.
-
Prototypes & Simulations: To validate feasibility, performance, and risks.
-
Specifications & CIPs: To define designs, guide implementation, and ensure community alignment.
-
Tooling: Haskell, Rust, Agda, Lean, and custom tools for formalization, simulation, and testing.
Typically running 6–12 months, these projects reduce risk, validate feasibility, and provide confidence for Testnet and Mainnet integration—ensuring only the most promising innovations advance while maintaining Cardano’s high standards of security and quality.
Impact and outputs
In 2025, seven Technology Validation streams are delivering major advances in translating research into practical, implementation-ready solutions.
-
TV-1 Leios progressed toward deployment with refined simulators, a 1,000-node prototype, and a cost model comparing SPO resource use, supported by an executable specification and conformance platform, with CIP handover expected in Q3 2025.
-
TV-2 Anti-grinding (Phalanx) formalized randomness attacks, designed a Praos-compatible defense raising adversarial costs, and delivered a prototype and CIP now under community review.
-
TV-3 Jolteon liveness produced a TRL4 Substrate prototype and advanced formal proofs of safety and liveness, complemented by trace-based verification to align implementation with specifications.
-
Tv-4 RSnarks achieved on-chain Halo2 proof verification, demonstrated recursive proof feasibility via multi-transaction splits, secured a CIP introducing MSM for performance gains, and formally verified foreign-field arithmetic in EasyCrypt.
-
Tv-5 Proof of Restake (Minotaur) reached SRL4 with a Rust library, specs, simulations, and a Jolteon-integrated PoC, while work on final protocol design and formalization continues.
-
TV-6 Light Clients (Cavefish) entered its inception phase, refining objectives for a trust-minimized protocol and exploring blind signatures for enhanced privacy.
-
TV-7 Committee Proofs (proposed) began discovery alongside its recommendation to the community, with planning investigating a Plutus verifier, committee-tracking contract, and formal specification for secure cross-chain committee rotation.
Together, these outputs form a strong pipeline of innovations to strengthen Cardano’s scalability, security, and interoperability while creating clear pathways from research to production.
Communication and dissemination
R&D Innovation prioritizes transparency by sharing progress from early prototypes to formal handovers, using tailored approaches per stream. Dissemination spans GitHub, blogs, forums, R&D sessions, and social media—balancing visibility with quality to engage the community and reinforce Cardano’s evidence-based innovation.