Charles Hoskinson pushed back this week against critics who say Cardano has prioritized governance over scaling, arguing that the two are inseparable. The Input Output CEO spoke as the organization submitted nine treasury proposals for community review, part of a $46.8 million funding request tied to Cardano's 2030 vision. The figure is nearly half the $97.5 million sought last year.
The governance-scaling debate
Hoskinson didn't mince words. He claimed Cardano now has the best scaling strategy in crypto — but insisted that path ran through governance first. "Voltaire was a prerequisite," he said, referring to the on-chain voting system that lets ADA holders decide protocol upgrades. Without it, he argued, deploying major scaling changes would have been riskier and slower.
He used Bitcoin's ongoing post-quantum debate as a case in point. Cardano's governance, he said, lets the community resolve contentious technical issues without splitting authority. The alternative? He warned against a fragmented voting outcome on the treasury proposals, comparing it to an "iPhone by committee."
What's in the treasury package
The nine proposals center on scalability and decentralization. At the top of the list: Leios, a new consensus layer expected to hit testnet soon, with a mainnet target by the end of 2026. Peras, another layer-1 improvement, is also in the mix. The package includes production hardening for Hydra, Cardano's existing layer-2 solution, plus a planned Midgard mainnet launch. Shared L2-agnostic primitives round out the developer tooling section.
The $46.8 million ask covers all of it. It's a leaner budget than last year's, but Hoskinson framed it as focused: the technical agenda centers on what he calls "years of continuous research" finally hitting the deployment stage.
Where ADA stands
ADA traded at $0.2528 at press time. The token hasn't moved much on the news — the market's attention is split between the treasury vote and broader macro headwinds. But the proposals will go through a formal community vote in the coming weeks, and the outcome will determine how quickly Input Output can execute on the 2026 roadmap.
What happens next
The Leios testnet is the next concrete milestone. Mainnet is slated for year-end, but that timeline depends on the treasury vote passing cleanly. Hoskinson's warning about a fragmented result wasn't subtle — he needs a united community to keep the scaling push on track. The vote opens soon.
