Cardano Leios Benchmark Reaches Stake Pool Operators

Cardano stake pool operators have received a standalone transaction validation benchmark, the Performance & Tracing team reported on September 30, 2026. The executable supports hardware testing as developers prepare Ouroboros Leios, a proposed upgrade to Cardano’s transaction processing capacity.

What the Cardano Leios Benchmark Measures

Leios introduces additional blocks referencing transactions alongside the existing Praos chain. A committee verifies these blocks before their transactions enter the ledger, expanding the amount of transaction data the network can process.

The benchmark examines the ledger component, including transaction validation and state updates. Transaction and block propagation across a live network are outside its scope.

Operators can run the delivered executable without Nix or a Haskell development environment. The team is seeking measurements from different hardware configurations, particularly those using the on-disk implementation of LedgerDB.

Why Disk Performance Matters for Leios

LedgerDB manages the state needed to process transactions, including unspent transaction outputs, or UTxOs. With that data stored on disk, retrieving it adds storage access to the work performed by the processor.

A machine’s performance can therefore depend on its SSD, storage connection, operating system kernel, file system, and mount settings.

The beacon benchmarking tool includes an option to bypass the operating system’s page cache, forcing the test to access storage directly. This lets developers examine disk costs that could otherwise be hidden by data held in RAM.

Its measurements include total elapsed time, time spent reading UTxO tables, peak memory use, and disk I/O activity. Together, those metrics describe both processing time and the resources used during a run.

Hardware Reports and the Public Glue Build

Public development work on glue documents a wrapper that downloads a chain fragment, runs four benchmark configurations, and assembles a ZIP containing results, machine information, and analyzer build details. Linux builds cover x86_64 and ARM64. The workflow downloads approximately 800 MiB and requires about 2.5 GiB of free disk space.

The public nightly is a hardware-testing prerelease built from unreviewed draft code. Its release notes distinguish it from the SPO deliverable. The September 30 update does not identify the version sent to operators.

Ahead of a Leios release candidate, the team is also testing automation on a performance cluster. The report says these runs prepare the infrastructure and will not produce representative Leios performance figures. The September 30 update publishes neither operator measurements nor minimum hardware requirements for running Leios.