Cardano Treasury Vote Enters Final Hours as Leios Gains Strong Support and L2 Proposal Faces Pressure

Cardano’s treasury vote is entering its final hours with a clear split between proposals that have strong DRep support and those still facing resistance. IO: Consensus Initiative, the proposal that includes Ouroboros Leios, appears to be in a much stronger position than IO & Midgard Labs: L2 Scalability Initiative, one of the most debated proposals in this voting round.

The vote closes on May 24, 2026, and the decision is not only about short term funding for individual teams. It will influence how quickly Cardano can connect higher L1 capacity, layer 2 infrastructure, smart contracts and developer experience into a more functional roadmap for the next three years.

Cardano Governance Weighs Ten IO Treasury Proposals

Input Output has presented ten treasury proposals for the 2026 governance cycle, covering consensus scaling, smart contract improvements, developer tooling, platform upgrades, layer 2 infrastructure, formal verification, fee innovation and ongoing maintenance. Cardano governance is therefore not voting on a single isolated upgrade, but on a wider set of decisions that could shape the technical direction of the network after Voltaire.

The proposals cover different layers of Cardano’s infrastructure. IO: Consensus Initiative includes Leios and L1 scaling. IO: Cardano Upgrades covers account address upgrades, multi asset treasury, Babel Fees and micro fees. IO & Sundae Labs: Enhancing Plutus focuses on performance, safety, formal specification and better tooling for Cardano smart contract development. IO Engineering: Developer Experience targets documentation, SDK tooling, error handling and a shorter path from first idea to production ready DApp.

That is why the final stage of the vote carries more weight than a simple Yes or No count. Cardano is deciding on the base protocol, the application layer, the L2 roadmap and the developer path in the same governance cycle. That combination makes this vote an important test of how the treasury will fund long term infrastructure.

Leios Gains Support as L2 Scalability Tests Trust

IO: Consensus Initiative carries the heaviest technical weight in the portfolio because it includes Leios, Cardano’s primary L1 scaling direction. Leios is designed as a consensus level improvement that aims to increase network capacity while preserving Cardano’s security and decentralization model. Public descriptions of the proposal point toward a testnet phase during 2026 and mainnet readiness by the end of the year.

Support for Leios shows that DReps recognize the need to strengthen the base protocol. Higher L1 capacity becomes an important requirement if Cardano is to support larger DeFi volume, real world asset applications, payment use cases and more complex user flows. Leios is therefore not only another technical task, but an attempt to prepare the network’s base throughput for more demanding applications.

The L2 Scalability proposal is in a more difficult position. Its technical importance is clear, because Hydra and Midgard address different but complementary needs. Hydra is designed for known participants, high frequency use cases and state channel environments, while Midgard is positioned as a permissionless optimistic rollup for more open applications. Together, they are meant to give Cardano a broader L2 answer for applications that need higher throughput, lower latency and a more flexible execution layer.

The resistance is less about whether Cardano needs L2 scalability and more about how this specific package is being funded. Some DReps have raised concerns that Hydra and Midgard are bundled into one proposal, that previous funding rounds have not been explained with enough clarity, and that the new request does not separate deliverables sharply enough for voters to judge execution risk. That distinction matters. The debate is no longer only about technical ambition, but about whether Cardano’s treasury should approve complex infrastructure work without stronger reporting, clearer milestones and more direct accountability.

What Rejected Proposals Could Mean for Cardano by 2029

If Leios continues toward approval, Cardano receives a strong signal of support for L1 scaling. That would give the network a clearer path toward higher throughput and better preparation for future application growth. But Leios alone does not complete Cardano’s scaling story. A faster base layer becomes most valuable when it is matched with layer 2 infrastructure, cheaper and safer smart contract execution, and a developer experience that helps new teams reach production faster.

That is why the status of L2 Scalability, Plutus and Developer Experience matters beyond today’s vote. If the L2 proposal does not receive support, Hydra and Midgard will not disappear, but their next phase could become slower, more fragmented or dependent on a redesigned funding request. The larger risk is not that Cardano loses its L2 direction overnight. The risk is that L1 scaling moves ahead while the application execution layer, where users, liquidity and high frequency use cases actually live, remains behind the protocol roadmap.

The same pressure applies to Plutus and Developer Experience. If Plutus progresses more slowly, complex Cardano applications may remain more expensive to build, harder to audit and more demanding to optimize. If developer experience remains fragmented, Cardano can have a strong technical base but a weaker onboarding path for new builders. In a market where developers compare ecosystems by documentation, tooling, deployment speed and available integrations, that gap can become a competitive problem before it becomes a technical one.

This vote is therefore not only deciding which proposals receive treasury funding. It is testing whether Cardano governance can separate strategically important ideas from proposals that need stronger structure, clearer reporting and more direct accountability. If Leios gains support while L2 remains under pressure, the final message of the vote will be precise: the Cardano community wants scaling, but it is no longer willing to treat every scaling proposal as automatically fundable just because the destination is important.