Cardano is preparing a layer-1 upgrade that it says will push mainnet throughput from about 10-15 transactions per second to hundreds, while keeping the network’s isolation and security profile the same. At a public event in Tokyo on the Midnight Japan Tour, Input Output’s Michael Smolenski and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pitched Ouroboros Leios as a stepping stone to broader consensus success.
Smolenski, Cardano Core product manager at Input Output, told attendees that Leios “advanced to layer 1 to make Cardano faster,” with active development underway and a targeted release “this year in 2026.” He described the current roof as suitable to prove the design of Ouroboros, but not enough for the next stage of acceptance and economic of shareholders (SPOs).
Cardano’s Leos Eyes 50x Speed Boost in 2026
“Until now, the speed of the network is there […] 10 to 15 transactions per second,” said Smolenski. “But now we need to move to higher performance to compete and drive adoption. Another factor, SPOs, in the long run need to support their operating costs from transaction costs instead of block rewards. […] they need to see about 50 network usage per second. “
The initial release of the Leios mainnet was billed as a “50-times improvement,” with Smolenski translating that to an early move from about 10 TPS to about 500 TPS. Rather than stick to transactions per second as the headline metric, he emphasized “transaction kilobytes per second” to account for various transaction sizes, calling the target “300 transaction kilobytes per second” and a confirmation window “between 20 to 80 seconds,” based on prototype results.
Smolenski described Leios as Cardano’s “next-generation consensus protocol,” built around additional block types. “There is a new block. It is called the endorser block,” he said, adding that the existing blocks will be called “ranking blocks.” The practical effect, in his telling, is the ability to “pack a lot of things” by assembling them into positive blocks, as well as other prepositioning instruments that he did not explain on stage.
He also emphasized that scaling will be increased to avoid overloading the operator nodes. The team plans to demonstrate peak performance in steps, first targeting 500 TPS on the mainnet, then proving 1,000 TPS in the near term, with a final goal of 10,000 TPS. “We can’t just leave where we are […] and increase to 10,000 transactions per second because this needs to be done strategically,” said Smolenski, repeatedly pointing to the need to “bring the SPOs with us.”
On the timeline, he said the first public testnet for Leios is targeted for “the end of Q2 this year,” before the mainnet hard fork.
Hoskinson: ‘Not just TPS’ But the Trilemma
Hoskinson expanded the scope, positioning Leios as the result of a decade of research and engineering pipeline. “Ouroboros Leios did not start in 2026 […] “Leios actually started in 2016, 10 years ago,” he said, describing “more than a dozen papers,” “numerous agreements,” and contributions involving “more than 15 engineering firms” and “168 scientists over a 10-year period.”
“Why Leios is special is not TPS,” Hoskinson said. “It is actually a solution to the most difficult problem of consensus and blockchain, the blockchain trilemma […] you have separation, you have security, and you have ascension […] we are told that you can only choose two.” He then made a central claim: “This legal process is decentralized, secure, and fast.”
Notably, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin also claimed that the blockchain trilemma has been successfully resolved, a comment he made a few weeks ago.
Hoskinson also pointed out that the design was designed to destroy safely. “If the law fails, the protocol fails in what we have today. It falls on Ouroboros Praos,” he said, referring to a previous incident in the network that he described as a soft fork in which “Cardano split into two networks” and later “back together on its own.”
In the same words, Hoskinson repeatedly returned to the power of dominance as a long-term benefit, suggesting that pure technological differences are passing. He pointed to Cardano’s on-chain dominance and treasury – “a billion dollars in it […] that you are in control […] ADA owners,” he said — as a way to support development and coordinate changes over time.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.2638.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
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