Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, recently shared some details about the upcoming ‘Ouroboros Leios’ protocol during his livestream yesterday.
Hoskinson explained that the upgrade can potentially render Cardano substantially faster, up to 11,000 transactions per second (TPS). He also said it can provide “an infinitely scalable protocol” that will grow without affecting the system’s security or performance.
Leios is built to allow the blockchain to grow continuously while maintaining Cardano’s decentralization and security features. Hoskinson shared a graph showing how Leios could reach 11,000 TPS with different “input-block” configurations. He demonstrated how adding more input blocks in parallel before each ranking block could boost the network’s throughput.
In his words, “With just that one input block, you can see that maximum is about 6 TPS.” Moreover, he explained that increasing the input blocks can raise it to 11,000 TPS.
Leios is different from other blockchain platforms in the sense that it will not be a standalone. It will be built over Cardano’s current proof-of-stake ledger, which will keep the network’s features intact. “It can collapse back down to the current protocol should any unforeseen fault occur,” Hoskinson explained.
As part of the Leios Research agenda, Hoskinson has also tweeted on X about the creation of a testnet to run the protocol at the fastest speeds. He said, “We’ll populate it with thousands of AI agents to trade amongst each other. Any Cardano DApps want to sign up to deploy on Face Melting Net? FMN.”
Hoskinson also noted that the Leios upgrade is a huge change that will affect nearly every part of the Cardano blockchain. The update will impact the ledger, consensus rules, cryptography, and other key components of the network.
He mentioned that implementing these changes could take between nine to twelve months. “It typically takes about nine months to twelve months of implementation effort from a SIP to bring this into the protocol,” he said. However, even with all these complex changes, Hoskinson is confident in Cardano’s ability to stay ahead of the curve.
Leios will launch alongside several Layer-2 solutions, such as Hydra and Mithril. The founder concluded by saying “Leios is the crowning achievement of ten-plus years of careful thought, research, and engineering.” If everything goes as planned, the network’s stakeholders could vote on the Leios Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) in early 2026.
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