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Cardano ecosystem leaders unite with 70M ada proposal to drive growth

Tuesday, December 02, 2025 — 16:50:30 (UTC)

Zug, Switzerland, December 2nd, 2025: In a powerful act of unity to accelerate growth, five key entities of the Cardano ecosystem – the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Input | Output (IO), the member-based organization Intersect, and the Midnight Foundation – have announced a historic, collaborative initiative to secure and fund critical integrations. This joint effort is specifically designed to overcome the primary infrastructure challenges that have constrained growth within the ecosystem.

The new initiative is directly targeting some of the ecosystem's most pressing infrastructure gaps: tier-one stablecoins, oracles, bridges, institutional digital asset custodians and wallet infrastructure and on-chain analytics platforms. Put to the community via a governance action on 27th November, it has achieved a 60%+ vote from the community via its delegated representatives (DReps), making this both the best received budget request to date, and the fastest approval in Cardano’s governance history.

The resulting infrastructure is fundamental to the next generation of on-chain activity, including high-growth sectors such as Decentralized Finance (Defi) Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) and Real World Assets (RWA). This unified and focused approach to funding these integrations is expected to reduce their overall cost and accelerate their delivery to ensure the Cardano network continues to have the foundational infrastructure it needs to thrive.

Unprecedented Investment and Unified Commitment Put to the community for consideration via a Governance Info action on 27 November, the proposed ₳70,000,000 withdrawal from the Cardano Treasury represents a strategic investment in future growth for Cardano, designed to provide the necessary tooling for a broader, more robust ecosystem that can support everything from core DeFi to DePIN and RWA.

"This is about putting aside historic differences and coming together for the greater good of the ecosystem," said IO CEO and Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson. "By focusing our resources on these five areas, we are addressing fundamental challenges that are impeding Cardano’s growth in one decisive move, laying the groundwork for a broader, more robust ecosystem that can support everything from core DeFi to DePIN and RWA."

“This collaborative approach marks an important moment in our ecosystem's history,” added Cardano Foundation CEO, Frederik Gregaard. ”Through our governance process and with community support, we are committed to acting as a unified team to implement these changes, and accelerate Cardano’s progress. We believe this proposal provides the foundational components necessary to secure large-scale enterprise and institutional adoption while advancing Cardano as a public Digital Trust Infrastructure “.

EMURGO CEO Phillip Pon added, "For Cardano and Midnight to capture the next wave of enterprise adoption, we must eliminate the friction points in our infrastructure. This is not just about funding; it is about strategically integrating the industry-standard bridges and stablecoins that institutions require. We are clearing the path for real-world assets to move seamlessly onto the chain."

“We recognize how essential robust, trusted infrastructure is to Cardano’s long-term success. We’ve looked across multiple ecosystems and assessed how the right integrations unlock liquidity, growth and innovation, and we want both Cardano and Midnight to benefit in the same way. We’re delighted to see the key Cardano constituents unite behind this vision and plan – we are fully committed to this effort and ensuring its success.” said Fahmi Syed, President of the Midnight Foundation.

Jack Briggs, interim Executive Director at Intersect, adds “Intersect was founded to help solve the most important challenges facing Cardano - together - as a member-based organization. This initiative is a direct expression of that mission. It is a big step forward that puts Cardano in a strong position for 2026 as we focus on utility and growth across the ecosystem. With the approval of our member majority-elected board, Intersect will act as administrator for the fund and ensure that, if the community approves it, contracting, accountability, and delivery are coordinated and the process remains open and verifiable.”

Guaranteeing Immediate Action Under Cardano’s governance frameworks, the Cardano community is required to vote on any proposal put forward for funding. While many headline terms have already been negotiated, for reasons of commercial sensitivity, further partnership details are not being disclosed at this time. However the first wave of pre-committed and high-impact integrations includes leading stablecoins, oracle services and one of the industry’s leading cross-chain bridges as well as infrastructure and analytics partnerships.

About:

Input | Output Input |Output (IO) is a world-leading blockchain infrastructure and research engineering firm dedicated to building a sustainable Web3 ecosystem. IO is committed to advancing the next generation of blockchain innovation, focusing on scalability, security, and real-world adoption through pioneering research and cutting-edge engineering. For more information, visit: iohk.io/

Midnight Foundation The Midnight Foundation is an organisation dedicated to advancing the development, adoption, and real-world impact of the Midnight network, a privacy-enhancing blockchain developed with Shielded Technologies. Designed for privacy-enabling smart contracts, Midnight leverages zero-knowledge proofs and a cooperative tokenomics architecture — with $NIGHT as the governance token and DUST as the utility resource — to deliver rational privacy, security, and decentralisation. More info: midnight.foundation

Intersect Intersect is a member-based organization tasked with ensuring the Cardano ecosystem's continuity and future development. Bringing members together behind a shared vision, Intersect enables a more resilient, secure, transparent, and innovative ecosystem that puts members in the driving seat of Cardano’s future. Find out more by visiting intersectmbo.org.

EMURGO EMURGO is a co-founding entity of the Cardano Blockchain that drives the commercial adoption of blockchain technology and asset tokenization. Through strategic investments, partnerships, and infrastructure development, EMURGO connects traditional finance and Web3, enabling trust, scalability, and the tokenization of real-world assets. To connect and learn more, visit emurgo.io.

Cardano Foundation The Cardano Foundation is an independent, Swiss-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing Cardano as a public digital infrastructure across industries. The Foundation develops infrastructure tooling, strengthens operational resilience, and drives real-world use cases and sound governance. For more information, visit cardanofoundation.org/

Press Queries: Georgia Hanias | Leslie Termulhen Head of PR, Input Output| Ecology Media georgia.hanias@iohk.io press@ecologymedia.co.uk +44 (0) 7812 211 403 Georgia Hanias | Founder and CEO Ecology Media | Phone (UK): +44 7812 211 403 | Email: georgiahanias@ecologymedia.co.uk | Web: www.ecologymedia.co.uk

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Announcement