Cardano (ADA) Roadmap for 2025 Revealed: What's Inside?

Cardano’s Plomin hard fork recently went live, introducing on-chain governance. The most significant change coming to Cardano with Plomin is the implementation of Delegate Representatives (dReps), who will vote on governance matters on behalf of ADA holders.

Previously, Cardano’s three founding entities — the Cardano Foundation, Input-Output (IO) and Emurgo — were responsible for governance changes and chain updates. Moving ahead, the keys held and responsibilities are transferred to new Cardano governance groups.

In his November 2024 whiteboard video, “After Voltaire, the next evolution of Cardano,” Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson proposed an input-output (IO) perspective on the next steps and reflected on the importance of the Cardano community’s input in shaping a comprehensive roadmap.

What’s inside Cardano’s roadmap?

Cardano builder Input Output’s vision for Cardano’s roadmap focuses on three defined pillars, which are scalability, usability and utility, and interoperability and extensibility.

Scalability

Cardano aspires to serve billions of users by 2030 by lowering the barriers to entry while maintaining decentralization, affordability and security. The integration of advanced scaling solutions will enable high transaction volumes, with a multi-faceted approach to achieving scalability goals through technologies such as layer-2 Hydra state channels, layer-2 rollups (zero-knowledge [ZK] and optimistic), Ouroboros Leios and Peras, Mithril certificates, data API services, local node services, Daedalus, Catalyst voting platform and Core node improvements.

Usability and utility

To achieve wider acceptance, blockchain technology must become more accessible for everyday use. Achieving this vision according to input-output requires native support for key functionalities: identity, privacy and regulatory compliance.

Key initiatives supporting the usability and utility pillar include improving developer productivity, enabling identity with Hyperledger Identus, enhancing privacy through Midnight and simplifying transactions via Babel fees.

Interoperability and extensibility

Extending Cardano’s capabilities will unlock its potential for interoperability.

The interoperability and extensibility pillar in the Cardano roadmap requires the following initiatives: Cardano adopting layered node architecture with microservices, partner chains utilizing multi-resource consensus with Minotaur, partner chains expanding extensibility through service layers, partner chains boosting cross-chain transactions via Hybrid dApps and Cardano as the smart contract layer for Bitcoin.

Plans for 2025 include evaluating merged mining and enabling Bitcoin users to interact with DeFi on Cardano and execute private transactions using Midnight.