Cardano’s development authority is fully delegated! Input Output (IO) hands over core infrastructure, driving complete decentralization

Cardano is taking a historic step toward “full decentralization.” According to CoinDesk, the founding company Input Output (IO) announced that starting in August it will gradually transfer core Cardano software components to external independent teams to manage. The move is intended to significantly reduce reliance on a single entity, and founder Charles Hoskinson said the network is facing “growing pains” and must reshape system confidence through the involvement of external expert teams.
(Backgrounder: 9 years of faith shattered! An old Cardano fan with “one million ADA” got hacked and ended up with everything wiped to zero; the official wallet SecondFi suffered a fatal vulnerability)
(Background add-on: The Cardano Foundation froze 1,090 BTC, and a well-known debt investor challenged it, demanding publication of fund flow details)

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• Core infrastructure fully handed over to two teams
• Facing brutal “growing pains,” with TVL and token price at a low point
• The final chapter of the Voltaire era, as IO focuses on research

In the fiercely competitive public-chain arena, Cardano is trying to break the current growth stalemate through thorough decentralization. On July 17, 2026 (Taipei time), according to overseas media CoinDesk, the founding company behind Cardano, Input Output (IO), announced a major strategic decision: starting in August this year, IO will gradually transfer control of core software components of the Cardano blockchain to external independent development teams.

Core infrastructure fully handed over to two teams

Under the plan, the scope of this handover includes Cardano’s core infrastructure, including the Haskell node, the Plutus smart contract platform, the Daedalus wallet, the Hydra scaling technology, and key components such as developer relations.

The external teams taking over the burden are no small players. They include Se7en Labs, a company specializing in Solana infrastructure development, as well as Teragone, a crypto research and software development team currently leading the development of the Cardano staking-based signature agreement (Mithril). The entire handover process is expected to begin in August and continue through 2027.

To ensure stability during the transition, Cardano will maintain at least three different implementation versions (including Haskell, Rust, and Go). These development processes will be overseen by community organizations such as Intersect and Pragma, and will be subject to the community’s strict review and voting. Before this, Cardano had already transferred protocol decision-making and governance power to the community; now it is further fully decentralizing the responsibility for software development and maintenance.

Facing brutal “growing pains,” with TVL and token price at a low point

Behind this large-scale reorganization is a reflection of the severe market challenges Cardano is facing. As of the time of publication, Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) is only about $70 million. Compared with competitors like Tron and Solana, whose TVL often exceeds $4 billion, there is a huge gap. At the same time, the ADA token price was hovering around $0.16 as of the time of publication. Compared with the $3.10 all-time high set in 2021, the drop is already approaching 95%.

For the predicament of network growth stalling, Cardano founder and IO CEO Charles Hoskinson has also recently been candid. He framed these issues as “growing pains” the network must go through, and believes it is urgent to bring in more professional teams to set goals and allocate resources.

The final chapter of the Voltaire era, as IO focuses on research

“Even Cardano must experience very uncomfortable growing pains,” Hoskinson emphasized, saying the network must change and regrow. “Bones have to break, growth spurts have to happen, exits and entries have to happen, failures have to happen, so that trust in the system can be established.”

He noted that this transfer of development rights symbolizes the last phase of Cardano’s development blueprint—full decentralization of nodes and development of reference blueprints. With core maintenance work handed over to the community and partners, IO will shift to focusing more on underlying research and explore new entrepreneurial initiatives through its IO Labs and IO Ventures.

Market analysis believes this will be the key test of whether independent teams can effectively maintain the software without causing slower development or coordination problems. If the transition goes smoothly, Cardano will be able to significantly reduce reliance on a single company, strengthen its decentralization characteristics, and lay the foundation for the next development stage.