cardano

Cardano has joined the official x402 software development kit, allowing developers to enable applications or AI agents to use ADA or Cardano network tokens to pay for online services. x402 transforms the basic idle "402 Payment Required" response in web pages into a checkout process built into internet requests: the service provider returns the price and payment instructions, the agent signs the payment, and after transaction verification, the required data or computing power can be obtained.This means that AI agents can purchase individual datasets on demand when preparing reports, without the need for manual account registration, entering credit card information, or subscribing to monthly fees. x402 was created by Coinbase in 2025 and subsequently contributed to an organization under the Linux Foundation, with members including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, and Amazon Web Services. Solana, XRP Ledger, and several Ethereum-compatible networks have previously supported this standard.Engineers from the Cardano Foundation have built client and server software for payment requests based on the specifications passed in June, as well as a facilitator responsible for verifying and submitting transactions. The first version supports TypeScript, with Python support planned for later release. Facilitator documentation shows that it has completed a real transaction on the Cardano pre-production network, but it has not yet run on the mainnet, nor has it demonstrated scenarios where agents use ADA to pay for commercial services on a large scale.

The Cardano development company Input Output Group (IOG) issued a warning on its official X account, urging users to temporarily avoid interacting with its YouTube channel. The channel began streaming a video of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson that is suspected to have been altered by AI, discussing a cryptocurrency giveaway event, and by the time of the report, the stream had been ongoing for nearly two hours.It is reported that the live stream encourages viewers to scan a QR code and promises to "double their wealth." IOG stated in the warning, "Please avoid interacting with the IO Group YouTube channel until further notice," and advised users not to click on links in the channel, not to transfer funds, or share personal information.

According to Crypto.news, Cardano governance company Intersect has updated its roadmap, dividing the Dijkstra upgrade into two phases: the first phase will go live in Q4 2026, including the Linear Leios scaling solution, nested transactions, new serialization structures, and PlutusV4 changes; the second phase will activate the Ouroboros Peras consensus protocol through a separate hard fork, with a target date of Q2 2027.Linear Leios introduces an endorsement block mechanism, where additional transactions are certified by the stake committee to enhance throughput while retaining the existing Praos security model. Additionally, Cardano plans to submit an amendment to add Dijkstra-related parameters by September 11. The Rust node client Amaru has already acquired relay and chain synchronization capabilities, with a mainnet block production target set for November 2026. Intersect emphasizes that the above timelines are estimates rather than commitments, and governance and community testing may lead to delays in activation.

According to The Block, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that quantum computing could pose a significant challenge to Bitcoin's governance capabilities. If the Bitcoin network cannot coordinate the necessary upgrades, BTC may lose its status as the largest cryptocurrency asset globally.Hoskinson mentioned that the problem with Bitcoin is that it is "frozen in time," making any changes very difficult. He believes that the early disappointment with Bitcoin's lack of flexibility was one of the reasons that led to the birth of Ethereum.

Midnight Foundation posted on platform X that the Wanchain Cardano BNB cross-chain bridge has experienced a security attack. Currently, several major exchanges, including KuCoin, Kraken, Binance, Bybit, OKX, and MEXC, have quickly responded by taking preventive measures to restrict the flow of stolen assets, including freezing related accounts and addresses, blacklisting the attacker’s wallet, and suspending the deposit and withdrawal services for the NIGHT token.Exchanges have confirmed that this incident is an isolated third-party bridging vulnerability and is unrelated to the Midnight Network mainnet and the NIGHT asset itself.

According to CoinDesk, the Cardano mainnet completed the "Van Rossem" hard fork on July 18, upgrading the protocol version to 11, primarily reducing the cost of smart contract execution and paving the way for subsequent scaling solutions.This upgrade was the first to be fully proposed, discussed, and voted on by the community through the on-chain governance process, rather than being directly led by the founding development company Input Output. On-chain data shows that the voting support rate was approximately 78.97%, all 7 members of the Constitutional Committee confirmed that the proposal complied with the "Cardano Constitution," about 53.02% of node operators voted in favor, and over approximately 93% of block production pledges have run the new version of the node.This upgrade prepares technically and procedurally for the scaling solution Ouroboros Leios, which is planned to go live in 2026.

On July 18, 2026, at 21:44:51 UTC, Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork, upgrading the network to protocol version 11, with no reported downtime. This upgrade is part of the changes within the Conway ledger era, aimed at reducing the operating costs of Plutus smart contracts, enhancing ledger security, and introducing new cryptographic tools.Van Rossem includes 5 Cardano Improvement Proposals, involving BLS12-381 multi-scalar multiplication, on-chain array types, optimization of multi-asset value processing, acceleration of list operations, and built-in modular exponentiation. Staking pools are now prohibited from reusing the same verifiable random function key across the entire network; each pool must hold a unique key bound to its identity.This upgrade was completed through the Cardano on-chain governance process, with the proposal to activation advanced by on-chain voting. Delegated representatives passed the proposal with a support rate of 77.63%, while the support rate among staking pool operators was 52.7%, and the constitutional committee's voting result was 6-0-0-1. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA saw their total balance rise to the highest level since 2023, currently controlling over a quarter of the circulating supply of ADA. Cardano will subsequently advance Ouroboros Leios and plans to achieve a target of over 1,000 transactions per second during the testing period in 2026.

The Cardano development company Input Output will transfer control of key blockchain components such as Haskell nodes, the Plutus platform, and the Daedalus wallet to external professional teams starting in August, as part of a multi-year decentralization initiative. Independent companies like Se7en Labs and Teragone will be responsible for some core infrastructure.At least three implementations of Cardano will be maintained in Haskell, Rust, and Go languages, and will be subject to community oversight and formal specification management. Cardano is currently facing weak network activity and a significant drop in the price of the ADA token. Founder Charles Hoskinson has defined this restructuring and the related setbacks in the ecosystem as necessary "growing pains" on the path to complete decentralization.

The governance company of Cardano, Intersect, stated on the X platform that EMURGO is unable to allocate the necessary resources to execute the Token2049 event due to its recent focus on handling the SecondFi security incident. After discussions among three parties, the responsibility for the event has officially been transferred to the Cardano Foundation.EMURGO submitted a transfer request to Intersect, which received agreement from all parties after discussions with the Cardano Foundation. Intersect stated that this decision was based on the urgency of the event timeline and the need to avoid delivery uncertainties. The Cardano Foundation has agreed to deliver the event within the approved scope, and both EMURGO and Intersect recognize its past execution capabilities. The delivery work for Token2049 has now officially been handed over, and the event is still scheduled to take place in October.Previously, in June, it was reported that SecondFi disclosed a security incident affecting approximately 16 million ADA (around 2.42 million USD at the time); however, SlowMist indicated that user losses from SecondFi could exceed 20 million USD.

The founding entity of Cardano, EMURGO, stated on Monday that the wallet service SecondFi, which was hacked, will not resume normal operations even after a security audit is completed, and requires all users to migrate their assets through the official recovery process. SecondFi is a rebranded version of the Yoroi wallet, which EMURGO claims is the largest wallet provider for Cardano.According to EMURGO's incident report on June 25, the service suffered four independent wallet theft incidents on June 22, with 374 addresses compromised and approximately 16 million ADA (worth about 2.4 million USD at the time) stolen. The team also managed to secure approximately 129 million ADA through emergency measures.EMURGO stated that the compromised wallets should be considered permanently exposed at the address and private key level, and restoring the compromised mnemonic phrases to other wallets does not eliminate the risk. EMURGO plans to launch an isolated wallet status check tool this week, followed by providing a secure export tool and an offline migration workshop in Tokyo, and is building a special repair fund for on-chain recovery systems, which will return assets to affected users after external audits are completed.

Cardano wallet service provider SecondFi released the latest update on the theft incident, stating that the team has completed the final balance snapshot of affected users' assets. Previously, multiple snapshots were continuously recorded during the incident response as a basis for subsequent asset recovery and verification.SecondFi stated that the engineering and security teams are advancing the asset recovery plan, with the expectation that asset returns could begin in about two weeks. One week will be used to reach a feasible technical solution, and one week will be used for testing and review, with specific timing potentially adjusted as progress is made. The platform will resume operations only after passing a comprehensive security review. Currently, users only need to submit support requests through the official website ticketing system, with no additional actions required.

Regarding the recent security incident of the Cardano ecosystem project SecondFi, Slow Mist founder Yu Xian stated: "I am actually quite unfamiliar with the Cardano ecosystem. I observed for a whole night, but if the addresses starting with addr1q are both hacker addresses (which they should be based on behavior), the losses for SecondFi users should exceed 20 million dollars (over 129 million ADA and other tokens stolen)."Previously, it was reported that SecondFi disclosed that the security incident affected approximately 16 million ADA, with the issue originating from the web wallet generation software.

SecondFi posted on platform X that the team discovered security issues with a small number of Cardano wallets on the platform. The issue has been contained and affected features have been suspended, while the engineering team is actively working to restore all platform functionalities. To protect users, SecondFi has temporarily entered maintenance mode, and all front-end interactions have been suspended.

On May 29, CME included Cardano futures in 24/7 trading, and ADA subsequently joined the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index on June 8, alongside BTC, ETH, XRP, and Solana. However, ADA has fallen 37% over the past month to about $0.17, marking its lowest level since 2021. Issues at the ecological level continue to worsen: the analytics platform TapTools, which serves over a million users, has shut down due to the departure of key executives; the 2026 Singapore summit has been canceled because the governance vote did not reach the two-thirds absolute majority threshold of 66.67%, with a support rate of 65.21%; founder Charles Hoskinson warned that more DeFi projects will fail in the second half of 2026.According to DefiLlama data, the Cardano DeFi ecosystem's TVL has dropped from about $905 million at the end of 2024 to currently less than $140 million, a decrease of 85%. The only node worth paying attention to is the launch of the Ouroboros Leios testnet on June 23, which focuses on speed and throughput, with the mainnet deployment target set for the end of 2026.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that he has communicated with Phillip Pon and is planning to create a Discord to facilitate the migration of the Cardano community from X.Charles Hoskinson mentioned that he will continue to livestream on X in the future, but the Q&A session will only accept questions from the new Cardano Discord and the existing Midnight Discord. He stated that this move aims to provide the community with a better-managed and more positive communication space to foster genuine dialogue and drive real progress.

Notable cryptocurrency bankruptcy creditor Thomas Braziel (@Bkclaims) disclosed that the original documents collected from the Isle of Man show that the earliest structure of the Cardano Foundation involved Charles Hoskinson, Jeremy Wood, Ken Kodama, and others. Subsequent documents indicate that Hoskinson served as the "Enforcer" of the foundation— a key position responsible for ensuring that the foundation's board acted in accordance with its charter.It is worth noting that Cardano's initial coin issuance began as early as September 2015, while the Swiss Cardano Foundation was not officially established until September 2016. During this period, the terms of service and risk disclosures listed the "foundation" as the issuer or supporter. Additionally, historical records of the Swiss Cardano Foundation also confirm the existence of the predecessor foundation in the Isle of Man and show that it received approximately 1,090 BTC.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that he will "take a break" after warning that the ecosystem will face "a wave of failures." As a result of his remarks, ADA fell below $0.20 for the first time in over five years, with a cumulative decline of nearly 70% over the past year, and further dropped about 10% after the news was announced.Hoskinson's comments come as the Cardano ecosystem faces a series of setbacks. The Cardano data analysis platform TapTools, which has been operating for four years, announced it would cease operations, while the community previously voted against using treasury funds to support ecosystem development, leading to the cancellation of the Cardano 2026 summit originally scheduled to be held in Singapore. Hoskinson stated that he had warned earlier this year that the prolonged sluggish market environment would lead to the collapse of some projects, resulting in "a large number of failures" in the Cardano ecosystem. He also expressed disappointment at the community's lack of willingness to use treasury funds to promote ecosystem development. On the X platform, Hoskinson briefly posted: "I'm taking a break. TTYL."

According to The Block, regarding the gradual shutdown of the Cardano ecosystem data analysis and infrastructure platform TapTools, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded that TapTools is another loss in the ecosystem following JPG Store, and warned of a potential "wave of failures," expecting more projects to shut down, DeFi operations to cease, and industry consolidation in the second half of the year.He stated that some older projects no longer have investment value, resources to support struggling projects are limited, and he lacks direct control over ecosystem funding decisions and treasury allocation.

According to The Block, the Cardano Foundation stated that the Cardano 2026 summit, originally scheduled for this year, has been officially canceled due to the on-chain governance vote not reaching the required two-thirds support threshold.Previously, the Cardano Foundation submitted a revised proposal requesting the treasury to allocate 7.8 million ADA (approximately 2 million USD) for the summit to be held in October in Singapore. Although the proposal received a 65.21% DRep staking support rate and a majority of representatives in favor, it did not meet the 66.67% approval threshold required for treasury funding proposals.Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard publicly called for support for the proposal before the voting deadline, but it ultimately did not pass.

According to AdaStat data, the Cardano Developer Experience Initiative has been officially approved through treasury voting. The proposal for treasury withdrawal requests related to developer tools and onboarding received 67.90% of the votes in favor, with approximately 3.72 billion ADA voting in support, while the opposition accounted for about 1.76 billion ADA, resulting in an opposition rate of 32.10%.The proposal is supported by IO Global, and following the approval of the vote, the related ecological development work will officially advance. This governance vote coincides with Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson publicly focusing on advancing ADA and the privacy blockchain platform Midnight.