Resources

This page provides a collection of resources on Ouroboros Leios, including technical papers, presentations, and videos.

Technical documentation

• CIP-164: Ouroboros Leios - Greater transaction throughput - Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) about the concrete Leios protocol changes to Cardano.

• CPS-18: Greater transaction throughput - Cardano Problem Statement (CPS) summarizing why more throughput is needed on Cardano.

• High-Throughput Blockchain Consensus under Realistic Network Assumptions (August 2025, Crypto '25) — Sandro Coretti, Matthias Fitzi, Aggelos Kiayias, Giorgos Panagiotakos, and Alexander Russell - Research paper on which the Leios consensus upgrade for Cardano is based.

• Leios technical design and implementation plan – this technical design document connects the protocol-level specification (CIP-164) to its implementation in cardano-node, providing practical guidance on how to implement Leios reliably.

Formal specifications

• Linear Leios
• Network basic broadcast

Presentations and videos

• Monthly review videos – latest information and news on Leios Research and development progress

• Scaling Cardano with Leios – Professor Aggelos Kiayias, IO's chief scientist, explains Leios in the context of scaling Cardano

• Understanding Leios – Giorgos Panagiotakos, one of the paper's co-authors, provides a detailed explanation of the Leios protocol

• Leios overview slides – presentation by Sandro Coretti-Drayton providing insights into Leios.

Leios comparisons and analyses

• Leios scorecard comparison – how does Cardano’s Ouroboros Leios stack up against Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin? This scorecard compares throughput, fees, decentralization, and more.

• Leios use cases – discover how Ouroboros Leios, Cardano’s next-generation protocol, could enable unique use cases like global microtransactions, supply chain tracking, and more, outshining other blockchains.

• Leios node cost analysis – during the April 2025 status meeting, we shared early cost estimates for running Leios nodes. Here’s a straightforward breakdown of those figures, showing what it might cost to operate Leios compared to the current Praos protocol and the potential revenue from transaction fees.