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Strategy

This document lays out the vision, mission and strategy which we follow to build our roadmap to the Leios consensus upgrade for Cardano. While this is covers the why we are doing this, how we aim to succeed, the roadmap is about what we plan to do.

Vision & Mission​

Leios supports Cardano’s vision to be recognized as the best-in-class blockchain, renowned for performance, reliability, and scalability.

Our mission is to drive greater adoption of the Cardano network by building a blockchain that is:

  • Scalable and reliable, enabling innovation and sustainable growth for developers, businesses, and communities.

  • Economically sustainable, ensuring long-term viability and trust, so that projects choose Cardano as the natural home for decentralized applications and enterprise solutions.

This mission positions Leios as the engine powering Cardano’s global impact.

Strategy​

To fulfil our mission, Leios will pursue a strategy built on three pillars:

  • Technical leadership

    We will continuously advance Cardano’s core protocol and supporting infrastructure to deliver world-class performance. This means investing in innovations that raise transaction throughput, reduce latency, and strengthen network resilience. By setting the technical benchmark in both research and implementation, Leios will ensure Cardano remains at the forefront of blockchain platforms.

  • Market repositioning

    Beyond technical progress, we will reposition Cardano in the marketplace as a blockchain capable of handling the most demanding use cases. By publishing transparent benchmarks, compelling visualizations, and a clear roadmap of improvements, we can shift perceptions about scalability and reliability. This narrative will attract developers, businesses, and enterprises looking for a secure and future-proof platform.

  • Sustainable decentralization

    Scaling the network must not come at the cost of centralization. Our strategy ensures throughput grows while hardware requirements remain reasonable, so that Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) can remain profitable and engaged. By keeping operational costs sustainable relative to on-chain revenues, we preserve one of Cardano’s greatest strengths—its unmatched decentralization. A healthy, diverse SPO ecosystem guarantees resilience, fairness, and long-term trust.

Principles​

These are the guiding principles we aim to uphold while executing our strategy, ensuring that our actions align with both our mission and the expectations of the Cardano community.

  • Validate early

    Because Leios is pioneering novel work, it is essential that ideas and technical approaches are tested and validated as early as possible. This reduces risk, encourages experimentation, and ensures that what we build is not only theoretically sound but also practically viable. Early validation allows the community and stakeholders to give feedback before changes become costly or disruptive, and gives us the opportunity to validate assumptions as early as possible in case the design needs to be adjusted, underlying architectures revised, or implementations adapted.

  • Continuously deliver

    Progress must be visible and tangible. By continuously delivering value to the community—whether through incremental improvements, new features, marketing content, or learning materials as Leios develops—we build trust and momentum. Frequent delivery demonstrates accountability, keeps developers and the community engaged, and ensures Cardano evolves in step with real user needs.

  • Transparency to ensure acceptance

    For decentralized governance to flourish, transparency must be at the core of everything we do. Sharing decisions, rationale, data, and results openly not only builds credibility but also empowers the community to participate meaningfully in governance. Clear communication and openness transform stakeholders into active collaborators, ensuring broad acceptance of Leios as a foundation for Cardano’s future.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)​

To measure the success of Leios and ensure alignment with our mission, we will track a set of technically rigorous KPIs across performance, efficiency, security, adoption, cost, and scalability. These indicators provide objective evidence of improvements and maintain transparency with the Cardano community, developers, and stakeholders.

Throughput and Performance​

  • Transaction Data Throughput (TxB/s): The volume of transaction data (in bytes) successfully processed and added to the ledger per second. This metric provides a more accurate measure of system capacity than raw TPS, as Cardano’s eUTXO model allows transactions to vary in complexity and size.

  • Script Throughput: The aggregate amount of computation performed on transactions, measured by total script execution units processed per second.

  • Inclusion Latency: Average time for a transaction to be included in the ledger under both high-demand and low-demand conditions.

  • Block Propagation Time: Duration required for new blocks to be propagated across the network.

  • Transaction Finalization Time: Time until transactions are considered finalized and economically irreversible.

Network Efficiency​

  • Resource Utilization: Reduction in computational and bandwidth overhead per transaction.

  • Synchronization Speed: Time required for a new node to fully synchronize with the current blockchain state.

  • Endorser Efficiency: Percentage of transactions endorsed prior to block inclusion.

Security and Decentralization​

  • Network Participation: Number of active nodes engaged in endorsement and block production.

  • Consensus Integrity: Preservation of Ouroboros Praos/Genesis-level security guarantees.

  • Resistance to Attacks: Absence of vulnerabilities that could compromise availability, consistency, or safety.

User and Developer Adoption​

  • Wallet and DApp Integration: Number of wallets and decentralized applications integrated with Leios.

  • User Experience Feedback: Decrease in complaints regarding transaction delays or network congestion.

  • Stake Pool Adoption: Percentage of stake pools adopting Leios for transaction processing.

Economic and Cost Efficiency​

  • Transaction Fee Variability: Stability or reduction of transaction fees under varying network load.

  • Smart Contract Execution Costs: Lower average consumption of execution units per Plutus script.

  • Sustainability: Ability to keep node infrastructure costs balanced relative to on-chain revenues.

Scalability and Future-Proofing​

  • Capacity for Future Growth: Ability to maintain low-latency, high-throughput performance as transaction demand rises.

  • Protocol Upgrade Success: Seamless integration of Leios with existing Cardano infrastructure and tooling without causing network fragmentation.