Cardano activated the Ouroboros Leios testnet on June 23, 2026, the first live network trial of a pipelined consensus protocol designed to push throughput to up to 1,500 transactions per second, roughly 30 to 65 times current Praos output. The launch follows more than 5,700 technical updates and 705,000 lines of code behind the upgrade; Charles Hoskinson said the effort exceeded the project's initial expectations, per Cryptonomist reporting.
Leios replaces Cardano's existing Ouroboros Praos consensus layer with a design that processes hundreds of blocks in parallel inside each 20-second window, per the official protocol documentation. Cardano's governance body approved 27.7 million ADA in treasury funding for continued development on an 84% vote of delegated representatives; the underlying proposal projects network capacity growing from 800,000 monthly transactions today to 27 million by 2030. Input Output has indicated mainnet deployment could follow by end of 2026, though no date is confirmed.
ADA trades around $0.16 as the testnet launches, near multi-year lows. The throughput figures are design targets; live testnet results will determine whether and when the protocol advances to mainnet.
