Cardano could lose a core group of scientists if Input Output fails to secure treasury funding for a slate of research and infrastructure proposals that are still awaiting approval.

Last month, Input Output, the development firm behind the Cardano network, revealed that it was seeking $46.8 million to finance its operations for the 2026 development cycle.

However, the funding request has encountered significant resistance as the May 24 voting deadline approaches. A look at the major proposals shows that they face weak support, heavy abstentions, and large blocs of votes left uncast, leaving the network’s technical future hanging in the balance.

The escalating tension prompted a stark warning from Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who cautioned that failing to approve the treasury withdrawal could trigger an exodus of top talent and potentially shutter the network’s flagship research laboratory.

Trailing the threshold

The $46.8 million request is fractured across several specialized workstreams, each requiring a 67% ratification threshold from the network’s DReps. As the voting window narrows, almost none are on track for approval.

The largest line item is the Cardano Maintenance Initiative, an ask of more than 62.1 million ADA designed to cover continuous core maintenance from the third quarter of 2026 through the first quarter of 2027.

The proposal covers nine functional areas, including bug fixing, disaster recovery, mainnet monitoring, and incident response.

Despite its critical nature, described by developers as the protective foundation that ensures network uptime and security, the proposal currently holds just 46.58% affirmative votes. A massive 9.25 billion ADA is logged as abstaining, while 45.61% of voting power has yet to weigh in.

Other critical infrastructure proposals are faring even worse. A 10.4 million ADA request to fund Layer 2 scalability solutions, including a data availability solution and the launch of Midgard, the network’s first permissionless optimistic rollup, sits at just 16.08% approval.

Layer 2 architecture is widely considered the only viable path to achieving the 10,000-plus transactions per second and sub-cent fees necessary to attract high-frequency decentralized finance and artificial intelligence micropayments in the current cycle.

A $2.95 million pitch to build “Pogun,” an end-to-end Bitcoin liquidity and credit engine meant to capture a share of the $1.5 trillion Bitcoin asset class, is polling at 19.04% in favor, weighed down by 24.15% active rejections and overwhelming abstentions.

Cardano’s development and tooling on the brink

The hesitation among DReps extends to proposals that target developer experience and smart contract capabilities, areas where Cardano has historically struggled to gain ground against rivals like Ethereum and Solana.

A 13 million ADA proposal to bring automated formal verification to decentralized applications has performed the best thus far, but still trails the needed supermajority at 57.79%.

The initiative aims to extend the Blaster verification tool across multiple smart contract languages, lowering the barrier for developers to mathematically prove their code’s correctness.

Similarly, an 11.8 million ADA request to expand the capabilities of Cardano’s native Plutus smart contract language, aimed at reducing script costs and improving expressiveness, is hovering around 32% approval.

A separate 3.6 million ADA pitch explicitly designed to boost developer growth by 30% over the next year, by streamlining onboarding and documentation, sits below 30%.

Also struggling is Project Cayley, a 7.92 million ADA initiative aimed at decentralizing data indexing. Currently, indexing the entire Cardano blockchain dataset requires massive computational resources, a burden that will only grow as the network scales.

Project Cayley introduces decentralized slice indexing, allowing node operators to index only specific portions of the chain. This lowers the barrier to entry and prevents data-serving infrastructure from centralizing around a few well-funded providers.

Yet, the proposal is languishing at 13.83% approval, with nearly 30% of active voters rejecting it outright.

Finally, a 13.1 million ADA proposal that would introduce Babel Fees, allowing users to pay transaction costs in any native asset, such as stablecoins, rather than holding ADA, has garnered nearly 60% support but remains shy of the 67% hurdle.

The upgrade is widely viewed as essential for removing onboarding friction for new users.

A clash over the “science coin”

For years, Cardano has staked its reputation on rigorous, peer-reviewed academic research and formal methods. This methodical approach has occasionally drawn criticism for moving too slowly, but it has cultivated a fiercely loyal community.

However, the stakes of the treasury vote also appear to be impacting a research-focused proposal called “Cardano Vision 2026: Human Centered, Scalable, Post Quantum Secure – IO Research.”

This proposal seeks nearly 33 million ADA tokens, approximately $8 million, to “preserve Cardano’s evidence-based approach” and “ensure that research outputs translate more reliably into measurable ecosystem growth.”

However, YUTA, a Cardano Drep, stated that the “proposal is a mix of a waste of funds and a potentially excellent proposal for Leios and quantum resistance research.”

In response, Hoskinson stated:

“We are deeply saddened that some Japanese dReps voted against our research proposal…If this proposal does not pass, we want the entire Japanese community to fully recognize that Cardano will lose its scientists, and our lab will be forced to close.”

Hoskinson emphasized that building the organization’s research apparatus took more than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars.

He warned against dismantling the world’s strongest cryptocurrency research group over “piecemeal funding support,” asserting that the organization’s scientists would simply leave for ecosystems offering greater certainty and professional respect.

He added:

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me. This has to do with destroying the entire core of our ecosystem. Cardano is the science coin. That’s our brand. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade to earn the right to say that. You don’t throw it away.”

As of press time, the proposal has secured only a 13% support, and its voting is expected to close on June 8.

Cardano’s decentralized governance experiment tested

The funding friction is particularly notable given that Input Output explicitly scaled back its financial demands for this cycle.

The 2026 treasury request represents a nearly 50% reduction from the previous year’s budget, signaling an intent to transition the ecosystem toward long-term self-sufficiency.

Yet, even this tightened fiscal belt has failed to win immediate favor from the newly empowered governance body.

The gridlock illustrates the double-edged sword of Cardano’s decentralized governance era. By placing the keys to the treasury directly in the hands of token holders and elected DReps, the ecosystem has achieved a level of financial decentralization rarely seen in major blockchain networks.

However, the current voting impasse highlights the vulnerability of that model. With large swaths of voting power either abstaining or remaining dormant, funding for vital infrastructure is essentially frozen.

For Input Output, the proposals represent a bare-minimum operational baseline to keep the network secure and competitive. For the DReps, the vote is an exercise in budget discipline and accountability, requiring the software laboratory to justify every dollar.

If the proposals fail to cross the 67% threshold by the May 24 deadline, Cardano faces an unprecedented scenario. Without the requested treasury disbursements, key upgrades could be delayed, and essential maintenance operations may be forced to scale back.

More critically, as Hoskinson warned, the talent pipeline that built Cardano’s sophisticated, academically rigorous architecture could begin to fracture, fundamentally altering the ecosystem’s trajectory.

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