Aiken is a new programming language and toolchain for developing smart contracts on the <a href="https://cardano.org/">Cardano(opens in a new tab)</a> blockchain.This page gives an overview of the project goals and values, as well an idea of the roadmap we're pursuing. The rest of the book contains useful information for getting started with and deep diving into Aiken (both the language, and the toolkit).Welcome, and enjoy. &nbsp;

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aiken

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		<ul>
<li>Cardano is trading at $0.82 but could surge past $4, with $7–$8 also possible, says a popular crypto analyst.</li>
<li>ADA just broke out of consolidation and hasn’t yet reached previous highs, signaling it’s still early in the rally.</li>
</ul>
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Cardano (ADA) is currently trading at about $0.82, up 2.21% over the last 24 hours and 46.54% over the last 30 days. However, according to popular crypto analyst <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/chart/ADAUSDT/QOxleeVK-Cardano-Has-Plenty-of-Room-To-Grow-Will-Hit-Beyond-4-Easily/" target="_blank">Master Ananda</a>, this price is considered “still very cheap” considering ADA’s potential in the current bull market cycle. He even believes that ADA’s price could easily surpass $4, then climb to $7 or $8.
<h2>Early Signs Point to a Bigger ADA Breakout Ahead</h2>
According to the analyst, Cardano’s major move occurred in late 2024, specifically between November and December. Afterward, the price tended to move sideways and failed to break through the December peak or the March 2025 high. But herein lies the key: he sees Cardano as still in the early stages of a longer uptrend.
<figure><img src="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv.jpg" alt srcset="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv.jpg 2560w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-300x147.jpg 300w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-1200x588.jpg 1200w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-768x376.jpg 768w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-1536x752.jpg 1536w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-2048x1003.jpg 2048w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-150x73.jpg 150w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-tv-450x220.jpg 450w" /><figcaption>Source: Master Ananda on TradingView</figcaption></figure>
The current situation also indicates that <a href="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/ada-explodes-30-in-new-bull-run/" target="_blank">ADA has just emerged</a> from a sideways pattern, accompanied by a mild correction after a 13-day rally since July 8th. There has only been one red day in the last three days. Even that isn’t a sign of weakness—more like a short breather before a long run.
And considering the performance of other major coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and <a href="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/retail-xrp-investors-tap-defi-yield/" target="_blank">XRP</a>, which have already set or are approaching new records, there’s strong reason to believe Cardano’s turn is just around the corner.
<h3>Behind the Scenes, Cardano Activity Tells a Bullish Story</h3>
On the other hand, the latest <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/currencies/ADA" target="_blank">data from CoinGlass</a> shows interesting dynamics in the ADA derivatives market. Daily derivatives trading volume plummeted by 50.83%, leaving only around $2.16 billion. This means many short-term traders are starting to step aside. But oddly, open interest actually rose 2.57% to $1.47 billion.
So, despite the decline in volume, open positions continued to grow. Many are choosing to hold onto their positions. Perhaps they also believe it’s not time to exit yet.
<figure><img src="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI.png" alt srcset="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI.png 1806w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-300x68.png 300w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-1200x272.png 1200w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-768x174.png 768w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-1536x348.png 1536w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-150x34.png 150w, https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADA-OI-450x102.png 450w" /><figcaption>Source: CoinGlass</figcaption></figure>
Furthermore, options volume for ADA has virtually disappeared from the radar—down 92.94% to just $6,590. What it means? The market isn’t interested in playing with complex options channels. The primary focus seems to be shifting toward futures and perpetual contracts, which more quickly reflect short- to medium-term price movements.
Not only that, Cardano hasn’t been sitting idle on the technology front either. The CNF previously reported that the Cardano Foundation recently <a href="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/will-cardanos-new-tool-accelerate-ada/" target="_blank">launched Tool Compass</a>, a tool that accelerates the development process on the Cardano blockchain. This Compass automatically matches tools to project needs, eliminating the need for manual search. This tool is believed to accelerate developer integration into the ecosystem.
Looking at network activity, Cardano also saw a significant spike in early July. Over 111 million network interactions were recorded, including over <a href="https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/cardano-network-activity-surges-past-111-million-will-ada-follow-with-a-price-spike/" target="_blank">138,000 Plutus scripts and nearly 8,000 Aiken scripts</a> activated. These numbers are no small feat—they indicate developers are starting to become active again and the ecosystem is being polished from the inside out.
<hr /><h6>Recommended for you:</h6>
	</div>
This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. The content does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any securities or financial instruments. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with financial advisors before making investment decisions. The information presented may not be current and could become outdated.			</article>

Crypto News Flash (EN)

Cardano Still Cheap at $0.82, Aiming for $4 to $8 Targets - Crypto News Flash

What if you could take a smart contract, written using a modern language like Python, TypeScript, or Scala, and run it on Bitcoin without modifying Bitcoin itself?Thanks to a novel compilation pipeline being developed at Input&nbsp;|&nbsp;Output (IO), that idea is becoming a reality. By combining a serialized smart contract format (Untyped Plutus Core – <a href="https://www.learningcardano.com/untyped-plutus-core-uplc/">UPLC</a>), a clever interpreter architecture (Control, Environment, Continuation (CEK) machine), and a widely supported open-source reduced instruction set architecture (<a href="https://riscv.org/">RISC-V</a>), IO is building a connection from the expressive world of Cardano smart contracts to the solid base layer of Bitcoin. At the center of this is <a href="https://bitvmx.org/">BitVMX</a>, an optimistic verification system for Bitcoin that leverages RISC-V to safely execute off-chain logic.While Bitcoin is secure, simple, and stable, its scripting language is extremely limited. That’s a feature, not a bug, but it makes decentralized finance (DeFi) and complex applications hard to build natively.So instead of rewriting Bitcoin, what if it had an optimistic execution environment where rich logic can run off-chain, and Bitcoin only gets involved when there's a disagreement?That’s exactly what BitVMX does, and its pipeline makes it easy to feed real smart contracts into this environment.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">How it works: UPLC → CEK → RISC-V → Bitcoin</h3><ol><li>High-level code: developers write smart contracts in modern languages built for (or adapted to) Cardano.</li><li>UPLC compilation: that code compiles down to UPLC – a minimal, functional representation. Think of it like a clean, language-agnostic bytecode.</li><li>Serialization: UPLC terms are serialized or encoded into a specific byte format that can be passed around like a message or file.</li><li>The CEK machine: this is a lightweight interpreter for UPLC, which is essentially a small virtual computer that knows how to execute UPLC code.</li><li>Compiled to RISC-V: instead of attempting to interpret UPLC directly on Bitcoin, we compile the CEK machine itself into RISC-V. It’s a real-world, simple CPU instruction set. This version of the CEK machine can then accept serialized UPLC as input.</li><li>Verified with BitVMX: BitVMX allows this RISC-V execution trace to be verified optimistically. Only when someone disputes the result does a ‘challenge game’ begin, revealing parts of the execution trace and resolving the dispute. Because the prover provides a deposit as collateral before submitting a computation trace, economic disincentives can be put in place such that in the case that the challenger can prove fraud occurred, the protocol may retain the collateral of the bad actor who posted the incorrect computation trace hash.</li></ol><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Why RISC-V and BitVMX?</h3><ul><li>RISC-V is open, simple, and powerful: it’s an instruction set architecture used across the world in computer chips and academic projects. It also has well-established simulators, tooling, and LLVM backends.</li><li>BitVMX makes Bitcoin programmable: it runs computations off-chain, but gives Bitcoin users a way to successfully challenge suspicious transactions.</li><li>The CEK machine is small and deterministic: this makes it a perfect candidate for compiling to RISC-V and verifying with BitVMX.</li></ul><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Why this matters</h3>This architecture enables developers to reuse the existing Cardano smart contract infrastructure without starting from scratch for Bitcoin. This means:<ul><li>True Bitcoin-native DeFi: developers can write contracts in languages built for Cardano and use them to build decentralized exchanges (DEXs), stablecoins, escrows, and more, secured by Bitcoin.</li><li>Cross-chain bridges: assets can move trustlessly between Cardano and Bitcoin ecosystems.</li><li>Secure, dispute-resistant computation: fraud proofs via BitVMX ensure correctness without bloating the blockchain. When computation is carried out incorrectly, there is a challenge-response protocol to prove that the computation is incorrect, and appropriately punish bad actors.</li></ul><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">IO, BitVMX, and the future</h3>This work is part of a broader collaboration called BitVMX FORCE, launched by <a href="https://iohk.io/">IO</a>, <a href="https://www.fairgate.io/">Fairgate Labs</a>, and <a href="https://www.rootstocklabs.com/">Rootstock Labs</a>. At <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1gqTfS4rCE">Bitcoin 2025</a>, IO demonstrated the UPLC-to-RISC-V compiler, leveraging the BitVMX verifier stack, paving the way for safe, scalable, and expressive smart contracts on Bitcoin.IO believes Bitcoin can serve as the settlement layer for a new class of decentralized applications. By anchoring computation and interoperability on secure, auditable systems like BitVMX, the goal is not only to enable new functionality but also to bridge multiple ecosystems and communities.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Get involved</h3>The toolchain is planned to open soon. In the meantime, watch for announcements from IO and BitVMX FORCE and:<ul><li>Check out <a href="https://aiken-lang.org/">Aiken</a> to explore writing contracts targeting UPLC</li><li>Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK">@InputOutputHK</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/BitVMX">@BitVMX</a> for technical updates</li><li>Join upcoming hackathons and conventions, especially if you're interested in RISC-V, dispute systems, or zero-knowledge cryptography</li><li>Join the <a href="https://t.me/+7Hf8PMk5s2RmZWQ0">Telegram group</a>.</li></ul>Let’s make Bitcoin programmable, together.<a href="https://iohk.io/en/blog/authors/riley-kilgore/page-1/">Riley Kilgore</a> Software engineer (Aiken)

Input Output

Smart contracts on Bitcoin

Cardano Foundation

Cardano Foundation Quarterly: Q2 2025

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								In an announcement that rekindles the perennial debate over how far Bitcoin can—or should—stretch beyond its original remit, Input Output (IO), the research and engineering company behind Cardano, has unveiled a compilation pipeline that executes Cardano smart contracts on Bitcoin without touching a line of Bitcoin’s consensus code.
“A novel compilation pipeline being developed at Input | Output takes a Cardano smart contract, written using a modern language like Python, TypeScript, or Scala, and runs it on Bitcoin without modifying Bitcoin itself,” the company <a href="https://x.com/InputOutputHK/status/1947759021970362642" target="_blank">wrote </a>on X late Tuesday night, attaching a six‑post technical thread that spelled out the process in detail.
The thread describes a relay of representations that begins with high‑level source code and ends inside Bitcoin Script. First, Cardano’s tool‑chain lowers the contract into Untyped Plutus Core (UPLC), a stripped‑down functional bytecode. UPLC is then serialized and handed to a miniature interpreter known as the Control–Environment–Continuation (CEK) machine. Instead of asking Bitcoin to interpret UPLC directly, IO compiles the CEK machine itself into RISC‑V, “a real‑world, simple CPU instruction set.” The resulting RISC‑V program becomes the payload that Bitcoin ultimately verifies, with the serialized UPLC passed to it at run‑time.
A companion blog post signed by software engineer Riley Kilgore frames the design in a single sentence: “By combining a serialized smart contract format (Untyped Plutus Core – UPLC), a clever interpreter architecture (CEK machine), and a widely supported open‑source reduced instruction set architecture (RISC‑V), IO is turning that idea into reality.” Because the RISC‑V code is deterministic and its execution trace can be proven—or disputed—inside Bitcoin Script, no soft‑fork is required. Bitcoin remains unchanged; the expressiveness is off‑loaded to an auxiliary virtual CPU whose behaviour can be challenged step by step.
The security anchor for those challenges is BitVMX, a descendant of <a href="https://bitcoinist.com/bitvm-bitcoin-ethereum-all-altcoins-useless/" target="_blank">Robin Linus’s 2023 BitVM proposal</a> for “disputable computation” on Bitcoin. IO’s newsroom statement calls BitVMX an “innovative, trust‑minimized protocol” that “operates on a 1‑out‑of‑n honest‑operator model” and lets developers “pay transaction fees in BTC directly from their preferred wallet.” BitVMX inherits the optimistic‑roll‑up style of BitVM—off‑chain execution, on‑chain fraud proofs—but replaces BitVM’s bespoke circuits with a full RISC‑V core, allowing unmodified binaries compiled by standard tool‑chains.
The promise is to bring Cardano’s eUTxO‑based smart‑contract ecosystem—Marlowe, Aiken, and the rest—into Bitcoin’s vast liquidity pool. In practical terms that could mean lending, swaps, and even NFT‑backed loans secured by BTC collateral, all without giving custodial control to a sidechain.
For Bitcoin purists the move is both familiar and contentious. <a href="https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-taproot-drives-transactions-to-ath/" target="_blank">Taproot </a>in 2021 expanded Script with Schnorr signatures and key‑path spends, giving the network its first taste of complex smart‑contract logic, while BitVM in 2023 showed that arbitrary computation could be verified rather than executed by Bitcoin nodes. IO’s pipeline pushes those ideas further, but it does so in a way that keeps the base layer unaltered—a design criterion that BitVM’s authors called non‑negotiable for Bitcoin’s social contract.
The compilation flow is still in active development; IO has not committed to a main‑net launch date, nor has it published gas‑cost benchmarks for typical contracts. What it has done is demonstrate a theoretically complete bridge between two philosophically divergent blockchains. If the engineering hurdles—transaction sizes, dispute latency, and user‑experience frictions—can be contained, Cardano’s software stack may soon become a first‑class citizen on Bitcoin.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.87.
<figure><img src="https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?resize=1024%2C454" alt="Cardano price" srcset="https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=3628 3628w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=640 640w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=768 768w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=980 980w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=1536 1536w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=2048 2048w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=750 750w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=1140 1140w, https://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ADAUSDT_2025-07-23_08-52-17.png?w=3000 3000w" /><figcaption>ADA stalls below the 0.236 Fib, 1-week chart | Source: <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/x/cEZc5KEz/" target="_blank">ADAUSDT on TradingView.com</a></figcaption></figure>
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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Bitcoinist

Cardano Cracks Bitcoin: Smart Contracts Without A Single Change

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Cardano smart contract language and toolchain

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