Input | Output Engineering Roundup - January 2026

Welcome to the first Input Output Engineering update of 2026. We’re bringing you the raw progress on Cardano’s treasury-funded initiatives. Transparent and accountable engineering from the source. ✨ This Month’s Highlights: Leios is Live in the Lab: Designs are done. We have moved to the prototyping phase with a single, ambitious target: hitting 1,000 TPS in our upcoming control tests. Acropolis (Node as an OS): The evolution continues. We’ve delivered key validation milestones (block headers & ledger state) to transform the node into a modular operating system ready for future AI-assisted interactions. Node Efficiency: We are finalizing LSM (UTXO-HD) for Node 10.7. This release slashes memory requirements to ~6GB. Plus, KES Agent v1.0 is tagged and ready for forward security. Ledger Optimization: We aren't stopping at UTXO-HD. The team is moving "Instant Stake" to disk to drive memory usage down even further. SPO Economics: We are tackling the "paradox of pledge." Our researchers are deep in the data on CIP-23 and CIP-82 to close the viability gap for our operators. High Assurance: Build safer, faster. Blaster v101 is out with critical fixes, and the Plutus Static Analyzer PoC is now live to help developers catch bugs early.