Cardano News: ADA Ecosystem Proposes ‘Critical Integrations Budget’ To Advance Network Growth

Cardano’s leading institutions have jointly submitted a proposal requesting 70 million ADA from the Treasury to fund a set of core integrations planned for the network’s 2026 roadmap. The coalition describes the package as essential infrastructure that Cardano currently lacks and says the upgrades are needed to support growth in decentralized finance, real-world assets, and institutional participation.

Five Pillars Driving Cardano’s Integration Plan

The plan is center around five pillars. These are onboarding of tier-one stablecoins, institutional-grade custody solutions, enhanced on-chain analytics, cross-chain bridge integrations, as well as internationally recognized pricing oracles. 

The amount of the funds requested cannot be released without the consent of the Delegated Representatives and the Constitutional Committee. The institutions say they have already been having detailed talks with key integration partners. Intersect is the program administrator and has full backing of its board.

The filing comes in the wake of a temporary chain barrier on Cardano. Intersect stated that the incident occurred due to an incorrect delegation transaction exploiting a cryptography library bug found in early 2022 on the Preview testnet. The problem caused the network to fork into two chains until coordination resolved the anomaly.

Hoskinson Calls for a Unified Path Forward

The matter was brought to the attention of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson in a Thanksgiving for Unity livestream on Nov. 27. He also said the network’s main institutions must reset their relationships and explained that 2026 will be a key phase for Cardano. The past year saw its share of infighting, social fork, soft fork and long-chain reorg.

He said his hard and fast approach had exacerbated some disagreements. He apologies for having contributed to those negative discussions and asked the ecosystem not to divide. Without the unity of Cardano’s institutions, he said, continuing progress may not be possible.

He tied this reset to a concerted effort by IOG, Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Intersect, and the Midnight Foundation. He said leaders in these organizations had a role in getting the groups to convene over shared governance efforts. Hoskinson stated that the community will see more aligned proposals coming along. This includes the budget for “critical integrations” under review now, 

Hoskinson also sought to calm fears about the soft fork of this week. He dismissed allegations of systemic failure and said that the episode demonstrated the network’s resilience. Hoskinson cited the Nakamoto-style proof-of-stake approach of Cardano network . Its core protocol engineering which he said enabled the system to regain functionality without significant disturbance or data loss.

He stressed that it will take an industry-wide approach at multiple levels of the ecosystem to create the vision for 2026. He described newer groups, like the Midnight Foundation, active collaboration organizations like Intersect and infrastructure participants such as Pragma. 

Hoskinson recognized long-standing entities such as IOG and the Cardano Foundation. He emphasized that the community had to be part of every aspect in the plan.