According to reports from The Crypto Basic, Charles Hoskinson announced that the Ouroboros Leios upgrade will multiply Cardano's transaction capacity by 60 times. During his interview, Hoskinson stated that this technological leap would position Cardano's network performance on par with the XRP Ledger while maintaining the project's founding principles of decentralization and security. The upgrade is designed to introduce parallel transaction processing capabilities that dramatically increase throughput without compromising the network's security model. This would allow Cardano to handle a significantly higher volume of transactions, positioning it to compete more directly with other major blockchains in processing speed and scalability.
As reported by The Crypto Basic, the XRP Ledger has established itself as a benchmark for blockchain efficiency with settlement times between 3-5 seconds and a maximum capacity of 1,500 transactions per second. In March 2026, the network surpassed 120 TPS during peak usage with approximately 650 operations. Hoskinson emphasized that Cardano's Leios upgrade would achieve comparable performance levels while maintaining the project's commitment to decentralization and security principles. The XRP Ledger's current performance serves as the benchmark that Cardano aims to match through this technological evolution.
According to the reports, the public Leios testnet, named Musashi Dojo, debuted on June 23, 2026, marking the protocol's first operation in a live network environment. Mainnet deployment is expected before the end of this year, though no specific date has been announced. This timeline positions the upgrade as a significant milestone for Cardano's scalability roadmap, addressing the industry's blockchain trilemma where scaling often requires trade-offs between decentralization and security. The upgrade represents a scalability enhancement for Cardano's existing proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
The announcement has generated renewed interest in ADA, with the cryptocurrency currently trading at $0.1772, up 4.85% in the last 24 hours, though it remains well below its all-time high. According to CoinMarketCap, the upgrade is part of Cardano's ongoing development roadmap that has focused on incremental, peer-reviewed improvements to its protocol. Unlike some other blockchain projects that prioritize speed over decentralization, Cardano has maintained a deliberate pace, emphasizing formal verification and academic rigor. For current ADA holders and developers building on Cardano, the Leios upgrade represents a potential inflection point that could make the network more attractive for decentralized applications requiring high throughput.
As reported by The Breakdown podcast, Hoskinson strongly defended the Midnight City initiative against criticism from content creator Big Pey. Big Pey had labeled the project as wasteful spending, describing it as an example of the 'Cardano Way' - investments that yield no immediate commercial returns. Hoskinson responded by stating he had lost all respect for Big Pey as an entrepreneur and criticized him for failing to understand how consumer products evolve. He challenged the critic to save the post and return in a year to apologize.
