2026-07-16
Blockfrost
- A governance appeal about Cardano's decentralized budget, which is funded in layers and now faces hard decisions about what to keep as ada trades far below last year.
- IO is transitioning into a venture studio focused on ventures and research, spinning core Haskell node engineering out to partner companies for node diversity.
- Blockfrost, an IO venture acquired years ago, runs the off chain backbone for Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Circle, and many others, roughly half of Cardano's traffic.
- The treasury voted against funding it, so a second proposal asks the community to run Blockfrost as a not for profit essential infrastructure asset.
- The long term plan, Project Kaye, is to decentralize Blockfrost as a partner chain run by stake pool operators, but that takes time.
- The warning: every DeFi ecosystem needs off chain infrastructure, and losing the largest, most reliable provider risks delistings and Cardano's hard won reputation.
25 entries
Cardano's decentralized budget is funded in layers like a cake, from core governance institutions up to research and commercialization.
Ada is dramatically down, from an all time high near 1.10 in 2025 to sub 15 cents after the 1010 issue collapsed everything.
IO has spent two years pushing to decentralize open source development, so the Haskell node is now the product of many companies.
Over the next nine months most full time Haskell node engineers will spin out to partner companies for more diversity of thought and roadmap.
Blink Labs runs a Go node and the Amaru project a Rust node, among others funded to pursue node diversity.
IO is pivoting to the two things it does best, building ventures and doing research, moving core infrastructure to community or smaller companies.
IO and ARC work on quantum resistance, the next generation of Ouroboros, and taking UTXO further with programs like Blaster.
The venture studio includes RealFi, whose testnet is live, and Pogen, realizing Bitcoin DeFi at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Midnight is one of the fastest growing projects, a fourth generation contender and the vanguard of the partner chain strategy.
Blockfrost is an IO venture acquired years ago when it was going to leave, run at a loss because Cardano's DeFi is not yet at Solana or Ethereum scale.
Blockfrost is not about vibe coding: it is security and SLAs, since it runs the backbone of the network's off chain activity.
Its customers include Crypto.com, Exodus, Fireblocks, Brave, Circle, Revolut, Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase, the on and off ramp into Cardano.
With only about nine people it is insulting to claim two people and vibe coders on 1,500 dollars a month could run it securely.
The long term strategy, Project Kaye, is to decentralize Blockfrost as a partner chain run by SPOs with its own consensus and tokenomics.
IO asked the treasury to fund the legacy infrastructure until it becomes profitable, but the voters chose not to.
The dreps funded nodes with no market share yet declined to fund the venture that runs 50 percent of all of Cardano's traffic.
If Blockfrost discontinues, Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken must decide whether to rebuild infrastructure or delist Cardano.
Trusted off chain infrastructure is a risk if hacked, since injected fake messages could create DeFi attack vectors and compromise user funds.
IO deliberately pivoted to a venture studio, so subsidized things like Catalyst and the legacy Blockfrost infrastructure are being shut down or spun out.
Until CIP 165 passes, people must run off chain infrastructure much like Ethereum's Infura and Alchemy, which is expensive to professionalize.
It is not Blockfrost's fault that Cardano's DeFi and transaction volume are low, so governance should not punish a reliable, historically vital service.
He asks no voters to reconsider and vote yes on Blockfrost becoming a not for profit community asset, since it leaves IO at year end regardless.
To the crypto media: this is not a Cardano flaw, since 100 percent of DeFi has off chain infrastructure like Infura, Alchemy, and Kido.
Cardano's commitment is to decentralize off chain infrastructure over time, including relationships with companion chains like Filecoin.
Losing essential infrastructure serving Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken risks Cardano's hard won reputation for reliability and never being hacked.