Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has stated that the network will be complete after the Leios upgrade, responding to an X user who asked whether Cardano is finished. In a post on October 17, 2026, Hoskinson said: "After Leios, yes. It has everything I wanted to do." He listed decentralized consensus, governance and development, EUTXO, Plutus, infinite scalability, security, formal methods, multiple independent nodes, recursive self-improvement, and millions of ADA holders among the features he envisioned.
Leios is Cardano's next-generation consensus and scaling upgrade designed to significantly increase transaction throughput without sacrificing decentralization or security. It enhances the current Ouroboros Praos protocol by adding endorser blocks and committee-based validation. The upgrade aims to raise throughput from roughly 5–10 transactions per second to around 100 TPS, with a longer-term target of 1,000 TPS or more.
The public testnet, known as MusashiNet or Musashi Dojo, launched on June 23, 2026, rolling out through five phases named Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void. According to Input Output, the testnet has recently entered its Fire phase. In September 2026, IOG developers demonstrated about 1,000 TPS with Ouroboros Leios in testing.
Hoskinson also referenced a separate concept related to Midnight, a Cardano-related privacy sidechain, describing it as "the magnum opus of my career" and saying it solves most problems in the cryptocurrency space.
