Bitcoin 
$104,795 prices are under pressure due to the upcoming Federal Reserve interest rate decision and comments from Powell, while losses continue in altcoins. Today, the Cardano 
$0.962454 team shared its roadmap for the remainder of the year, focusing on building a fully decentralized structure managed entirely by the community.
Cardano’s Governance Transition
Cardano plans to transition to ‘fully decentralized governance’ after the Plomin hard fork. In this new governance era, Cardano’s roadmap will be guided by community input.
“Considering this, IO has submitted proposals regarding its development priorities for evaluation by the Intersect product committee. We believe IO’s vision for Cardano’s roadmap reflects a clear and ambitious vision for the future of blockchain technology, focusing on three defined key elements: scalability, usability, and interoperability.” -Input | Output (IO)
Cardano’s Future Aspirations
Cardano aims to reach billions of users in the next five years by maintaining decentralization, affordability, and security while removing barriers to entry. This goal will be pursued through initiatives like Layer2 Hydra and Layer2 rollups, including zero-knowledge (ZK) and optimistic solutions.
Beyond technological advancements, Cardano’s primary objective is to empower the community’s collective input moving forward.
“In this new era of decentralized decision-making, the collective input from the community and the expertise of developers within the ecosystem will shape Cardano’s future direction. IO’s perspective on Cardano’s roadmap emphasizes a bold and forward-thinking approach to blockchain innovation by prioritizing scalability, user accessibility, and seamless interoperability.”
Layer2 Hydra aims to establish off-chain transaction channels with a target of 90 million transactions per day. With parallel Hydra Head structures, speed will increase while costs decrease. ZkFold and optimistic rollups (Mingard) are expected to alleviate congestion on the main network.
The finality period with Peras is set to be reduced from 12 hours to 2 minutes, with a goal to achieve this by the end of the year. Mithril aims for rapid node synchronization and certificates for lightweight clients (targeted for the 2026 mainnet).
The launch of ZK-based smart contracts is aimed for the 2025 mainnet. In 2025, decentralized governance tools (Hermes and Voices) will be implemented for the community. Establishing principles through on-chain voting as part of the Cardano Constitution is also among the significant goals.
Key Dates to Remember
- Midnight Mainnet: End of 2025.
- Mithril v1: Before the end of Q1 2026.
- Ouroboros Peras: Before the end of 2025.
