Solana Summit Berlin is a reminder that ecosystems win when they make the story easy to understand. Founders, developers, investors, institutions and creators all in one room around a clear narrative: Internet Capital Markets. You might agree or disagree with Solana’s tradeoffs, but the positioning is sharp. That is something Cardano needs to keep improving. Not just better tech. 🔍 A clearer story. 🤝 Better coordination. 👷‍♂️ More visible builders. More events that make outsiders feel like something is happening. Cardano has depth. Now it needs more moments where that depth is obvious to everyone else.

I am going to go out on a limb and say something that I think matters for Cardano right now, even if it means putting myself back in the firing line. Governance is not our biggest problem. Adoption and usage are. Governance matters, of course it does. It decides how capital is allocated, who is held accountable, and whether the treasury is treated as a productive asset or an endless subsidy pool. But governance only becomes truly valuable when it is directing resources towards a blockchain that people are actively using, building on, and economically depending on. That is where I think the next phase of Cardano needs to be much more focused. Leios will be important because it increases Cardano’s capacity. But capacity only becomes valuable when there is demand to actually fill it. A faster road matters most when people actually need to travel on it. Otherwise we risk spending more on infrastructure while the economic activity that should justify that infrastructure remains too thin. For me, the next major phase of the roadmap should be Adoption. That means identifying every serious barrier that makes Cardano harder, slower, more expensive, or less attractive to build on, then removing those barriers with discipline. Developer experience matters. Liquidity matters. Wallet onboarding matters. Stablecoin access matters. Integration costs matter. Time to market matters. Reliability matters. Documentation matters. Business confidence matters. They are the difference between a builder choosing Cardano, or choosing another chain because the commercial path is easier, every time this happens utility is originated elsewhere and this utility drives usage. We can keep spending time arguing about governance processes, Discord servers, over-complex engineering to solve simple problems, personalities, and who should or should not receive treasury funding. Some of that has its place. But if too much attention is spent there, we risk missing the more important issue, businesses can and will leave, usage can and will fall, builders can and will lose confidence, and infrastructure costs can continue rising without enough activity to support or even justify them. That is not a sustainable economic model for Cardano. A blockchain treasury is strongest when usage helps replenish it. Adoption drives transactions. Transactions create fees. Fees support treasury growth. Treasury growth funds further improvements. That is the loop we should be trying to strengthen, whilst also decentralizing our spend to drive competition and make it competitive building on Cardano. Make Cardano easier to build on. Make it cheaper to use. Make it more attractive for serious businesses. Increase real on chain activity. Retain the builders we already have, our passionate pool of talent that deserves recognition. Give new builders a reason to choose Cardano without needing to be convinced by ideology alone. Governance can help us get there, but adoption is what makes the whole system economically meaningful. That is the phase Cardano needs now, not endless over-complicated, controlled and gate governance discussions. Just my thoughts.

Took the weekend to think about the path forward and the team and I have come to a simple conclusion: We aren't ready to give up on Cardano. My post went viral and I had people from all chains and walks of life reaching out. My DMs were crazy. Most very positive. Some of it, madly inspiring. The main take away though was that people still believe in us, and Cardano. Huge thank you to everyone who reached out. We had multiple parties volunteer to front the 100k ADA for the direct treasury proposal. This is the Cardano I invested my life into. The Cardano of old, where people had each others backs and we were unified. I felt that again this weekend. This community is undeniable. Let's lock in our direction and find something we can all get excited about again. I ain't hear no bell 😤 Updated proposal dropping Soon™

10000 $ICP to 10 people who predicts correct score. ends in 5 hrs

A significant shift is happening in Cardano. ADA holders are no longer passive participants in someone else’s roadmap. They now have direct influence over the direction, funding priorities, and future of the protocol. The holders have spoken clearly in the recent budget cycle. They want progress. They want accountability. They want delivery tied to discipline. When capital comes from the treasury, it is entirely reasonable for ADA holders to ask hard questions, challenge poor execution, and expect spending to translate into measurable value for Cardano. That changes the incentive structure. As a result, we have already seen treasury spend fall. In my opinion, the value of that spend has increased. Less capital is being treated as automatic entitlement, and more attention is being placed on delivery, relevance, risk, and return to the ecosystem. I believe this will continue. As global competition around value output increases, proposals will need to become sharper. They will need to justify cost more clearly, explain the mechanism of value creation, and show why the treasury should fund them. The personal attacks, emotional outbursts, and increasingly strange behaviour we are seeing from some corners are a confirmation of that shift. When informal control starts to weaken, the reaction often becomes louder, less rational, and more personal. Until people accept that power and control is moving back towards ADA holders, those social outbursts will likely continue. That is what happens when influence moves away from closed circles and towards the people who carry the economic risk. I think this is extremely beneficial to Cardano. Healthy governance should apply pressure. It should force clarity. It should make capital allocation more difficult, more accountable, and more closely linked to outcomes. That is how a decentralized ecosystem matures beyond personalities, relationships, and legacy influence. The powerful thing is that absolutely anybody can contribute to that change. A holder, builder, stake pool operator, developer, researcher, business owner, or ordinary user can bring information into the system. They can question assumptions, expose weaknesses, improve proposals, challenge poor incentives, and help force positive change. That is where collective global intelligence starts to create real value. Different people bring different experiences. Some understand infrastructure. Some understand markets. Some understand governance, risk, compliance, enterprise adoption, product delivery, or community behaviour. When those perspectives are allowed to surface, the system becomes harder to control, but much stronger over time. Disappointment is not a weakness in governance. It is often the first sign that the system is beginning to correct itself. What matters is that frustration is being converted into action. Holders are voting, questioning, organising, analysing proposals, and pushing for a more serious and accountable ecosystem. The old model of quiet influence, unclear control, and decisions shaped away from the people who bear the economic risk is weakening every day. This is where Cardano becomes different. Its strength is the ownership structure, the incentives, the treasury system, and the fact that every ADA holder has the same fundamental rights within the system. No special class. No permission gate. No hidden entitlement. Cardano’s future will be shaped by the people who hold it, use it, build on it, and are prepared to defend its long term value. Exciting times.

The FUD on @ATLAS_DEFI_ “I’ll wait.” 💧624K ADA liquidity 👥364 holders 📈6.18M ADA MC ⚡Perps coming 💵Stablecoin staking rewards Sometimes the biggest risk is watching the train leave without you. 🚆💙 #Cardano #ATLAS

how many iagon’s do you hold bro?

Holy moly this thing did numbers You think X messaging doesn’t matter? You can go to discord, you can go to WhatsApp, you can hide in a cave. None of that will matter unless you fix the external perception of Cardano at this point. Hope you realize the more you fail to take control of the narrative and the people you are continually letting down, the worse and worse the narrative is going to be. Saw holders reaching out I never even knew existed sharing similar sentiment. Keep thinking the move is not listening to us…

After reading today’s post from @CashAnvil, I have to give some flowers to the man, his co-founder, and the whole team. They are fucking legends. Not many people realize this, but Anvil API is used for the Citizens mint. So yeah, minting Citizens supports their team too. What they have built is a powerhouse of infrastructure, and I’m honestly shocked that alone isn’t helping them self-sustain on this chain. Second point: wow, what fucking support. We are about to pass 50% sold out on Citizens, and with booster packs, we’re at over 1,100 NFTs minted so far. I know, NFTs are dead, etc. etc. But “dead” means several things, lel. Everything is dead, even on ETH, but at the same time, free mints there have recently run to several hundred-floor prices, and the volume is still way ahead of Cardano. I feel like sometimes we are hurting ourselves by being too pessimistic. Since ADA dumped from $3 four years ago, all I’ve heard is: “It’s not the time to launch. It’s not the time to mint. You have to wait.” Don’t fucking wait. Just build.

My post somehow reached way outside of Cardano. There are a lot of hopeful people out there shilling other chains in my replies. Seems to be opportunity out there. The support has been epic. Thank you all. I am feeling a bit reinvigorated. Means more than you know. Taking the weekend to weigh options!

It’s 2026 and the Founding entities of $ADA are making a discord server. Honestly could be the most bearish thing i’ve ever heard. Deep down I still really want to believe in cardano but holy shit is it a fucking hard effort.

Designed for Enterprise. Built for Everyone.

Discord groups have existed in this ecosystem for years. In practice, they have often functioned less like public forums and more like caves: small groups talking among themselves, with decisions and narratives forming in isolation. I think it is delusional to believe that people will simply change their social behavior, stop discussing things on X, and suddenly start organizing meaningful public debate inside specific Discord channels. Cardano has hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, yet somehow basic concepts like network effects still seem to be ignored when convenient. We have already had several attempts to create “proper” channels for discussion. The Cardano Forum has existed for years and is barely used by most of the community. At times, it feels less like a civic space and more like a graveyard of abandoned conversations. Catalyst and Intersect Discord servers have also existed for years. They may be useful for coordination, but if the goal is to create an echo chamber where the same people talk to the same people, then yes, Discord is probably the perfect venue. The issue is not that X is healthy. It obviously is not. The issue is pretending that moving conversations into more controlled spaces automatically creates better discourse, broader legitimacy, or a more representative community. It does not. It mostly creates quieter rooms. And in an ecosystem that claims to care about decentralization, public accountability, and open governance, confusing silence with alignment is a dangerous mistake. The level of disconnection from reality in this ecosystem keeps growing.

If you think paying for marketing and content creators doesn’t do anything, look at what just happened to Cardano. You’ve just witnessed the power of social engineering and narratives led by influencers & media who completely changed the public opinion of Cardano, sending the price from 24 cents to 15 cents in just a week. Crypto is not a competition of best tech it’s a competition of public perception. The market has repeatedly shown that being technologically superior is not enough. Just look at Solana. Despite outages and technical issues, it climbed to the top because it captured marketing. Ethereum is still number two despite being expensive to use. Yet Cardano still likes to believe that investors solely buy based on tech, decentralization, and infra. ”build it and they’ll come“ - they won‘t. The majority of people buy based on public attention (marketing) and perceived upside. Infrastructure improvements may excite developers, but developers are not the market. I strongly believe we’re in a good place right now to really push what we have already built, but it looks like this will be yet another year we let projects and public attention die for the sake of funding even more infrastructure that won’t change a thing for the majority of the end user.

The impact of the CB DAO on activity across Cardano cannot be overstated. After joining the CBDAO last round, and being funded, BankFi, in less than three months, has seen measurable growth in transactions, TVL, user activity, and new business opportunities that came directly from this integration with CBDAO. More importantly, it connected us with other builders who share the same goal: creating sustainable businesses that bring long-term value to Cardano. Infrastructure is essential, but infrastructure alone doesn't onboard users or create economic activity. Builders do. The CB DAO gives Cardano a way to coordinate, fund, and hold accountable the teams willing to take the risk of building companies on this ecosystem. We've experienced that value firsthand, and we believe Cardano will be stronger if more builders are given the same opportunity.

About to cook up something very special with @SebastienGllmt and @MidnightNtwrk and @wayupio announcement of maybe an announcement, can't contain the excitement though

Agree with Adam. Iagon brought Fireblocks to Cardano and gets the credit for it, 100%. Deeper Fireblocks integration now coming built on top of these first steps through the Pentad.

Fighting together against external narratives > internal bickering... Can we cut the drama off at the knees and agree that Iagon brought Fireblocks to Cardano (with a couple provisions) and Pentad is working to further expand the capabilities so we don't get into another round of squabbling semantics and name calling? 🙏🤞🙏🤞🥺

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The time to continue allocating 75% to infra was 3 years ago. We are way passed that need now. A much bigger focus needs to go towards liquidity expansion including stablecoin incentives, and product/dapp expansion. This can’t be understated. We are in the era of commercialization, ecosystem growth, and product development now. It’s imperative on dreps to have a similar and shared focus.