The Cardano Foundation has thrown a bucket of cold water on ecosystem spending, rejecting 28 of 69 budget proposals for 2026 — a 46% block rate by proposal count. The approved projects, worth 111.4 million ADA, represent just over a third of the roughly 331 million ADA requested. Another 13 proposals totaling 37.4 million ADA were met with abstentions, while a 25.4 million ADA request remains under review. The message is unmistakable: the days of blank-check funding are over.
The crackdown arrives as ADA trades at $0.16, down 84% from its 52-week high and 77% lower on a yearly basis. The technical picture is ugly: the relative strength index sits at 21.5, deep in oversold territory, and the 200-day moving average at $0.30 is a distant 46% above the current price. Total value locked in Cardano DeFi applications has cratered from roughly $905 million at the end of 2024 to below $140 million — an 85% collapse.
In a sign that institutional hands are catching the falling knife, addresses holding at least one million ADA now control 67.49% of the circulating supply, the highest concentration since 2017. That whale accumulation stands in stark contrast to the broader market exodus.
On the network side, Cardano’s PreProd testnet completed its scheduled transition to Protocol 11 today, the final dry run before the Van Rossem mainnet upgrade. Van Rossem is an intra-era hard fork that leaves the transaction structure untouched but bundles several improvements: faster Plutus script execution, higher ledger consistency, stronger node security, and unified built-in functions across Plutus V1, V2 and V3. The upgrade honors Max van Rossem, a key figure in Cardano’s governance evolution and a primary author of the network constitution.
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The mainnet activation now hinges on a governance vote by DReps, stake pool operators and the constitution committee, with a possible hard fork window stretching from late June to mid-July. The Intersect budget process — which the Foundation has just prioritized — will ultimately be decided by DReps in a final ballot closing June 12. That vote will determine the actual disbursement from a 350 million ADA pool.
Meanwhile, the Leios testnet is set to launch June 23. Input Output Global has submitted a treasury request for 27.7 million ADA to bring the protocol to mainnet readiness by the end of 2026. Leios promises a 10- to 65-fold throughput increase, potentially exceeding 1,000 transactions per second.
Regulatory tailwinds could offer some relief. The SEC has classified ADA as a non-security, and the CME launched ADA futures in February. After the mandatory six-month trading period, the agency can rule on pending spot-ETF applications from Grayscale and others as early as August 9.
Whether the combination of technical milestones, whale conviction, and regulatory clarity can close the gap between network progress and price remains to be tested. The next real-world signal comes with Leios’s testnet debut on June 23 and the mainnet activation of Van Rossem in the weeks that follow.
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