The ecosystem has reached a milestone of 2,014 projects, while applications are being prepared for .ada and .cardano gTLDs. Wanchain has launched a bridge to Sonic, and technical progress continues with Mithril's work on incremental snapshots and configuration decentralization. Furthermore, committee election voting is opening for the community, and Project Catalyst Fund15 is set to launch.

A blog post by Kris Bennett introduces Ouroboros Phalanx, an extension of the Ouroboros Praos consensus protocol. Phalanx strengthens Cardano's security by using verifiable delay functions (VDFs) to make randomness "grinding attacks" economically infeasible. This enhancement not only deters adversaries but also improves network performance, reducing transaction settlement times.

Intersect announced that protocol parameter updates proposed by the Technical Steering Committee have entered the Preview testnet. These changes, which include increasing the block size to 128KB and raising Plutus script memory units per transaction to 20M, are designed to enhance network throughput and support more complex DeFi applications on Cardano.

The development report highlights the Hydra team's release of version 1.0.0. The consensus team advanced the Leios CIP, while the performance team benchmarked node v.10.6 and the LSM-tree backend. The Plutus team finalized the implementation of CIP-0153, introducing the Value built-in type. In the ecosystem, Project Catalyst Fund14 voting concluded, and the Cardano Foundation launched its Summit 2025 PR campaign.

The ecosystem has reached 114.56 million transactions and an increase in active DReps, while the Asia tour concluded in Tokyo. Yoroi v6.0 launched, integrating DexHunter and Minswap. Additionally, Midnight Network partnered with CSWAP for privacy-first DeFi solutions, and the Hydra-node v1.0.0 pre-release is now available.

Progress continues on CIP-112 and features for the next intra-era hard fork. The first fully community-elected constitutional committee is now in place, and the Mithril team has updated the DMQ protocol CIP. Additionally, Yoroi Extension v.5.13.0 has been released, alongside new partnerships for Sundial Protocol and Midnight Network.

The consensus team is auditing the KES agent and refactoring the hard fork combinator for Peras-awareness. The Plutus team is enabling sums-of-products and built-in functions for the upcoming intra-era hard fork. Meanwhile, IOG and zkFold have partnered for a trustless ETH-Cardano bridge, and Minswap's "Wen" token generator is now live.

The consensus team drafting an architectural design for Leios (CIP-0164). The Plutus team progressed on implementing the Value built-in type (CIP-0153) and merged multi-scalar multiplication primitives for the next hard fork. In scaling, the Mithril team created a new pre-release, supported Cardano node v.10.5.1, and completed a SNARK proving circuit prototype. IOG also kicked off its 2025 Asia tour.

In a "Let's Talk Cardano" episode summary the Cardano Foundation's Veridian digital identity platform was explored. Authored by Laura Mattiucci, the post details how Veridian, built on Cardano and the KERI protocol, tackles digital trust issues. It features quantum-resistant key management and decouples identity from public keys for interoperability, using the blockchain as a root of trust for its global security monitoring service.

The ledger team's progress on CIP-112 and features for the next intra-era hard fork. A major Voltaire milestone was reached with the first fully community-elected constitutional committee now in place. In scaling, the Mithril team updated the DMQ protocol CIP. Ecosystem news includes the release of Yoroi Extension v.5.13.0 and new partnerships for Sundial Protocol and Midnight Network.