IO & VacuumLabs: Enhancing Plutus - Performance, Correctness, and Usability
Treasury withdrawal: Pays ADA out of the Cardano treasury.
- Status
- Enacted: Approved and in effect.
- Proposed
- 22 Apr 2026, in epoch 626
- Amount
- ₳11,877,575
- Action ID
- gov_action1w0shrfxqwv95kk0v4cn34wylz25a2cmqkq5jpc0e2yrahhqava3qvczhx6t
Votes
- DReps: 71.6% yes, 67% needed, threshold reached, 181 Yes · 32 No · 24 Abstain.
- Stake pools: do not vote on this action.
- Constitutional Committee: 100% yes.
Projects it pays for
Abstract
**Proposal as pdf: [https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=Qmd7G7L6xinunTLU9JorPLYyFCLGRarXEn7RngdNYgNH3B](https://ipnso-com.ipns.dweb.link/?cid=Qmd7G7L6xinunTLU9JorPLYyFCLGRarXEn7RngdNYgNH3B)**
This proposal strengthens Cardano’s smart contract platform across three critical and closely connected areas: language capabilities, formal correctness, and developer experience. It funds targeted expansion to the Plutus language with new syntactic forms and new primitives to reduce script costs, improve expressiveness, and unlock more efficient contract patterns; formal specification, conformance testing, and structured security review to support correctness as node diversity grows; and a better compiler and tooling experience that lowers setup friction, improves error reporting, and makes smart contract development more accessible. Together, these workstreams make Plutus cheaper to use, more trustworthy to build on, and easier for developers to adopt, helping Cardano support a broader range of applications while also providing stronger foundations for alternative node implementations and other ecosystem tooling.
This is a technical collaboration with Input Output and VacuumLabs, distributing Plutus stewardship across expert teams. Intersect administers funds via milestone-based smart contracts with independent oversight. All unspent funds return to the Treasury.
**Treasury Ask:** ₳11,877,575