Cardano’s Leios 6x scaling breakthrough comes with a much harder ADA problem

Cardano’s Leios upgrade has demonstrated sixfold throughput gains, but staking economics still depend on paying users.The scaling protocol peaked at 26.8 transaction kilobytes per second during its first public testnet phase, compared with a 4.51 TxkB/s ceiling for Cardano’s existing Ouroboros Praos system, according to the network developer Input Output.In the stable final days of the 41-day test, Leios carried 54% of traffic reaching the chain and processed 18 times the transaction count seen on Cardano mainnet over the comparable period. The traffic, however, was artificially generated to stress the system rather than produced by users paying to transact.That distinction is becoming increasingly important for ADA holders.Cardano’s staking rewards come from a combination of transaction fees and releases from its remaining ADA reserve. The reserve contribution declines over time, leaving network activity to shoulder more of the cost of rewarding stake pool operators and delegators.Leios is designed to remove the throughput ceiling that could otherwise prevent Cardano from generating enough transaction fees to make that transition. Its specification explicitly links greater capacit...