Cardano plans to invest $30 million in building core infrastructure to inject critical Liquidity for Decentralized Finance development.

Cardano is planning to inject critical liquidity into its long-standing weak DeFi infrastructure through a fund worth approximately $30 million. According to a proposal submitted on November 27, Cardano hopes to utilize 70 million ADA to introduce top stablecoins, accomplice service providers, cross-chain bridges, pricing Oracle Machines, and institutional-grade analytical tools to establish a real economic foundation for the network before 2026.

This proposal is jointly promoted by Input Output, EMURGO, the Cardano Foundation, Intersect, and the Midnight Foundation, showcasing unprecedented ecosystem collaboration. The core objective behind it is clear: to fill the infrastructure gap that has affected Cardano's development over the years.

Currently, the DeFi scale of Cardano is still limited. DefiLlama data shows that the network's TVL is only about 248 million USD, with the stablecoin scale being about 40 million USD, which is a huge gap compared to Ethereum's 170 billion USD stablecoin volume. The lack of deep liquidity pools, stablecoin reserves, and institutional tools makes it difficult for Cardano to achieve network effects.

Recently, Cardano experienced a brief chain split event, raising further questions about its technical maturity and highlighting the urgent need for enterprise-level infrastructure such as real-time monitoring and security guarantees. The new fund will adopt a systematic vendor introduction mechanism, including audits, milestones, and SLAs, to avoid the efficiency issues caused by past fragmented collaborations.

Nevertheless, Cardano founder Hoskinson pointed out that the core issue of DeFi growth is not merely the lack of stablecoins, but rather insufficient user participation—many ADA holders choose to stake but participate little in lending and providing liquidity. He believes that Cardano needs to address the liquidity cycle problem of “which came first, the chicken or the egg,” and promote interoperability with Bitcoin and the integration of the Midnight privacy network to attract real trading volume.

2026 will be a critical juncture to test the effectiveness of the new budget. If mainstream stablecoins successfully enter and gain support from market makers, the scale of Cardano's stablecoin is expected to rapidly expand from $40 million to several hundred million dollars, with TVL potentially increasing to the $500 million level. Cross-chain bridges, custodial services, and Oracle Machines will further drive RWA, lending, and institutional capital entry.

Overall, this $30 million fund will be a key test for whether Cardano can truly step into the mainstream Decentralized Finance competition.