Cardano Leios Testnet Hits 6x Throughput Boost
Cardano (ADA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that Cardano’s Ouroboros Leios testnet achieved a sixfold increase in throughput during its first public trial. The 41-day MusashiNet phase demonstrated that Leios handled 54% of total chain traffic on stable days, processing 18 times more transactions than real mainnet levels. This capacity gain was achieved by creating endorser blocks between Praos blocks, which validate in parallel before a final certificate is accepted.
Developers resolved all discovered issues through weekly public releases, confirming the problems lay in the code rather than the underlying protocol. A red team tested the network without threatening the safety of the Praos layer, with performance falling in line with stake involvement. Leios was merged as CIP 164 on January 6, 2026, following research presented at Crypto 2025.
The upgrade aims to address block space limits that affect DeFi trades and liquidations during high demand. Currently, Cardano lacks a separate fee lane for differential pricing, making this speed improvement crucial for handling surges. The project’s next Water phase is live, featuring a rewards program for stake pool operators.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ADA, measured when this story was written up on 28 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ADA trades at $0.2138 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 41.2%, indicating short-term selling pressure, while the 4-hour ratio sits at 51.5%, suggesting balanced activity over a slightly longer timeframe. The 24-hour buy ratio is 48.5%, showing that buying and selling are nearly equal over the full day. Volume delta reflects this balance, with a negative $341,907 in the last hour and a positive $67,596 over four hours, though the 24-hour delta remains negative at -$790,959. Cumulative Volume Delta closed at -$823,203, indicating that sellers have dominated the total volume over the day. Net buying occurred for only 12 of the last 24 hours, highlighting inconsistent buyer commitment. Spot volume reached $25,975,849 across 176,427 trades, showing active but contested liquidity.
The latest daily buy ratio of 45.6% sits at the 5th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.2% - among the weakest buying days it has had.
Twenty-four hours later
What ADA did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ADA, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the 7-day average buy ratio was 49.5%, with the latest day showing a slight 1.0 point decrease from that average. Volume traded at 0.52 times the weekly average, indicating significantly lower activity than usual. Only 2 of the past 7 days saw net buying, contrasting with the mixed signals seen in the shorter timeframes. The price rose 7.4% over the 8-day period, supported by a total volume delta of +$589,355. This recent upward price action occurred despite the current day’s lower volume and negative short-term delta, suggesting the weekly trend remains positive despite today’s consolidation.