Cardano Leios testnet shows 6x scaling but faces economic hurdles
Cardano (ADA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
Cardano’s Leios upgrade has demonstrated a sixfold increase in throughput during its first public testnet, reaching 26.8 transaction kilobytes per second (TxkB/s) compared to the 4.51 TxkB/s limit of the existing Ouroboros Praos system, according to cvj.ai. The 41-day test produced over 127,000 blocks and announced approximately 30,000 Endorser Blocks, with 63 stake pools registering during the phase. In stable final days, Leios carried 54% of traffic and processed 18 times the transaction count seen on Cardano mainnet over a comparable period.
However, this traffic was artificially generated to stress the system rather than coming from users paying to transact. The network’s staking rewards rely on a mix of transaction fees and releases from the remaining ADA reserve, which declines over time. Leios aims to remove the throughput ceiling to ensure enough transaction fees can replace these diminishing reserve contributions.
A cost analysis models a 43% decline in reserve contributions by 2029, leaving 20.64 million ADA monthly to be replaced by fees. Input Output stated that none of the implementation issues, including memory leaks and crashes, exposed a flaw in the underlying Leios protocol. The project is now entering the Water phase of its public testnet, with a goal to make Leios mainnet-ready by the end of 2026.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ADA, measured when this story was written up on 8 September 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ADA is trading at $0.2205 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 59.9% and a 4-hour buy ratio of 56.4%, indicating strong short-term buying pressure. This contrasts with the 24-hour buy ratio of 48.4%, suggesting that recent buying intensity has increased compared to the broader daily trend. Volume deltas show positive inflows of $1,773,695 over the last hour and $1,931,979 over four hours, while the 24-hour delta is negative at -$1,188,754. The cumulative volume delta (CVD) for the 24-hour period closed at +$2,086,228, reflecting net buying over the day despite the negative delta figure. Net buying occurred for 14 out of the last 24 hours, with a total spot volume of $38,349,130 and 179,700 trades recorded.
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.
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, ADA saw a 7-day average buy ratio of 49.3%, with the latest day showing a slight dip of 0.9 points against that average. Trading volume was 1.24 times the average, while the price increased by 11.5% over eight days. However, the 8-day total volume delta was -$2,130,848, indicating that despite price gains, net selling pressure exceeded buying over that longer period. Only three of the seven days in the preceding week saw net buying, highlighting that this recent surge in short-term buying is a deviation from the weekly norm. The current 1-hour buy ratio of 59.9% is notably higher than the weekly average of 49.3%, signaling a temporary shift toward bullish sentiment.