Cardano Had Its Biggest Week in Years, But ADA Price Fails To Rally

The Cardano ecosystem recorded several major developments over the past week. Most notably, the launch of the Leios public testnet led activity. There were also upcoming decentralized finance (DeFi) initiatives, renewed ecosystem funding, and an application-level security incident involving the SecondFi wallet.

Here’s what happened in the Cardano ecosystem in the last week:

Leios Public Testnet Goes Live

Cardano officially launched the public testnet for Leios, its next-generation scaling protocol, on June 23. Named Musashi Dojo after the legendary samurai Miyamoto Musashi, the testnet marks one of the network’s most known technical milestones in years. Moreover, the upgrade is seen as a major boost to Cardano’s transaction throughput by up to 65X. A mainnet hard fork is targeted for November 2026.

The rollout is structured into five phases: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void. These will progressively test the protocol from initial design validation to adversarial testing before mainnet deployment. As a result, the testnet allows stake pool operators (SPOs) to deploy Leios-enabled block producers. Developers can also begin testing decentralized applications (DApps), wallets, and infrastructure ahead of the upgrade.

RealFi Testnet Set for July Launch

Input Output Global (IOG) also announced that Phase 1 of its RealFi testnet will launch on July 6.

The project aims to improve capital efficiency by enabling stablecoins to generate yield instead of remaining idle. The initiative represents IOG’s latest effort to expand decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases within the Cardano ecosystem.

Project Catalyst Returns with 2 Million ADA

Cardano’s community funding program, Project Catalyst, will return in August with a 2 million ADA grant pool.

The upcoming funding round will prioritize projects building around technologies such as Pyth, Brale, stablecoins, programmable tokens, and on-chain identity. This will provide fresh capital for developers and ecosystem builders.

AlphaGrowth Proposes Treasury-Funded DeFi Initiative

Meanwhile, AlphaGrowth unveiled PRIME, a proposal with a vision to accelerate DeFi adoption on Cardano.

The firm plans to request 120 million ADA from the Cardano treasury to fund the initiative. It is also showcasing its previous work with major blockchain ecosystems including Compound, Uniswap, and Arbitrum. Notably, it says it helped support more than $1 billion in total value locked (TVL).

SecondFi Exploit Prompts Security Reminder

The week also saw a security incident involving SecondFi, formerly known as the Yoroi wallet. A vulnerability reportedly resulted in the theft of approximately 16 million ADA.

SecondFi stated that affected users will be fully compensated and advised users to follow updates through its official channels.

Addressing concerns, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson emphasized that the blockchain itself was not compromised. He stated that Cardano’s protocol, cryptography, and core infrastructure remain secure. 

He described the exploit as an isolated application-level issue rather than a network-wide vulnerability.

Cardano’s native token ADA traded at $0.1439, declining 0.8% over the past 24 hours despite a series of ecosystem developments.