Cardano’s governance action to lower the minimum pool fixed cost (minPoolCost) from 170 ada to 75 ada reached its deadline at 06:44:51 JST on October 12 with only 44.18% DRep Yes, and expired. The Constitutional Committee had assembled Yes votes from 5 of its 7 members the day before, but on the DRep side the action fell about 850 million ada short of the required 67%, so the fixed cost stays at 170 ada.
At the same deadline, the action to withdraw 11,787,063 ada for the OpenZeppelin tool stack also expired, with 4.00% DRep Yes. As if taking their place, a new action was submitted on October 15 to withdraw 22,000,000 ADA from the treasury, buy copper held in a U.S. warehouse and turn it into a token.
On the network, epoch 660 closed at 1,780,896 transactions, surpassing the record set by epoch 304 in November 2021 and becoming the highest on record. Midnight published its roadmap on October 14, placing the point at which Cardano SPOs can join Midnight as block producers in Q1 2027.
SIPO’s DRep abstained on the minPoolCost action and voted No on the OpenZeppelin action, and has not yet voted on the copper action. Our three pools’ No votes on the k poll, and our position relative to the saturation line, are disclosed in Chapter 7.
Executive Summary
- minPoolCost 75 ada action expired: final DRep Yes was 87 votes and 1,643,257,367 ada, or 44.18%. Votes cast No were 14.51%, and DReps who never voted held 37.66%. The Committee’s 4th and 5th votes arrived on October 11, meeting its requirement. On the record it is an expiry at the deadline.
- The OpenZeppelin action also expired: DRep Yes was 4.00%, and votes cast No were 50.80% of the denominator. Total treasury withdrawals did not move, and the remaining room under the 2026 limit is still 42,604,371 ada.
- A new 22,000,000 ADA action to buy copper: Toto Finance would receive the funds, hold COMEX-grade copper for 18–24 months, and return the sale proceeds to the treasury by month 36. The proposal itself states that the principal is not guaranteed, and that assuming fee ceilings are fully used and the exchange rate is unchanged, break-even requires copper to rise to about $10.06 per pound. The deadline is 06:44:51 JST on November 16.
- Epoch 660 closed at 1,780,896 transactions: 11.27 times epoch 659, and 13.65% above epoch 304’s 1,566,974, the highest on record. Total rewards rose 1.34% over the previous epoch, and the treasury’s increase grew by 61,173 ada. The next epoch, 661, had 253,314.
- On the k poll, Yes and No each gained seven pools: explicit Yes is 24 pools and 194,863,923 ada; No is 33 pools and 1,244,423,359 ada. The Yes ratio is 2.04%, and the deadline is 06:44:51 JST on October 22.
- SIPO’s first pool sits at 1.423 times the k=1000 saturation line: SIPO2 is about 1.59 million ada below the line.
- Node 11.2 did not ship in its expected week: the Hard Fork Working Group expected a pre-release in the week of October 12, but as of the morning of October 17 it has not been published. cardano-cli and the Leios prototype are moving into Dijkstra’s shape.
- Midnight’s roadmap: NIGHT rewards for block production are placed in Q4 2026, and NIGHT staking plus opening block production to Cardano SPOs in Q1 2027.
- A “High” advisory on the Midnight ledger: a flaw that could inflate tokens other than NIGHT, with the fixed version given as 8.1.2. There is no mention of exploitation.
- NIGHT listed on OKJ: on October 13, across exchange, retail sales, recurring purchases, and deposits/withdrawals.
- All four assets fell: ADA −5.99%, BTC −0.96%, ETH −2.55%, NIGHT −9.17%.
1. Market Pulse
Morning fixed-point readings from October 10 to October 17.
| Asset | 10/10 | 10/17 | Week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADA | $0.24 | $0.22563 | −5.99% |
| BTC | $82,527 | $81,736.8 | −0.96% |
| ETH | $2,482.30 | $2,419.00 | −2.55% |
| NIGHT | $0.045657 | $0.04147 | −9.17% |
All four assets fell this week, with NIGHT and ADA down the most. Last week the NIGHT readings came from different sources at the two ends of the week; this week both are derived from Cardano DEX prices, so they are aligned. Measured in ADA, NIGHT went from 0.190237 ADA to 0.183797 ADA, −3.39%.
Measured at epoch boundaries, ADA went from $0.25187719 (¥39.87) at 06:45 JST on October 12, when epoch 661 began, to $0.22545085 (¥35.63) at 06:45 JST on October 17, when epoch 662 began: −10.49%. The sampling times differ from the morning readings, so this does not match the weekly −5.99%.
We do not link price moves to the events covered in this issue. That includes the start of NIGHT trading on OKJ and the epoch 660 record.
The remaining network figures: across the boundary from epoch 660 to 661, the staking ratio rose from 56.49% to 56.76%, delegators fell by 342 to 1,333,489, and pools that produced blocks fell from 944 to 931. The treasury stands at 1,381,928,464 ada in epoch 662.
2. Epoch 660 Closes at 1,780,896
Epoch 660, which we reported last week as “1.08 million in three days,” closed at 06:44:51 JST on October 12 with 1,780,896 transactions. It landed almost exactly on the “about 1.79 million” pace we projected last week from the elapsed time.
| Epoch | Period (JST) | Blocks | Transactions | Per block | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 659 | 10/2 6:44 – 10/7 6:44 | 21,207 | 158,011 | 7.45 | 49,494.70 ada |
| 660 | 10/7 6:44 – 10/12 6:44 | 21,243 | 1,780,896 | 83.8 | 337,720.00 ada |
| 661 | 10/12 6:44 – 10/17 6:44 | 21,385 | 253,314 | 11.85 | 67,761.27 ada |
That is 11.27 times epoch 659’s transactions, carried in almost the same number of blocks. Fees were 6.82 times epoch 659.
The highest per-epoch count on record
The explorers AdaStat and Cexplorer announced epoch 660’s count as an all-time high. The previous record was 1,566,974 in epoch 304 in November 2021; epoch 660 exceeded it by 213,922 (13.65%).
The count was driven by HOSKY’s “Doggie Bowl,” covered last week: send 2 ADA and get HOSKY tokens back together with the minimum ADA needed to receive them. In its launch announcement, HOSKY wrote that it had come back to break the per-epoch record it had held for more than five years (Cardano epoch 660 sets an all-time high at 1.78 million transactions).
The following epoch, 661, had 253,314 transactions. That is 14.2% of epoch 660, but still 1.60 times the earlier epochs, which hovered around 150,000.
How the fees showed up in rewards and the treasury
Last week we wrote that epoch 660’s fees are added to the rewards pot, and that how much they add could be checked once rewards were final. Those rewards were finalized at the October 17 boundary.
| Epoch | Fees | Total rewards |
|---|---|---|
| 658 | 53,506.45 ada | 6,201,561.55 ada |
| 659 | 49,494.70 ada | 6,142,296.55 ada |
| 660 | 337,720.00 ada | 6,224,827.98 ada |
Total rewards for epoch 660 rose 82,531 ada (+1.34%) from 659. The 288,225 ada increase in fees was not added to rewards one-for-one. Cardano’s rewards pot combines the payout from reserves with fees; 20% of it goes to the treasury, and the rest is distributed according to pool performance. Whatever is not distributed returns to the reserves.
The treasury side shows the change in numbers too. The treasury’s increase at the boundary into epoch 661 was +3,608,981 ada, and at the boundary into epoch 662 it was +3,670,154 ada, a difference of 61,173 ada. That equals 21.2% of the increase in fees. What we can state is the arithmetic of this sequence.
SIPO’s three pools produced 109 blocks in epoch 660 (SIPO 52, SIPO2 29, SIPO3 28) and 105 blocks in epoch 661 (52, 29, 24). A block with many transactions is produced the same way as any other.
3. minPoolCost 75 ada Action Expires at 44.18% DRep Yes
Reduce minPoolCost to 75 ada stopped accepting votes at 06:44:51 JST on October 12 and was recorded as expired in epoch 661. The minimum pool fixed cost (minPoolCost) remains 170 ada.
| Category | Last issue (10/10) | Final |
|---|---|---|
| DRep Yes | 34.45% (76 votes, 1,281,325,258 ada) | 44.18% (87 votes, 1,643,257,367 ada) |
| DRep votes cast No | 32 votes, 517,623,497 ada | 37 votes, 539,517,216 ada (14.51%) |
| DRep Abstain (outside denominator) | 17 votes, 1,477,728,444 ada | 19 votes, 1,512,996,169 ada |
| DRep not voted | 1,784,357,894 ada | 1,400,735,296 ada (37.66%) |
| Committee | Yes 3, not voted 4 | Yes 5, not voted 2 |
In the final week, Yes gained 11 votes and about 361.93 million ada. Yes votes kept coming even in the last four-plus hours, at 02:03, 03:40, 05:07 and 05:33 JST on October 12. It still fell 848,745,818 ada short of 67%.
The Committee got there; the DReps did not
The Constitutional Committee recorded its 4th and 5th Yes votes at 18:50 and 20:34 JST on October 11, reaching the required 5 of 7. The action failed because of the shortfall on the DRep side.
Votes cast No were 14.51% of the denominator, about a third of the Yes share. DReps who never voted held 37.66% of voting power. No did not outweigh Yes; the deadline simply arrived before the threshold was reached, and on the record it remains an “expiry” (minPoolCost 75 ADA action expires at 44.18% DRep Yes).
The fixed-cost debate does not end here. As we wrote last week, the constitutional amendment CAP-12 has been revised in the direction of adding a “minimum pool margin,” introduced with Dijkstra as the replacement for the minimum pool cost, to the Constitution’s appendix.
Disclosure. SIPO’s DRep abstained on this action on September 15. All three of our pools declare a fixed cost of 340 ada, so the expiry has no mechanical effect on them.
4. The OpenZeppelin Action Also Expires; the Treasury Limit Is Unchanged
Withdraw 11,787,063 ada for the OpenZeppelin Stack administered by Intersect also expired at the same deadline.
| Category | Last issue (10/10) | Final |
|---|---|---|
| DRep Yes | 3.90% (15 votes, 169,525,021 ada) | 4.00% (16 votes, 171,849,824 ada) |
| DRep votes cast No | 82 votes, 2,024,470,932 ada | 94 votes, 2,180,840,538 ada (50.80%) |
| DRep Abstain (outside denominator) | 13 votes, 851,794,097 ada | 17 votes, 939,648,371 ada |
| DRep not voted | 2,015,245,043 ada | 1,804,167,317 ada |
| Committee | Yes 3, not voted 4 | Yes 5, not voted 2 |
The Committee reached five members here too, with the same two votes on October 11 as for minPoolCost. On the DRep side, votes cast No made up 50.80% of the denominator, a majority.
With both actions expired, total treasury withdrawals did not move. Withdrawals enacted since epoch 613 total 457,395,629 ada, leaving 42,604,371 ada under the 2026 limit of 500,000,000 ada.
Disclosure. SIPO’s DRep is a party to this action, having voted No on September 25 (SIPO DRep: No on the 11.78M ADA withdrawal for the OpenZeppelin stack).
5. A 22 Million ADA Treasury Action to Buy Copper
As if replacing the two actions that reached their deadline, one new treasury withdrawal was submitted at 10:01 JST on October 15: Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve | ₳22M RWA Tokenization.
What it asks for
The action’s abstract reads:
“The Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve requests a one-time ₳22,000,000 Treasury Withdrawal to Toto Finance Inc., U.S.-based recipient and accountable administrator, to acquire independently verified COMEX Grade 1 copper cathodes in a COMEX-approved U.S. warehouse and tokenize the metal as CuTT. One CuTT economically represents one verified pound of eligible physical copper”
The plan is to hold the copper for 18–24 months, sell it under a controlled procedure, and return 100% of realized net sale proceeds plus unused budgets to the treasury by month 36. The 22,000,000 ADA breaks down as follows.
| Use | Amount |
|---|---|
| Copper purchase | 14,724,409 ADA (66.93%) |
| Operations and assurance (warehouse, insurance, audits, legal, etc.; ceiling) | 3,533,859 ADA |
| Toto Finance technology development and project management (after milestone acceptance) | 2,640,000 ADA (12%) |
| Independent administration and oversight | 660,000 ADA (3%) |
| One-time execution | 441,732 ADA |
Risks the proposal states itself
The action’s text puts its own risks into numbers.
- Principal is not guaranteed: it states, “No original ADA principal, copper appreciation, token adoption or profit is guaranteed.”
- Break-even copper price: if fee ceilings are fully used, ADA/USD is unchanged, and the illustrative entry price is $6.73 per pound, it says about $10.06 is required for 22,000,000 ADA to break even.
- Where the token lives: the canonical CuTT is issued as an ERC-20 on Ethereum; the treasury-funded tranche is locked entirely in a bridge escrow, and on Cardano only the 1:1 bridged CuTT can move.
- Who is involved: it calls a U.S. PwC member firm “preferred but not engaged” for oversight, and states that “PwC and Intersect are NOT on-chain recipients, current custodians or confirmed project partners.” On the receiving wallet it writes, “A Toto-controlled receiving wallet is NOT independent escrow.”
The first two days
As of the morning of October 17, two days after submission, DRep Yes is 2 votes and 12,547,657 ada, and votes cast No are 16 votes and 154,987,311 ada. There are no Committee votes yet. The last votes are accepted at 06:44:51 JST on November 16.
Against the remaining 42,604,371 ada under the treasury limit, this action asks for 22,000,000 ADA. If it passed, roughly half the remaining room would be used (Cardano treasury action to buy copper with ₳22M goes to a vote).
SIPO’s DRep has not yet voted on this action.
6. The k Poll, Five Days to the Deadline
Should stakePoolTargetNum (k) be raised from 500 to 1000? (SPO poll) closes at 06:44:51 JST on October 22. This week Yes and No each gained seven pools.
| Category | Last issue (10/10) | This issue (10/17) |
|---|---|---|
| SPO explicit Yes | 17 pools, 67,978,699 ada | 24 pools, 194,863,923 ada |
| SPO explicit No | 26 pools, 1,005,266,980 ada | 33 pools, 1,244,423,359 ada |
| SPO not voted | 8,544,163,377 ada | 8,056,965,897 ada |
| SPO always abstain (outside denominator) | 610 pools, 11,596,679,562 ada | 618 pools, 11,950,391,600 ada |
| Committee | Yes 1, Abstain 1 | Yes 1, Abstain 1 |
SPO votes recorded this week are listed below. Delegated stake is each pool’s current value as fetched on the morning of October 17.
| Recorded (JST) | Pool | Vote | Stake (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 11, 18:08 | MDS | Yes | about 1.24M ada |
| October 12, 03:40 | STAT (AdaStat Pool) | Yes | about 45.52M ada |
| October 12, 06:14–06:15 | DIGI to DIGI6 (6 pools) | No | about 151.84M ada in total |
| October 12, 10:33 | ACL (4 pools) | Yes | about 78.46M ada in total |
| October 12, 22:39 | AID1 | Yes | about 1.59M ada |
| October 15, 20:25 | HAPPY | No | about 74.67M ada |
The six DIGI pools are all registered under the name “Digital Fortress” and were recorded within 31 seconds. The four ACL pools are registered as “A CardanoLand pool ACL” and were recorded within 36 seconds. Neither group attached a rationale, so we do not describe their reasons.
The votes that did attach rationales show views from both sides.
HAPPY (No): “I vote No as an SPO on raising k to 1000. I share the goal of more independent operators, but raising k doesn’t reach them. It cuts rewards for delegators in ~200 established pools and operators can just open more pools, as happened last time. Better-targeted measures exist.”
AID1 (Yes): “I support the direction of increasing k from 500 to 1000 as a means of promoting Cardano’s long-term decentralization.” “However, I do not consider 1000 to be necessarily the optimal value. A gradual adjustment, such as increasing k to 750, may also be a reasonable option.”
Distance to the decision
The decision rule declared in the action’s text is whether explicit Yes exceeds 50% of active voting stake, with registered stake that does not vote counting the same as No. The denominator is now 9,546,123,057 ada, and the Yes ratio is 2.04% (0.70% last issue). To pass 50%, explicit Yes needs about 4.58 billion ada more. About 8.06 billion ada has not voted.
No ÷ Yes narrowed from 14.79 times last issue to 6.39 times, because Yes grew 2.87-fold in the week while No grew 1.24-fold. The DRep columns are moving too, but the action’s text declares that DRep votes do not count toward this poll’s result.
7. SIPO’s Three Pools and the Saturation Line
This concerns SIPO’s own position, so we disclose the record and our interests together.
On October 7, SIPO voted No on this poll with all three pools, SIPO, SIPO2 and SIPO3, and abstained as a DRep. There are no new votes this week. The full rationale is at SIPO: No from three pools on the SPO poll to raise k to 1000. Its core is that the action’s own text states that, other things equal, “the total rewards pot per epoch does not change,” and our judgment that a change that only redistributes a fixed total does not grow Cardano.
This is a mechanical estimate: on-chain circulation of 36,810,458,522 ada on the morning of October 17, divided by k.
| k | Saturation point (circulation ÷ k) | SIPO’s three pools (live stake at the end of epoch 661) |
|---|---|---|
| 500 (current) | about 73,620,917 ada | all three below |
| 1000 (proposed) | about 36,810,459 ada | SIPO 52,390,191 ada = above (1.423×) / SIPO2 35,218,774 ada (0.957) / SIPO3 24,246,790 ada (0.659) |
SIPO’s first pool is above the k=1000 saturation line and would be disadvantaged if this change passed. SIPO2 gained about 360,000 ada in the week and is now about 1.59 million ada below the k=1000 line. SIPO’s No vote should be read as made with this effect on our own income in view.
Saturation caps the reward calculation; it does not affect eligibility to produce blocks. Delegators can check which side of the lines above their current pool sits on without waiting for the result.
8. Preparing for Dijkstra: Node 11.2 Is Not Out Yet
The plan and what happened
In the minutes of its October 13 meeting, Intersect’s Hard Fork Working Group wrote this about the next node, 11.2:
“Includes everything Dijkstra related except linear Leios” “Expected to be pre-released by the end of this week (week of 12th October)” “After the round of testing, its is expected to be promoted to mainnet ready release next week (week of 19th October)”
As of the morning of October 17, 11.2 does not appear among the releases or tags of IntersectMBO/cardano-node. The latest is still 11.1.3 from September 29. The plan has slipped by about a week, which makes it a point to watch next week. The same minutes describe 11.3, which includes Leios, as “few weeks away,” and report that protocol version 12 is expected to carry about 100 guardrails, with the first version of the script to check them expected the following week.
SPOs attended the meeting in numbers and, represented by Martin of ATADA, asked for the token metadata standard CIP-23 to be fully implemented in version 12. The minutes note that “Introducing full support for CIP-23 this late might delay the originally planned dates for protocol version 12,” and assign the IO development teams to size the work and its effect on the schedule.
The tools are taking Dijkstra’s shape
Ahead of the node itself, the surrounding tools are moving into line with Dijkstra.
- cardano-cli 11.3.1.0 (October 15) and 11.4.0.0 (October 17): add a command group for building Dijkstra-only “sub-transactions,” and
--direct-depositfor depositing ADA directly into registered accounts. Sub-transactions accept only Plutus V4 scripts. - Leios prototypes rc-2026w41 (October 12) and rc-2026w42 (October 17): both “require respin,” meaning they can neither talk to nor read the chain of earlier versions. In w42, endorser-block certification moves one slot earlier, aligned with CIP-164.
- Leios public testnet “Musashi Dojo”: at 21:00 JST on October 12, IOG announced it had entered Fire, the third of five phases. On October 15 a distributed load-testing day was held, with participating SPOs generating the load. No figures from the tests have been published yet (Leios Musashi Dojo starts load testing in its Fire phase).
- Ledger: the Ledger team’s October 14 update reports that the maximum script language for Dijkstra is now set to Plutus V4.
- Hydra: the cap on transactions per snapshot rose from 1,000 to 4,000. Essential Cardano’s October 16 weekly report, noting that the figures come from a local three-node test, says processing 24,000 minimal transfers fell from 37.04 to 13.50 seconds.
- Mithril 2642.0 (October 16, pre-release): signers and aggregators now read protocol parameters from the chain. It targets only the preview networks (Mithril 2642.0 has signers read protocol settings from the chain).
- Daedalus 11.5.0 (October 15): fixes gaps left after a partial Mithril sync, bumps the node to 11.1.3, and recommends that all users upgrade.
- Dingo: the Go node shipped eight versions from October 10 to 16. The v0.81.1 release notes include a security item, “harden DevNet keys and public API inputs,” and v0.83.1 fixes validation of the elected pool’s VRF key.
No revision to CAP-12 this week
For the constitutional amendment CAP-12, the author said last week that the remaining points would follow the next week, but the text was last updated on October 9 and consultation continues. Comments this week included one setting out that switching Leios off in an emergency would be treated as a change to a critical parameter, and one asking not to finalize the guardrail on the minimum pool cost until it is settled which stage of Dijkstra CIP-23 falls into.
9. Midnight’s Roadmap Puts SPO Block Production in Q1 2027
At 00:39 JST on October 14, Midnight published a roadmap on its official site, listing what it plans to deliver across seven areas in Q4 2026 and Q1 2027.
The area most directly relevant to SPOs is “Scale and Sovereignty.”
| Period | Item | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Q4 2026 | BABE staged migration | A phased move of consensus from the current Aura to BABE |
| Q4 2026 | Block production rewards | SPOs producing blocks begin earning NIGHT for that work |
| Q1 2027 | NIGHT staking | NIGHT holders can delegate to a stake pool and earn rewards |
| Q1 2027 | Block production opens to the community | Cardano stake pool operators can join Midnight as block producers |
| Q1 2027 | BABE migration to mainnet begins | BABE begins going live on mainnet |
In other areas, items such as “EVM NightMode,” which connects to Ethereum-style chains, private intents via offer files, and Passport SDK v1 are placed in Q4 2026, while the Collateral Warehouse and viewing keys for auditors and regulators are among the Q1 2027 items. The page does not give detailed specifications for each item. The roadmap is a plan, with timing given by quarter (Midnight roadmap: NIGHT staking in Q1 2027).
Disclosure. SIPO is an SPO running three Cardano pools, and if the opening of block production proceeds as planned, we could be among those eligible. SIPO is also a member of Midnight’s Nightforce ambassadors.
10. A New “High” Advisory on the Midnight Ledger
At 09:41 JST on October 15, a new security advisory, GHSA-vhp6-px6f-jv94, was published in the Midnight ledger repository. Its severity is “High,” and its title is “Non-canonical MPT path alias enables non-NIGHT token inflation.”
Put simply: if a non-canonical way of referring to the same location gets into a kind of table used inside the ledger (an MPT), a “phantom input” can be created that counts toward the balance during transaction validation but is skipped when the transaction is actually applied. The advisory says this allowed non-NIGHT unshielded tokens to be created without consuming a real input, and that the impact requires the existence of a non-NIGHT token type the attacker wants to inflate.
The patched version is given as ledger 8.1.2. As covered last week, mainnet node 1.0.400 already carries 8.1.3, and no new node release accompanies this advisory. It has no CVE number, and it says nothing about whether the flaw was actually exploited. The advisory we flagged last week, GHSA-wr7g-rr4v-jmj8, received no additions this week.
11. Midnight: A Keynote in Tokyo and Domestic Trading
- Midnight City: Tokyo (October 10): Charles Hoskinson introduced “Nightframe” in his keynote. The Midnight City account summarized it as “private, always-on programs that understand your intent.” He has published the keynote video on YouTube (Hoskinson presents Nightframe as the successor to smart contracts).
- NIGHT trading starts on OKJ (October 13): the Japanese exchange OKJ began handling NIGHT across four services: exchange, retail sales, recurring purchases, and deposits/withdrawals. Deposits and withdrawals use the Cardano chain (OKJ to start handling NIGHT on October 13).
- An event for Japanese enterprises (October 13): Midnight’s Japanese account reported hosting an event in Tokyo for Japanese companies.
- North Star, a DEX on Midnight: it executed a mainnet swap with dummy tokens on October 10 and reported processing 1,014 transactions on the first day of its beta on October 14. It does not handle NIGHT yet (North Star logs 1,014 transactions on its first beta day on Midnight).
- Transactions after deployment opened: the explorer Midnight Explorer says daily transactions went from 284 on October 1 to 26,178 on October 8 (Midnight transactions reach 20,000-plus a day after deployment opens).
- Improvement proposals numbered: on the morning of October 16, numbers were assigned to MIP-0031 on wallet message signing, MIP-0030 on operating custody accounts with ECDSA keys, and MIP-0032 and MPS-0049 on non-transferable credentials, among others. Receiving a number does not mean adoption (Midnight assigns numbers to three MIPs including message signing).
- For developers: the TypeScript library midnight-js has issued release candidates of 5.0.0, aimed at the move to ledger v9: rc.4 (October 9) and rc.5 (October 17).
- Investment and distributions: Zurich-based investment platform Eldora announced that the Midnight Foundation is joining as an investor (amount undisclosed). Atrium Lab ended its extra NIGHT distribution to users of its basket that delegates to several pools at once.
On October 15 Hoskinson wrote on X, “Working on something for Midnight that is pushing me to my limits. … [ANN] soon.” The details have not been announced.
12. Keys and Custody: Ledger, Trezor, and the Quantum Debate
- An unauthorized implant in a Ledger device: early on October 11 JST, Ledger said on its official support account on X that, while investigating loss of funds by users who bought products from the Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis, it found an unauthorized hardware implant in one affected device. Ledger says there is no sign its own systems were breached, and the investigation is focused on devices that went through that reseller (Ledger confirms an unauthorized implant in a device bought via CryptoBilis).
- Trezor Suite 26.10 defaults vote delegation to Abstain: from October 15, people newly staking ADA have their vote delegation set to “Abstain” by default. Everstake, the previous default, or any DRep can still be chosen. Existing delegations are unchanged (Trezor Suite 26.10 defaults ADA vote delegation to Abstain). From a DRep’s point of view, this changes the default destination of newly arriving delegation.
- Quantum computing and keys: on October 7, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake called on the industry to plan a “bunker mode,” a controlled migration of assets to addresses whose public keys are not yet exposed, and Vitalik Buterin and Hoskinson joined the debate (The bunker mode debate: how far can Cardano’s keys be protected?). Midnight’s roadmap includes “Nightstream,” a zero-knowledge proving infrastructure designed to resist quantum computing.
13. DeFi
- Minswap and FluidTokens: FluidTokens announced a joint X audio session with Minswap, “The merging,” at 18:00 JST on October 20. Neither company has yet spelled out what lies behind the two descriptions we reported last week, “merger” and “projects stay independent but teams are shared.” We continue not to call it a merger.
- Strike Finance and RealFi: the perpetuals exchange Strike announced that V2 passed 2 million trades in under a year, and on October 14 integrated RealFi yield into its liquidity vault. Hoskinson quoted this, writing that RealFi is “open for business through Strike.” SIPO, as a RealFi alpha ambassador, participates in RealFi’s SPO accelerator.
- Indigo and USDrf: a proposal to add RealFi’s stablecoin USDrf to iUSD’s peg stability mechanism went to a vote by INDY stakers.
- Surf and Optim: the lender Surf set a year-end target of 50 million ADA in deposits, and Optim opened a portal for OADA and other holders with a ten-week claim window.
- SecondFi: on asset recovery after the June incident, it says “Recovery has worked successfully for those users who have followed our instructions,” while warning about impersonators and scams. The official recovery tool is offered only on its own site.
- Cardano Card ends: EMURGO’s payment card ends on October 31 because its issuer, Wirex, is changing direction. Until then it works as usual (Cardano Card to end on October 31 after Wirex’s change of course).
We found no reports of new incidents in Cardano DeFi this week.
14. Organizations and People
- The Cardano Foundation looked back on TOKEN2049, with CEO Frederik Gregaard saying, “We leave Singapore with the token standard live, the identity layer independent, and the custody route set for March.” Cardano’s official account said Cardano native tokens are expected to become standard assets on Fireblocks by March 2027. The Foundation also noted that Reeve, which writes financial records onto the chain, is open source; announced a paper on PoS reserves co-authored with IOG (AFT 2026); and launched a “Research Exchange” starting October 19.
- Plutus maintenance moved from IO Labs to Midgard Labs. Cardano’s official account calls it the fifth core function moved to an independent team, after Daedalus, Mithril, ledger development and platform engineering.
- Mesh SDK published a draft action on October 15 to withdraw ₳600,000 from the treasury for 2026 maintenance, and is seeking feedback. It is not on-chain yet (Mesh SDK drafts a ₳600,000 treasury withdrawal for 2026 maintenance).
- The DRep Council is working on common standards for governance proposals.
- Draper University announced the first eight teams of the “Apex Growth Accelerator,” run with the Cardano Foundation.
- The Amaru team announced the year’s second node diversity workshop in London on November 12–13.
15. Risk Dimensions
- Governance (fixed cost).
minPoolCoststays at 170 ada. The fixed-cost debate is moving toward a minimum pool margin under CAP-12, but there are concerns about removing the minimum pool cost guardrail before it is settled which stage of Dijkstra CIP-23 falls into. - Treasury (a new withdrawal). The copper action is for 22,000,000 ADA; if passed, it would use about half of the 42,604,371 ada remaining under the 2026 limit. The proposal itself says there is no guarantee the principal comes back and lists ADA/USD, copper prices, custody, and bridge failures among the substantial risks.
- Pool economics (SIPO itself). SIPO’s first pool sits at 1.423 times the k=1000 saturation line, and SIPO2 is at 95.7% of it. SIPO is a party that voted No on the k poll with three pools.
- Operations (Cardano nodes). The 11.2 pre-release did not arrive in its expected week. Each Leios prototype requires a respin, and the new Mithril version changes how signers are configured. Both are worth checking before they reach mainnet.
- Operations (Midnight). The new advisory gives 8.1.2 as the patched version, but administrators of contracts that issue or hold non-NIGHT tokens should check whether the advisory’s conditions apply. Last week’s caution that “values already stored in contract state are not fixed” still stands.
- Key custody. The Ledger case is narrowed to devices that went through a specific reseller. Hardware wallets should be checked as having been bought through the manufacturer’s official channels.
- DeFi (the word “merging”). The Minswap and FluidTokens session is titled “The merging,” but no terms have been given. Whether deposited assets or contracts move will depend on a concrete announcement.
- Network (after the surge). Epoch 661 returned to 253,314 transactions. When the HOSKY campaign ended and how much it distributed have not been stated officially.
16. What to Watch Next Week
- The k poll deadline: 06:44:51 JST on October 22. How much of the roughly 8.06 billion ada not yet voted will move, and where the 2.04% Yes ratio ends up. Check the Info Action’s page on gov.tools.
- The cardano-node 11.2 pre-release: a week behind the Hard Fork Working Group’s expectation. Check the
IntersectMBO/cardano-nodereleases page and the next Hard Fork Working Group minutes. - The guardrail script for protocol version 12: the first version is expected “next week.” Check Intersect’s Cardano Upgrades documentation and the CAP-12 page on the CAP portal.
- Intersect Weekly Update #133: not yet published as of the morning of October 17. Whether it updates the node version distribution (last issue: “30% older than 11.1.2”). Check Intersect’s news page.
- Votes on the copper action: the deadline is 06:44:51 JST on November 16. The first week saw 2 Yes and 16 No. Whether the Committee’s first votes and rationales appear. Check the action’s page on gov.tools.
- Minswap and FluidTokens’ session “The merging”: 18:00 JST on October 20. Whether changes for users are spelled out. Check @FluidTokens and @MinswapDEX on X.
- Cardano R&D session: 23:00 JST on October 22. Peras voting certificates and Mithril bridge security are on the agenda. Check IOG’s announcement on X.
- Midgard Labs meetups: October 23 (Tokyo) and 24 (Osaka). Check the announcement on X by Midgard Labs COO Dave Dionisio.
- Hoskinson’s “[ANN] soon”: what the Midnight announcement is. Check @IOHK_Charles and @MidnightNtwrk on X.
- Cardano Card ends: October 31. Check @cardano_card on X.
Conclusion
The two actions we have followed since earlier issues both expired on the morning of October 12. minPoolCost nearly quadrupled its Yes support in three weeks, and the Committee assembled the five members it needed, but the DRep side fell about 850 million ada short of 67%. Votes cast No were 14.51%, and DReps who never cast a vote held 37.66%. What decided the outcome was less the size of the opposition than the votes that did not arrive before the deadline. The fixed-cost debate has moved on to the minimum pool margin in CAP-12.
In the treasury, a new question took their place: an action to buy copper with 22,000,000 ADA, tokenize it, and return the sale proceeds within three years. The proposal itself sets out in numbers that the principal is not guaranteed and what copper price is needed to break even. DReps will decide by November 16 how far the treasury should go in funding a demonstration of real-world asset tokenization.
On the network, epoch 660 closed at 1,780,896 transactions, surpassing a five-year-old record. The jump in fees shows up in numbers in both total rewards and the treasury’s increase. The following epoch returned to around 250,000.
Midnight’s roadmap places the opening of block production to Cardano SPOs in Q1 2027. For Cardano SPOs, Midnight is moving from something to watch toward something to consider joining. Next week, the k poll deadline and the fate of the delayed node 11.2 are the first things to check.
References
Where the text refers to SIPO’s own articles, the links are given in place. The primary sources are below.
- Koios REST API (epoch info, rewards and treasury, action status, vote timestamps, pool stake, circulation): https://api.koios.rest/api/v1
- Cardano governance actions: https://gov.tools/governance_actions
Reduce minPoolCost to 75 ada: https://gov.tools/governance_actions/75e7882a8ef2bc39517bffbfb654e89f525def5a8364d81e11fc5facafc6dd9b#0- OpenZeppelin withdrawal action: https://gov.tools/governance_actions/418df5986f50547ec4a709f1a5bce6b850753ad6614c873386b7c953fee84a9f#0
- Committee member (Eastern Cardano Council) rationale (minPoolCost): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Eastern-Cardano-Council/ga-rationales-2025/refs/heads/main/ga157/ga157-rationale.jsonld
- Copper action (Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve): https://gov.tools/governance_actions/6eddf4f1dbad06f329aa69743559c4930b7b689f16c073061d228d9c6613d19c#0
- Copper action metadata: https://totofinance.com/cardano-treasury-proposal-strategic-tokenized-copper-reserve/data.jsonld
- Copper action proposal (PDF): https://totofinance.com/cardano-treasury-proposal-strategic-tokenized-copper-reserve/Cardano_Toto-Finance_Tokenized_Copper_CuTT_Treasury_Proposal.pdf
- k SPO poll (vote status): https://gov.tools/governance_actions/f6fd3678f12edc58dd8739560149fcdb0b8b6fc77a5f303d49c87c74d1fccb4c#0
- k SPO poll action text: https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/bafkreia3u74dgyvg5v3u7wxwip44wwqzyhynqqm4wzyhkkwevaiynlihnm
- HAPPY rationale (k poll): https://black-obedient-smelt-300.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/bafkreiglxrmnuj77ygzuse24urt76cr4wvh6mcfulmho2jdkvonttuxaiy
- AID1 rationale (k poll): https://ipfs.blockfrost.dev/ipfs/QmSBzRT2RCK8pXauTURjgbyQHpkHMCBygTv5D8vMxgtHpr
- HOSKY record announcement (October 14): https://x.com/hoskytoken/status/2110337812197515703
- Cexplorer record announcement: https://x.com/cexplorer_io/status/2109537384765206553
- Hard Fork Working Group minutes (October 13): https://cardanoupgrades.docs.intersectmbo.org/general/hard-fork-working-group-meeting-minutes/13th-october-2026
- Essential Cardano weekly development report (2026-10-16): https://www.essentialcardano.io/development-update/weekly-development-report-2026-10-16
- Ledger team update (October 14): https://updates.cardano.intersectmbo.org/2026-10-14-ledger
- cardano-cli 11.3.1.0: https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-cli/releases/tag/cardano-cli-11.3.1.0
- cardano-cli 11.4.0.0: https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-cli/releases/tag/cardano-cli-11.4.0.0
- Leios prototype rc-2026w42: https://github.com/input-output-hk/ouroboros-leios/releases/tag/rc-2026w42
- IOG’s Musashi Dojo announcement: https://x.com/IOGroup/status/2109615074163974342
- Mithril 2642.0: https://github.com/input-output-hk/mithril/releases/tag/2642.0
- Daedalus 11.5.0: https://github.com/input-output-hk/daedalus/releases/tag/11.5.0
- Dingo releases: https://github.com/blinklabs-io/dingo/releases
- CAP-12 (CAP portal): https://cap-portal-api.onrender.com/proposals/12
- Midnight roadmap: https://midnight.network/roadmap
- Midnight’s roadmap announcement: https://x.com/MidnightNtwrk/status/2110032576517976405
- Midnight security advisory GHSA-vhp6-px6f-jv94: https://github.com/midnightntwrk/midnight-ledger/security/advisories/GHSA-vhp6-px6f-jv94
- Midnight improvement proposals repository: https://github.com/midnightntwrk/midnight-improvement-proposals
- Hoskinson’s keynote video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyrt2fNAWQ4
- Hoskinson’s post (October 15): https://x.com/IOHK_Charles/status/2110545654431043760
- OKJ’s NIGHT listing announcement: https://x.com/OKCoinJapan/status/2108817051620163760
- North Star beta day-one announcement: https://x.com/NorthStarDEX/status/2110272218819432867
- Ledger Support announcement: https://x.com/Ledger_Support/status/2108551100613714002
- Trezor Suite 26.10 (post by Tomáš Klíma): https://x.com/tomasklim/status/2110619797822325085
- FluidTokens’ “The merging” announcement: https://x.com/FluidTokens/status/2109633423899783330
- Strike Finance and RealFi: https://x.com/strikeperps/status/2110053214745972805
- SecondFi announcement (October 12): https://x.com/secondfiapp/status/2109479564762321171
- Cardano Card discontinuation: https://x.com/cardano_card/status/2109868143032361378
- Cardano Foundation’s TOKEN2049 recap: https://x.com/Cardano_CF/status/2109932823469506622
- Cardano’s Fireblocks announcement: https://x.com/Cardano/status/2111087376764211613
- Cardano’s Plutus handover announcement: https://x.com/Cardano/status/2110769938755420374
- Mesh draft announcement: https://x.com/meshsdk/status/2110631605593309581
- Amaru workshop announcement: https://x.com/Amaru_Cardano/status/2111058296450789848
- IOG R&D session announcement: https://x.com/IOGroup/status/2110717327805153283
- Morning fixed values (ADA / BTC / ETH / NIGHT): https://www.coingecko.com
- Weekly Brief #27: https://sipo.tokyo/language/en/weekly-brief-27-en/
Transparency Notes
- Final votes on the actions: final epoch 661 values fetched from Koios at 07:16 JST on October 17. The
minPoolCostdenominator is Yes 1,643,257,367 ada plus the stake counting as No (votes cast No, always no confidence, not voted) of 2,076,150,372 ada, or 3,719,407,739 ada. 44.18% is Yes ÷ denominator; 14.51% is votes cast No of 539,517,216 ada ÷ denominator; 37.66% is not-voted 1,400,735,296 ada ÷ denominator; the 848,745,818 ada shortfall is 0.67 × denominator − Yes. - OpenZeppelin’s 50.80%: votes cast No of 2,180,840,538 ada divided by the denominator of 4,292,755,538 ada.
- How we state “No X%”: the No percentage returned by the public API includes not-voted and “always no confidence” stake. Percentages of No in the text are limited to votes actually cast No divided by the denominator.
- Expiry versus rejection: both actions are recorded on-chain as “expired” (epoch 661) and were removed in epoch 662. There is no “rejected” state on-chain.
- Committee votes: we give the recording times (18:50:31 and 20:34:05 JST on October 11) and do not name individual members.
- Epoch 660 ratios: 11.27× is 1,780,896 ÷ 158,011; the fee ratio of 6.82× is 337,720.00 ÷ 49,494.70; the difference from epoch 304 is 1,780,896 − 1,566,974 = 213,922 (13.65%). We checked epoch 304’s count against Koios epoch data and the AdaStat and Cexplorer announcements. Cardano PRIME has quoted the fee estimate given in SIPO’s October 13 article.
- Rewards and treasury: total rewards are the values in Koios epoch data. Treasury increases are differences in each epoch’s treasury balance; 61,173 ada is 3,670,153.74 − 3,608,980.68. The 21.2% of the fee increase is the arithmetic 61,173 ÷ 288,225, not a separately verified breakdown.
- Copper action: the abstract, breakdown and break-even figure (about $10.06 per pound) come from the action’s metadata. The break-even is the proposal’s own estimate under the stated assumptions of fully used fee ceilings, unchanged ADA/USD and an illustrative entry price of $6.73. “Roughly half” of the remaining room is the arithmetic 22,000,000 ÷ 42,604,371.
- k poll denominator and Yes ratio: Yes of 194,863,923 ada plus the 9,351,259,134 ada counting as No gives a denominator of 9,546,123,057 ada and a Yes ratio of 2.04%. Explicit abstentions and the 618 “always abstain” pools are excluded from the denominator, as the action’s text declares.
- Per-pool stake: the values in Chapter 6’s table are each pool’s active stake for the current epoch, fetched on the morning of October 17, via a different path from the action’s tallies, hence “about.” For the DIGI and ACL groups we give registered pool names only, not who operates them or why they voted.
- Saturation estimate: a mechanical estimate dividing on-chain circulation of 36,810,458,522 ada on the morning of October 17 by k. SIPO’s three pools are live stake fetched right after epoch 661 ended.
- SIPO’s interests: on the k poll, that we voted No with three pools and abstained as a DRep and that our first pool is above the k=1000 saturation line; on
minPoolCost, that all three pools declare a 340 ada fixed cost, so there is no mechanical effect, and that our DRep abstained; on OpenZeppelin, that our DRep voted No; on the copper action, that our DRep has not yet voted; on Midnight, that as a Cardano SPO we could be eligible for the opening of block production and that we are members of the Nightforce ambassadors; and on RealFi, that as an alpha ambassador we participate in the SPO accelerator, are all disclosed in the text. - Market sampling times: October 10 values were taken at 06:35:12 and October 17 values at 06:35:02 JST as morning fixed-point readings. October 10’s ADA was recorded to two decimal places ($0.24), and the weekly −5.99% is calculated from that value. CoinGecko’s seven-day daily series (09:00 JST October 10 → 07:23 JST October 17) shows ADA −7.01% and NIGHT −8.06%, with different reference times and series. The epoch-boundary ADA (−10.49%) uses values at the exact boundary times.
- NIGHT values: this week both ends are derived from Cardano DEX prices, so the sources match and we show the weekly change.
- Use of “security”: Midnight’s advisory is published as a GitHub security advisory with “High” severity. cardano-node had no release this week. For Dingo we use the word only to the extent the v0.81.1 release notes contain it.
- What we did not write: when the HOSKY campaign ended and how much it distributed (not stated officially), results of the Musashi Dojo load tests (no figures published), a verbatim account of Hoskinson’s keynote (we have not verified a transcript), the Midnight Foundation joining the Quantum Alliance (we could not confirm an announcement by the Foundation itself), terms of the Minswap–FluidTokens integration, and DReps’ estimates and reasons for or against the copper action (we limited this issue to the proposal’s own statements).
- Price and events: not linked.
This is not investment advice. For information and research purposes only.
