Cardano has opened the Leios scaling testnet to builders, stake pool operators and decentralized application teams, marking a new phase in the network’s long-running effort to expand throughput while preserving its security-focused design. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and CEO of Input Output, announced the testnet during a June 23 livestream, presenting it as a community testing environment intended to expose weaknesses before any mainnet deployment.
Cardano Opens Leios Scaling Testnet to Builders
The Leios testnet is being positioned as a prototype implementation derived from an IO research paper and developed over roughly the past year. In a video played during Hoskinson’s livestream, Carlos, a member of the Leios team, framed the release as a transition from research and prototyping into public experimentation. “Leios is the scaling solution for Cardano. We started one year ago from a research paper from IO research and brought it up to a prototype implementation.”
The testnet is designed for hands-on testing by the Cardano community rather than a controlled internal trial. Carlos said the goal is for participants to “test it, use it and break it,” with feedback expected to inform further iterations before a possible mainnet release. “Now we’re going to put this prototype implementation into the test net so that you the community can come and actually test it, use it and break it. We need SPOs, we need builders, we need DApps involved in this test net because you guys are the ones that are going to tell us how it fails, where it breaks, what fails.”
Hoskinson described the launch as a milestone for a research agenda he said dates back roughly a decade, linking the moment to Cardano’s original proof-of-stake ambitions. He thanked contributors across the ecosystem, naming Carlos, Duncan Coutts, Sebastian Nagel, Blink, TXPipe, Sundae, the Cardano Foundation and the Amaru team among those involved. “We put so much work into this. 10 years,” Hoskinson said, calling the testnet “a great moment” for the ecosystem.
Musashi Dojo Invites SPOs, DApps to Stress-Test
The testnet environment is branded as the Musashi Dojo, a name drawn from Japanese tradition and the historical swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. Carlos said the theme reflects Cardano’s long-standing cultural connection to Japan and the technical design of Leios , which he described as using “two blocks, one short block, one long block.” He linked that design to Musashi’s two-sword philosophy, saying: “Mousashi developed this style of fighting with two swords, one long, one short based on the idea that no single tool works well in every condition. Leiosworks with two blocks, one short block, one long block.”
The Musashi Dojo rollout is organized around five phases, named after chapters from Musashi’s Book of Five Rings. Carlos said each phase is intended to rehearse the protocol under progressively stricter conditions before mainnet consideration. “From the Mousashi Dojo, we want the community to take away the high confidence that we will need for going to mainet. Each phase is rehearsed under tighter and tighter conditions. Then mainet is when we step into the ring with everything we have learned.”
Hoskinson directed participants to Musashi.network, which he said hosts the testnet resources, including documentation and a faucet for stake pool operators and builders. He also placed Leios within a broader Cardano scaling roadmap, referencing future work including Paris for fast finality, Kronos for decoupling NTP, Cryptsinus for a privacy layer if desired, and Minotaur for multi-resource consensus. “So join the Mousashi dojo and train with us. Your feedback, your experimentation, even your adversarial attack will be critical for the success of Leios and Cardano,” Carlos said in the launch video.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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