Cardano’s proposal pipeline is moving several items at once, with new and active Cardano Improvement Proposals and Cardano Problem Statements focused on post-quantum security, transaction structure and developer tooling.
The Cardano Community account said in a Community Digest that CIP-0178, which proposes a merkle root of transactions in the block header, and CPS-0030, described as a quantum-secure settlement layer, are in active community feedback. It also highlighted two newer items: CIP-0197, post-quantum ZK signatures for HD wallets, and CPS-0034, which targets Plutus Core conformance testing.
Security proposals sit alongside developer-facing changes
The mix of proposals suggests Cardano is working on more than one layer of its stack at the same time. Some items are aimed at security assumptions that could matter over a longer horizon, while others focus on the consistency and testability of smart contract tooling.
CIP-0197 is framed around post-quantum signatures for wallets, while CPS-0030 points to a broader settlement-layer question. CPS-0034, by contrast, is about conformance testing for Plutus Core, which would affect how reliably developers can expect the language to behave across implementations.
That combination matters because protocol maturity is often less about a single upgrade than about whether security, testing and developer tooling evolve together. Cardano’s latest set of proposals suggests those threads are being developed in parallel rather than in isolation.
Community review remains the gate before adoption
The proposals are still in the community review and feedback stage, so they should be read as part of Cardano’s governance process rather than as completed changes. The digest also points to finalized items elsewhere in the pipeline, showing that the system continues to move both early-stage ideas and more mature proposals through the same review structure.
The clearest signal is that Cardano is continuing to use its proposal process to surface long-horizon security work and incremental developer tooling changes at the same time. The practical outcome will depend on how each proposal develops through review, but the current snapshot shows an active queue rather than a single isolated update.