Cardano Foundation

Five ventures advancing DeFi and real-world asset tokenization have been selected to join the Spring ’26 Cardano Accelerator Program cohort. 🌐 Meet the cohort: • Toto Finance: Institutional infrastructure for tokenized commodities such as precious metals, energy, and gemstones. • Libertum: Tokenization stack enabling compliant issuance and lifecycle management of real-world assets across jurisdictions. • NOBON: Digital infrastructure for climate finance, streamlining due diligence and capital allocation to sustainable projects. • Colossus Digital: Institutional staking and custody platform supporting compliant asset management across 20+ blockchains. • The Mint: MiCA-aligned asset-referenced tokens backed 1:1 by verified physical gemstones. Through the Venture Hub, each participating team will receive technical mentorship, go-to-market support, and regulatory guidance, culminating in a Demo Day with investors and ecosystem partners. Welcome to the program. We look forward to supporting your growth over the coming months. Read more about the Spring 2026 cohort: https://lnkd.in/eiKBD3k7

Banks are no longer asking if they should engage with digital assets, but how. Tomorrow at FINANZ'26 in Zurich, Sandro Knöpfel, Global Business Development Lead at the Cardano Foundation, joins speakers from Sygnum Bank, PostFinance, and Crypto Finance Group to explore how financial institutions are building new services around Bitcoin. The session will examine what is already moving into production across custody, tokenization, and lending, and what it takes to integrate these capabilities into regulated environments in a way that delivers real value for banks and their clients. Sandro will also share how digital infrastructure like Cardano can support this shift by connecting traditional financial systems with blockchain networks. "New Banking Services Around Bitcoin" takes place on February 25 from 4:00 to 4:40 PM at FINANZ’26 in Zurich. We hope to see you there!

Still tracking participation in mandatory training with paper sign-in sheets? Every lost sheet is a potential compliance headache. As one of Brazil’s biggest companies, Petrobras has to onboard thousands of employees every year, and each staff member must complete a range of mandatory training courses as part of this process. Historically, relying on paper records meant constant disputes over signatures, lost files, and zero visibility on who truly attended the complete course. So the Petrobras team decided to take a new approach by implementing smart cards linked to the Cardano blockchain. Employees tap in and tap out, and each interaction generates a cryptographically signed record with an immutable timestamp. Can't get lost. Can't get altered. Can't be questioned. The Result? 400% more verifiable attendance data compared to manual tracking. Entry times, exit times, full participation records - employees today get instant email confirmations. Instructors receive daily summaries. Auditors independently verify all data. The best blockchain applications take something barely functional and make it work. "There is no trustworthy compliance without verifiable data. Cardano’s public blockchain enabled us to establish a new standard of transparency and accountability through Proof of Attendance (PoA)." - Marcelo A. F. Curi, Blockchain Solution Architect, Petrobras Read the full case study: https://lnkd.in/eP-4nZFz

Attending the Alpine Tech Forum for a few years has been an enriching experience. A big thank you to Alexander E. Brunner for creating a highly curated event that addresses real issues surrounding the future of Trust Infrastructure, AI, and the associated opportunities and threats, particularly for Europe. The exploration of the intersection between these topics—Defence Technology and Macro Politics—is not only impressive but also fascinating. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected through technology and economics, understanding this fine line is more important than ever.

Business is international. Organizational identity often is not. In the latest episode of the Let’s Talk Cardano podcast, Jeremy Firster (馮捷龍) speaks with Christoph Schneider, Kevin Griffin and Karla McKenna from Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) about the future of trusted organizational identity. They discuss: • How the Verifiable LEI (#vLEI) builds on the global LEI system • Why governance is essential for digital trust • How #KERI and #ACDC support high assurance credentials • Use cases across supply chains, trade finance, and digital assets • Why verifiable authenticity matters in the age of #AI driven fraud The episode also touches on why identity should sit outside any single system, and how digital infrastructure like Cardano, alongside tools such as Veridian, can support verification across networks. Listen to the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eZfgAbhv

Africa showed up to build. 🇰🇪 The Cardano Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, organized by Wada, marked the culmination of Cardano Summit 2025, bringing the momentum to a final focused environment in the Summit’s international tour. Hackathon teams from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Zambia presented MVPs. Founders met potential partners. Enterprises and organizations connected with developers to deploy blockchain in everyday scenarios. The conversations centered on identifying the right collaborators, and understanding how to use Cardano’s digital infrastructure to bring meaningful solutions to market. For businesses and organizations in the room, the value was clear: direct access to talent, live use cases, and a community actively building on-chain. From partnership development to networking and building on-chain, the talent and ambition in the room reflected a global Cardano ecosystem that is actively moving from ideas to implementation. Thank you to everyone who made this event so special. Here is a look back at what happened in Nairobi.

Strategic decisions about AI and blockchain require more than technical awareness. They require business context. The Cardano Academy's free AI & Blockchain for Business Leaders course covers how these technologies intersect in enterprise environments, where they complement each other, and what risks to account for before committing to any initiative. You will learn: • What #blockchain and #AI actually do, in practical terms • Where these technologies complement and improve each other • Common misconceptions and risks • How organizations are experimenting responsibly • Which new use cases the two can unlock when combined across a variety of industries This course is aimed at leaders, managers, and decision-makers who want clarity before making strategic or operational choices. Start here: https://lnkd.in/g-BKd2Tp