After months of work, we’re reaching another major milestone in the Cardano Foundation’s roadmap and releasing the Programmable Tokens Platform. This will be the key to unlocking tokenization and further growth of stablecoins on Cardano.

The platform provides an open-source standard for programmable tokens on Cardano and comes with a live preview environment. Referred to as Cardano Improvement Proposal 0113 (CIP-0113), it also delivers some easy-to-follow reference implementations showing how wallets, indexers, explorers, and DApps can integrate, visualize, or transfer programmable tokens.

Anyone can now explore, test, and give feedback on programmable tokens on Cardano.

Developers and builders will find within the repository extensive documentation along with several reference implementations on how to integrate programmable tokens into wallets, indexers, explorers, decentralized applications (DApps), and more. For projects and companies building tokenization platforms on Cardano, or even decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that must work with regulated assets, this gives them a hands-on starting point.

While we keep refining CIP-0113 into a production-grade standard, key documentation already includes:

• Aiken implementation for the programmable tokens;
• deep-dive into the CIP-0113’s architecture;
• integration guidance for wallet and DApp developers, plus indexers and explorers.

Those looking for an easier entry point can get involved through the live preview platform. It connects to Cardano's Preview testnet, meaning no real funds are involved or necessary. It likewise allows anyone to deploy a protocol instance, issue programmable tokens, transfer them, and see the compliance rules in action.

The Foundation welcomes feedback on both the implementation and the CIP-0113 standard. In fact, as the standard is still being refined, input from builders will prove essential to getting it right.

How programmable tokens scale tokenization

Tokenized assets can significantly streamline operations, lead to faster settlement times, reduce management costs, and even increase transparency and trust. They also come in many formats:

• financial – funds and collective instruments, private credit, debt, bonds, stocks, securities, structured products and derivatives, etc.;
• fiat currencies – stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs);
• tangibles – real estate, fashion, art, jewelry, commodities, and any other physical items that can be duplicated into a digital twin;
• intangibles – intellectual property, carbon credits, renewable energy credits, etc.

In order to deploy tokenized assets, however, businesses have to abide by legal requirements, local regulations, and several compliance requirements, from know your customer (KYC) to anti-money laundering (AML). So blockchain-backed financial instruments, stablecoins, real-world assets (RWAs), and other tokenized assets must have the capability of complying with legal and regulatory requirements.

For that to happen, however, issuers need the technical option to enforce certain rules. They might have to allow- or denylist a specific type of transaction, or freeze assets due to a court order. They will also have to ensure jurisdiction-specific legal requirements, such as for the tokenization of a traditional financial instrument.

So far, Cardano lacked a shared framework to consistently implement these capabilities across the ecosystem.

Projects could, of course, create bespoke solutions, some of which were based on already existing solid technical foundations. But in the absence of a common standard, wallets, explorers, and DApps had to integrate each token individually. This encumbered adoption, limited scalability, and inhibited institutional confidence.

CIP-0113 sets up this missing shared framework by introducing a programmable token standard where the token issuers define the rules. They have the flexibility to determine the terms of the smart contracts governing minting, burning, and transfer conditions.

CIP-0113 gives tokenization platforms, DeFi protocols, and financial institutions the confidence that they can ensure compliance features and make them evolve alongside regulatory developments and specific, case-by-case needs.

Features and importance of CIP-0113

Cardano's native asset model is one of its core strengths. The network treats any minted token as a first-class citizen of the ledger — visible in every wallet, trackable by every explorer, and transferable through the same infrastructure as Cardano’s own native cryptocurrency ada.

This simplicity, however, comes with a trade-off. Once a native asset is minted, even though it remains free to transfer on-chain, the token issuers no longer have a mechanism to enforce rules on how the token behaves. They can’t restrict transfers to verified holders, freeze assets in response to a legal order, or ensure that transactions comply with regulations.

This is where CIP-0113 comes in. It defines a standard for programmable tokens, enhancing native Cardano assets with customizable rules that, in turn, are automatically enforced every time a token is transferred, minted, or burned.

It enables issuers to attach modular compliance logic while preserving the openness of the underlying infrastructure. Issuers of a programmable token can now decide what type of programmability to add. All the while, tokens issued under CIP-0113 remain native Cardano assets; they can be tracked by existing explorers and move through the same infrastructure every other Cardano token uses.

Basically, the standard establishes a way to attach compliance logic directly to a token, and the network itself transparently enforces the programmable rules. Rules like "check the sender isn't on a sanctions list" or "only allow transfers between verified accounts" execute automatically on-chain.

The CIP-0113 standard is also modular, because different use cases require different rules.

Each tokenized instrument has a particular context and prerequisites. Not only that, the regulatory landscape and the use cases for such programmable assets keep evolving. So we needed a flexible enough standard to allow for customization and make the CIP-0113 solution future-proof.

The programmable token framework for Cardano addresses this through substandards.

On one hand, CIP-0113 creates a standard for deploying and managing programmable tokens, but it does not define the rules such tokens need to abide by. On the other hand, the CIP-0113 substandards provide a collection of smart contracts, written and defined by the token issuers, which in turn specify the rules and policies under which the tokens can be minted, burned, or transferred.

Substandards add an extra layer of programmability, allowing specific validation logic to be plugged into the framework used for each case. Token issuers choose and configure the substandard according to their needs, without having to modify the core protocol.

In addition, the CIP-0113 framework already ships with reference substandards providing template functions for certain scenarios. To make use even simpler, new substandards can also be designed and shared as templates. Anyone has access to develop or add them, making the framework extensible by design.

CIP-0113 is currently progressing through its formalization process within the Cardano governance framework. Those interested can explore the standard and respective discussion on the GitHub repository.

The journey until here

While our teams only started the Cardano Foundation’s workstream on programmable tokens back in Fall 2025, this project has a much longer history.

CIP-0113 builds on CIP-0143 specification for interoperable programmable tokens developed by Philip DiSarro and Jann Müller from IOG. This reference implementation established the core architectural patterns that CIP-0113 inherits.

Before them, Michele Nuzzi from Harmonic Labs was among the very first to explore programmable token implementations on Cardano. And Matteo Coppola Mazzetti from FluidTokens has become an active collaborator of CIP-0113.

The Cardano Foundation brought all these efforts together and migrated the implementation to Aiken in order to make it accessible to as many developers on Cardano as possible. We’ve also built the off-chain infrastructure and platform, plus drove the evolution from CIP-0143 to the more comprehensive CIP-0113 standard.

Moreover, the entire implementation is open source. In this way, others can build on top of it, repurpose, and augment it so that programmable tokens capabilities on Cardano can stay ahead of the curve and address the market’s needs.

What next for programmable tokens on Cardano

This release is the foundation, not the finish line. The most immediate priorities focus on:

• feedback: gathering inputs from developers, builders, and the broader Cardano community to refine both the standard and its implementation;
• security audit: a professional audit of the core smart contracts, which is a necessary step before any production use can take place;
• platform development: enhancing the platform's user experience and building out core features, including further work on the securities substandard for regulated financial instruments;
• builder support: working directly with projects and organizations that want to build on Cardano using programmable tokens.

The groundwork for programmable tokens on Cardano is now in place. Not just that, it’s open source, testable, and ready for the community to explore.

The Cardano Foundation thanks everyone for their collaboration so far, and invites you to join us 19 March 2026 at 15:00 GMT for a deep-dive about CIP-0113. During this special edition of the Developer Office Hours we’ll run a live demo, learn the ins and outs of the standard, and open the mic to all attendees for a Q&A session.

We can’t wait to keep evolving CIP-0113 together and see what comes next.