Cardano Launches Programmable Token Standard on Mainnet With Freeze and Seize Controls

Published October 7, 2026, 08:25 UTC. Based on the Cardano Foundation announcement at TOKEN2049 Singapore (Oct. 7, 2026) and reporting by CoinDesk and CryptoRank.

The Cardano Foundation said on October 7, 2026, that CIP-0113, Cardano's new programmable token standard, is live on the Cardano mainnet. The Foundation announced the milestone at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, saying the standard went through multiple independent security audits and was developed over several years with Cardano community experts.

The standard gives token issuers a way to write compliance rules directly into their tokens. Issuers of stablecoins, tokenized funds, bonds and other regulated assets can build in know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering checks, sanctions screening, freeze and seize controls, and transfer restrictions. The Foundation said the Cardano ledger enforces those rules every time a token is transferred, minted or burned.

Rules travel with the token, no hard fork

Tokens issued under CIP-0113 remain native Cardano assets built on the network's extended UTXO model. The Foundation said the compliance logic attaches to the token itself, so wallets, explorers and applications handle them like any other Cardano asset, and execution costs stay predictable regardless of how many inputs a transaction contains. The launch required no hard fork.

Issuers choose from modular rule sets, which the Foundation calls modules, or write their own, and can update the rules as regulations change without altering the core standard. That design matters for stablecoin and securities issuers operating across jurisdictions where compliance requirements shift.

Libertum's October 5 mainnet dry run

The standard already has real-world testing behind it. Tokenization platform Libertum said it ran a live test offering on Cardano mainnet on October 5, using the Cardano Foundation's canonical deployment. According to Libertum's account, the three deployment transactions took about one minute, and total network fees from deployment through a net-asset-value update came to about 5 ADA.

Libertum said the test walked through a full compliance flow: an on-chain KYC approval, a KYC revocation that blocked the investor from receiving tokens, a buy and mint at settlement, a freeze and unfreeze of the holder's position, and a seize that moved the position to a destination wallet. A net asset value of $1.20 was anchored on-chain. Cardanoscan now recognizes the token as a CIP-113 programmable token, decoding its registry entry and transfer rules.

Issuer choice, not network law

CIP-113's path to the mainnet announcement ran through the CIP repository. It merged into Cardano's main CIP repository on September 29, 2026, a milestone the Cardano community digest recorded the following day. Matteo Coppola, chief executive of Fluid Tokens and a contributor to the standard, described the merge as the moment the official standard for programmable tokens on Cardano, including securities, was out.

The launch reframes a debate Cardano has deliberately sat out. In November 2025, a Bybit Lazarus Security Lab report found fund-freezing code functions on 16 major blockchains and flagged Cardano as one of the networks with no such mechanism, a distinction Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson publicly highlighted. CIP-0113 does not change the base ledger: ADA and ordinary native assets remain non-freezable at the protocol level. What it adds is an opt-in layer where issuers of regulated tokens choose to give themselves freeze and seize powers over their own assets.

That distinction will likely decide how fast institutions pick it up. Regulated issuers of stablecoins, funds and bonds need transfer controls to operate legally in most major markets, and the standard packages those controls as native Cardano assets with predictable fees. For DeFi builders, the trade is new dependencies: CryptoRank noted that a freeze on one asset could temporarily block unrelated tokens sharing the same transaction output, a wrinkle wallets and apps will have to handle.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Cardano Foundation, announcement of CIP-0113 launch on mainnet at TOKEN2049 Singapore (Oct. 7, 2026), primary source
• CoinDesk, "Cardano gives token issuers power to freeze, seize and restrict assets" (Oct. 7, 2026), secondary source
• CryptoRank, Cardano just added the kind of token controls Wall Street wants and DeFi may hate, secondary source
• Libertum, Libertum is live on Cardano mainnet with CIP-113 (Oct. 5, 2026), secondary source