Overview
ICAN Group is a London engineering firm that builds, tests, and runs software for systems where mistakes are expensive. It works across finance, life sciences, critical infrastructure, and blockchain1. On Cardano, ICAN runs a set of core engineering teams that keep the network reliable, fast, and secure2.
In 2026, Input Output, the company that originally built Cardano, moved four of its engineering teams to ICAN Group: Platform Engineering, Quality Assurance, Cryptography, and Performance & Tracing. The same engineers moved with their leader, ICAN founder Can Huzmeli, who had run these teams inside Input Output. The work is coordinated in public through Intersect, the member organization for Cardano development2. ICAN Group is also the umbrella for ICAN Consultancy and two product ventures: Ethscore, a machine-learning tool that scores Ethereum wallets for fraud risk, and TroveTrade, an AI finance platform2.
Key Features
- Steady platforms for Cardano's engineers. ICAN's platform engineering and site reliability team, the people who keep systems online and respond when they fail, runs the internal tools Cardano's engineering teams rely on, against clear reliability targets2.
- Testing, security, and speed checks for the network. ICAN's quality assurance team catches problems before users meet them, its cryptographers work on how Cardano keeps value and data secure, and its performance team measures what slows the network down2.
- A compiler for Cardano smart contracts. ICAN builds plinthc, a tool that turns code written in Plinth, a Haskell-based language, into smart contracts: programs that run on the blockchain. It installs beside a developer's usual Haskell setup without replacing it3.
- Taking over and running client systems. ICAN's managed engineering ownership service takes over legacy software, risky early products, or acquired tools, runs them to agreed targets, and keeps everything as code the client can take back4.
- Preparing encryption for quantum computers. ICAN Group's applied cryptographers find where an organization uses encryption and plan a staged move to methods built to resist future quantum computers5.
What to Expect
ICAN Group sells engineering services, not an app, so there is nothing to download or sign up for. Visitors to its website find its three service areas, case studies, and free field guides: short downloadable playbooks on topics such as keeping systems online and checking a company's technology before buying it1. Companies start with a conversation through the contact page, and ICAN replies with a proposed shape for the work, which often spans more than one service area4.
Everyday Cardano users won't deal with ICAN directly. Its work sits underneath the network, in the testing, security, and reliability work that keeps Cardano running2.
Cardano developers are more likely to meet ICAN through GitHub. The plinthc documentation walks through installing the compiler, writing a first smart contract, and testing it on a local copy of the chain, with tutorials such as locking and unlocking funds and running an auction6. ICAN's GitHub organization also hosts working copies of core Cardano code, such as the node software that runs the network, alongside Haskell build tools7.
ICAN measures teams by how smoothly work flows, such as how often code ships and how often changes fail, and says it never uses surveillance-style tracking of individuals, such as counting hours logged or keystrokes8. ICAN Group is one of several development companies that work on Cardano.
