Overview
Input Output Group is the umbrella name for Input Output, the research and engineering company behind Cardano, together with the projects and subsidiaries affiliated with it. The name took on that role in December 2025, when Input Output Global renamed itself Input Output and placed its affiliated projects, including the Lace wallet and RealFi, under the Input Output Group name1.
The group grew out of a research-first way of building blockchains. Founded by Charles Hoskinson in 20152, Input Output writes its designs up as academic papers for outside review, on the stated reasoning that experiments cannot test every way a system might fail3. Cardano and Midnight, a blockchain designed to protect users' data, both came out of that work3,4.
Since 2023 Input Output Group has also worked as a venture studio, incubating ideas in house2 and spinning the successful ones out as separate companies with their own funding and boards4. Its first portfolio covered Midnight, Lace, Project Catalyst, Blockfrost, RealFi, and partner chains2.
Key Features
- One name across several projects. Input Output Group covers affiliated projects and subsidiaries rather than a single company1. Lace is a wallet built by Input Output that works with both Cardano and Midnight5, and RealFi issues a stablecoin, a token meant to hold a steady dollar value, backed by real-world assets such as business lending and US Treasury bills6.
- Peer-reviewed foundations. Input Output Research, the group's research division, publishes its cryptography and distributed-systems work in academic venues, and the venture studio turns the findings into products3.
- A pipeline that ends in a real company. Ideas from across the group move through named stages, from an initial vision to a prototype company to a launched one, with legal setup, staffing, and help raising capital supplied along the way4.
- Public code and an open audit archive. Input Output publishes public code through the input-output-hk GitHub organization7, and it keeps a separate public archive of the security audit reports outside firms have written about its software8.
What to Expect
The iog.io site presents the group and its engineering company together. Leadership is named and public, with Charles Hoskinson as CEO, Tamara Haasen as President, and Prof Aggelos Kiayias as Chief Scientist9. A research paper library, a newsroom, an office of policy, and job listings sit alongside a products page whose entries include Lace, RealFi, Blockfrost, Project Catalyst, and Identus, a framework for verifying digital credentials10.
For everyday readers, the practical entry points are the member products rather than the group itself: a wallet, a stablecoin, and Project Catalyst, a community fund that pays for proposals chosen through community voting10. Developers will care more about the public code and the papers behind it. Organizations with an idea of their own are the venture studio's audience, since that arm takes a concept through to an independent company4.
Input Output built Cardano but no longer does all of its core engineering in house. Core protocol work moved to BlockPQR11, and platform engineering, testing, cryptography, and performance work moved to ICAN Group, with the same engineers moving alongside the code12. Input Output still sets the initiatives those teams work to, and Intersect approves each delivery milestone11.
