Cardano just added the kind of token controls Wall Street wants and DeFi may hate

Cardano’s proposed programmable-token standard could let a freeze on one asset temporarily block unrelated tokens held in the same transaction output.

CIP-113, merged into Cardano’s main improvement-proposal repository on Sept. 29, is designed to add issuer-controlled transfer rules to native assets without abandoning the network’s extended unspent transaction output, or eUTXO, model.

The Cardano Foundation has positioned programmable tokens as infrastructure for regulated financial assets, including stablecoins, securities and real-world assets that may require transfer restrictions, freezes and other compliance controls.

The framework could therefore broaden Cardano’s appeal to institutional issuers while introducing new dependencies for wallets and DeFi applications when several assets share the same output.

However, the milestone stops short of full activation. CIP-113’s official page still lists the proposal as “Proposed,” with its path to Active requiring issuance on Preview and mainnet, end-to-end testing and support from a widely adopted wallet.

Still, Matteo Coppola, chief executive officer of Fluid Tokens and a contributor to CIP-113, hailed the milestone, saying the merge followed years of development and puts the framework in Cardano projects' hands.

“This means the official standard for programmable tokens on Cardano, including securities, is out,” Coppola said, adding that contributors had worked to make it production-ready.

That institutional flexibility comes with a structural complication: on Cardano, the rules governing one programmable token can affect other assets bundled alongside it.

Under the eUTXO model, a transaction output can contain several tokens as well as ADA. Spending that output consumes it as a unit, so a restriction attached to one programmable asset can determine whether the entire transaction goes through.

If an output contains restricted token A, unrelated token B, and ADA, for example, a freeze or denylist rule on A can prevent the holder from spending that output to move B. Neither B nor the ADA has been independently frozen, but both become temporarily inaccessible because they share the same output with A.

CIP-113 provides a way to break that dependency through a restructuring mechanism known as “unfracking.”

The process allows one token policy to be separated from the rest of an output without changing ownership. If the transaction is permitted, A can be moved into its own output while B remains in another output controlled by the same holder. A stays restricted, while B is no longer subject to A’s transfer rule on a subsequent spend.

However, the holder does not automatically control the ability to separate the assets.

An unfracking transaction requires the holder’s authorization and must also satisfy the affected token’s registered separation rules. Those rules can require an additional signature, impose conditions through a script, or block the restructuring route entirely.