Cardano activated its Van Rossem hard fork on Saturday, moving the network to protocol version 11 and marking a watershed moment for the blockchain. For the first time in its history, the upgrade was proposed, debated and ratified entirely through the network’s onchain governance system rather than by Input Output, the engineering firm that designed and built Cardano.
The shift signals a fundamental change in who controls the network’s future, even as the technical improvements focus on lowering smart contract costs and preparing for a major scaling upgrade.
The hard fork activated on July 18 at 21:44 UTC after ratification on July 13, moving Cardano from protocol version 10 to version 11. According to onchain data from Cardanoscan, the upgrade required sign-off from three separate governance bodies, each with different thresholds and approval margins.
Delegated representatives, or stakeholders that ADA holders elect to vote on governance proposals on their behalf, voted 78.97% in favor against a 60% threshold. The constitutional committee, a body of elected members that rules on whether proposals comply with the Cardano Constitution, found the hard fork compliant with all seven members agreeing where five were required.
Pool operators who actually run Cardano’s infrastructure approved the upgrade by the narrowest margin of the three bodies, with 53.02% voting to approve. This tight vote serves as a reminder that decentralized governance means the founders’ preferred outcome is no longer guaranteed.
Under Cardano’s constitution, the upgrade also required at least 85% of stake pools by active stake to run compatible node software before ratification. Network telemetry showed adoption well ahead of that threshold, with roughly 93% of block production already on version 11 heading into activation.
On the technical side, version 11 is an intra-era hard fork, meaning it stays within Cardano’s current governance-focused era and does not change the structure of transactions.
The upgrade adds new capabilities to Plutus, the platform developers use to write Cardano’s smart contracts, unifying built-in functions available across the platform’s three versions so older applications gain newer features. It also tightens several ledger validation rules, including one guaranteeing that no two stake pools can reuse the same cryptographic identity key.
The improvements lay procedural and technical groundwork for the planned Ouroboros Leios scaling upgrade expected later in 2026. Ouroboros Leios is a scaling proposal for the proof-of-stake consensus model that aims to sharply increase transactions per second without weakening the protocol’s security guarantees.
As Input Output noted in a development report, Van Rossem represents the foundation for the next upgrade, the Dijkstra era hard fork, which will introduce Ouroboros Leios to Cardano.
For everyday ADA users, the immediate impact is minimal. Transactions work the same way, wallets do not need updating and the fee to send ADA remains unchanged. The upgrade does not alter how the network looks or feels to use.
The real benefits arrive through the applications that can be built on Cardano over time. The Plutus changes lower the costs of running a smart contract, the code behind any onchain service from DeFi protocols to NFT marketplaces. Users pay a fee every time they interact with one of those apps, and part of that fee reflects how much computation the contract demands. Cheaper execution means those apps can charge less per transaction, though the savings are not automatic since developers have to rebuild their contracts to capture the improvements.
The larger shift is over who controls what comes next. This follows a pattern seen in related CoinDesk coverage of blockchain governance evolution. On most blockchains, a founding company or core team sets the roadmap and users take what they are given. Van Rossem showed that Cardano’s holders can approve a protocol change themselves, without the founders directing the change. For investors holding ADA, that is the difference between owning a token on a network someone else steers and having a formal vote in where it goes.
The hard fork is named for Max van Rossem, a Cardano governance contributor who helped shape the network’s constitution and died in October 2025. His legacy extends beyond the naming convention, as the upgrade embodies the governance principles he championed. According to Cardano’s official documentation, the Voltaire era introduced the onchain governance framework that made this community-directed upgrade possible.
Whether decentralized governance is worth more than faster, top-down development remains a separate debate, but Van Rossem represents a real change in who holds the wheel. The upgrade a user will actually feel is still ahead. Van Rossem lays the groundwork for Leios, the scaling change meant to sharply increase how many transactions Cardano can process. That is what would deliver faster confirmations and more capacity when the network is busy, representing the tangible benefits users have been waiting for.
More Reads:
South Korea to Launch Second Phase of Project Hangang CBDC Pilot in September
Zero-Knowledge Proofs Could Be the Answer to AI Agents Destroying Internet Trust
If you’re reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there, by joining the…
Dipprofit’s private Telegram community
Discover more from Dipprofit
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
