Summary
- Cardano’s Van Rossem hard fork activated on July 18, moving the network to protocol version 11 and lowering smart contract execution costs while preparing for a future scalability upgrade.
- The upgrade is the first in Cardano’s history to be proposed, debated and ratified entirely through its onchain governance system, rather than by founding developer Input Output, marking a shift in who controls protocol changes.
- While everyday ADA transactions remain unchanged for now, the fork enables cheaper, more capable smart contracts and lays procedural and technical groundwork for the planned Ouroboros Leios scaling upgrade expected in 2026.
Cardano activated its Van Rossem hard fork on Saturday, moving the mainnet to protocol version 11. The technical changes lower smart contract costs and lay groundwork for an upcoming scalability overhaul.
But a more consequential change is who directed the upgrade. For the first time in Cardano’s history, it wasn’t Input Output, the engineering firm that designed and built the blockchain.
Every previous Cardano hard fork was coordinated top-down by the network’s founding entities, chiefly Input Output, but Van Rossem was initiated, debated and ratified entirely through Cardano’s onchain governance system, the framework introduced in the so-dubbed Voltaire era that lets stakeholders vote directly on protocol changes.
It is the first Cardano upgrade approved end-to-end by the network’s own participants rather than its creators.
Onchain data from Cardanoscan shows the network moved from version 10 in epoch 643 to version 11 in epoch 644, with the action enacted activated Saturday, July 18 at 21:44 UTC after ratification on July 13. Passage required sign-off from three separate bodies, and the tallies demonstrate how differently each treated it.
