Cardano launches hard fork with first community vote upgrade

Cardano completes a hard fork to implement Van Rossem upgrade

Cardano completed a hard fork over the weekend to implement the Van Rossem upgrade and transition the network to protocol version 11. This is not the first time Cardano has performed a hard fork-but it is the first time it has been done without intervention from the blockchain founding company Input Output. This makes the way the upgrade is achieved as important as the content of the upgrade itself.

A hard fork is a permanent, mandatory update to the core rules of the blockchain, which is applied simultaneously to every computer running the network, and is a fairly serious operation. Throughout Cardano's history, Input and Output have always determined such network changes.

The Van Rossem upgrade lays the foundation for improving network scalability and reducing costs. It is the first major upgrade to Cardano to be approved entirely through on-chain governance-which means elected community members, server operators and an oversight committee voted to go online.

The fork is named after Max van Rossem, a Dutch Cardano contributor who passed away in October 2025. As a developer, elected representative, node operator and constitutional representative, Van Rossem was involved in designing the governance system for this activation and upgrade.

Three independent bodies signed the ratification documents. Representatives known as "DReps"-elected community members who vote on behalf of Cardano holders, similar to elected representatives in Parliament-approved the proposal with 77.63 percent approval, exceeding the 60 percent threshold. Equity pool operators-the companies and individuals that operate servers to keep Cardano running-supported it with a approval rate of 52.7%, slightly above the required 51%. The Constitutional Council-a seven-member committee charged with verifying that upgrades comply with Cardano's founding documents-also approved the proposal. Cardano has been moving towards this governance model since the Chang hard fork of on-chain voting was first introduced in 2024, and the Plomin hard fork of early 2025, which gave token holders real decision-making power.

Van Rossem is an intra-era upgrade-a targeted improvement that does not rebuild Cardano's core architecture. The main goal is to reduce Plutus 'execution costs. Plutus is Cardano's smart contract programming language and the code engine built behind all DeFi applications, NFT marketplaces and on-chain payment tools on the network. Lower execution costs mean developers can run more complex applications for less. The upgrade incorporates multiple technology proposals, including a new encryption tool for faster verification of digital signatures, and a security fix that requires each pool of interests to use a unique encryption key, blocking a known attack path.

For daily users, nothing has changed today.

Last week, Input Output, the company that builds Cardano's core code base, announced that it would hand over development to a team of external experts starting in August. Van Rossem is the first upgrade implemented during this transition period. The next goal is Ouroboros Leios-Cardano's planned comprehensive reform of transaction processing, with the goal of increasing current throughput by 30 to 65 times and setting a target of more than 1000 transactions per second. Van Rossem is the technical prerequisite for this goal.

Although the news may excite Cardano enthusiasts, the market does not seem to believe that this hard fork provides enough impetus to boost the market. Cardano's token ADA has been basically flat in the past three days, hovering around $0.1662, with a market value of $6 billion. Bulls are pushing, but overall pressure remains short-hard fork announcements appear to stabilize prices and prevent testing of deeper support. The 50-day index moving average (a weighted line that tracks recent price movements) lies below the 200-day line, a classic bearish pattern. The RSI (momentum indicator, range 0-100, above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold) read 48.8, in the neutral range. The ADX, a measure of trend strength, is weak at 16.1, but its directional component has shifted from bearish to bullish-an early sign of a potential turning point that traders are concerned about.

According to Sanitation, the giant whale, which holds 100,000 to 100 million ADA coins, has pushed its holdings to the highest level since 2023. Small holders reduced their exposure. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expects Leios to be launched on the main network by the end of 2026, while the public beta network (code-named Musashi Dojo) was launched on June 23.