Cardano Activates Van Rossem Hard Fork, First Fully On-Chain Governed Network Upgrade

Cardano successfully activated the Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, upgrading the network to Protocol Version 11. This milestone marks the first upgrade in Cardano's history to be proposed, debated, and ratified entirely through its Voltaire on-chain governance framework, bypassing founding entity Input Output Global. The upgrade reduces smart contract costs via Plutus framework enhancements and prepares the network for the upcoming Dijkstra era and Ouroboros Leios scaling protocol. While ADA's price reacted with modest gains, whale wallets holding 100,000 to 100 million ADA accumulated balances to their highest levels since February 2023.

Van Rossem hard fork activation

• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork is named in honor of Max van Rossem, a Cardano community governance contributor who passed away
• ▪The Cardano network activated the Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, at approximately 21:44 UTC, upgrading the mainnet to Protocol Version 11
• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork is an intra-era upgrade that keeps the ledger inside Cardano's current Conway era

Decentralized on-chain governance ratification

• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork was the first upgrade in Cardano's history to be initiated, debated, and ratified entirely through the Voltaire on-chain governance framework
• ▪The Voltaire governance vote for the Van Rossem hard fork closed on July 13, 2026, with Delegated Representatives approving the proposal with 77.63% to 78.97% support against a 60% threshold
• ▪The Constitutional Committee approved the Van Rossem hard fork with 6 members voting in favor and 1 member not participating
• ▪Stake Pool Operators approved the Van Rossem hard fork with 52.7% to 53.02% support against a 51% threshold

Plutus primitives cost model

• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork updates node security by preventing stake pools from reusing the same Verifiable Random Function key across the network
• ▪An update to the Plutus cost model, which determines the pricing schedule for on-chain smart contract operations, was enacted on May 16, 2026
• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork introduces new Plutus primitives defined in CIP-0109, CIP-0132, CIP-0133, CIP-0138, and CIP-0153 to reduce smart contract execution costs

Dijkstra era Leios preparation

• ▪The Van Rossem hard fork serves as a technical and procedural stepping stone toward the upcoming Dijkstra era
• ▪The Dijkstra era aims to introduce Ouroboros Leios, a parallelized consensus scaling design targeting throughput exceeding 1,000 transactions per second, by the end of 2026

IOG node development withdrawal

• ▪Input Output Global is stepping back from Cardano node development, with IO Labs handing Haskell node development to community control
• ▪Under a transition plan scheduled for completion by 2027, independent firms will maintain at least three Cardano implementations written in Haskell, Rust, and Go

ADA price whale accumulation

• ▪Following the hard fork, ADA's price experienced a short-term increase of approximately 1.2% to 5%, trading in the range of $0.164 to $0.17
• ▪Cardano wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA increased their combined balances to over 25.6 billion ADA, representing their highest concentration since February 2023