Cardano activated its van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, after final approval came through its decentralized on-chain governance system. The upgrade took effect at the boundary of epoch 644, moving the network to Protocol Version 11. It stayed within the Conway ledger era, making van Rossem an intra-era hard fork. This marked a significant milestone as one of the first major blockchain upgrades executed entirely through binding on-chain votes.
Governance Bodies Back the Upgrade
The hard fork received approval on July 13 from all three governance groups required under Cardano’s post-Chang framework. DReps backed the action with 77.63% support, clearing the 60% threshold. Stake pool operators also approved the upgrade, with their support reaching 52.7%, just above the 51% requirement. The Constitutional Committee completed the process with six approvals; the rule required five committee votes, and one member did not vote.
Cardano’s Governance Model Enters a New Phase
The activation marked a major test for Cardano’s governance structure. The system emerged through the Chang and Plomin upgrades, which gave ADA holders, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee formal roles in protocol decisions. Earlier Cardano upgrades relied more heavily on founding entities or temporary governance structures. Van Rossem differed because the network authorized the change through its own on-chain process.
Intersect, Cardano’s member-based ecosystem organization, coordinated the upgrade process. It convened a Hard Fork Working Group that included Input Output, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Midnight, infrastructure providers, and other contributors.
Testing, Technical Changes, and Market Tone
The group focused on testing and readiness rather than final authority. Cardano ran checks across SanchoNet, Preview, and Preprod before activation. Preview moved to Protocol Version 11 on May 8. Preprod followed on June 10 after developers fixed compatibility issues affecting tools such as Ogmios and Kupo.
Van Rossem introduces targeted changes to Plutus smart contracts, ledger consistency, and node security without changing transaction structure. It expands built-in functions across Plutus V1, V2, and V3. The upgrade also adds more efficient case expressions for basic types, arrays, optimized multi-asset value operations, modular exponentiation, and improved list handling. Additional changes cover BLS12-381 cryptographic operations and stronger uniqueness protections for stake pool verification keys. A separate Plutus cost-model update passed on June 18, which prepared pricing for the new functions before activation.
ADA traded at $0.165 on Monday after a mild recovery in the previous week. Even so, the token remained below its 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day exponential moving averages. Price action also stalled after the early-July rebound. Sellers continued to defend lower Fibonacci retracement levels from the April-to-June decline. The RSI stayed just under 50, while MACD held only slightly above zero. Funding rates turned positive on Friday and stood at 0.0061% on Monday. However, the long-to-short ratio remained at 0.90, showing bearish positioning in derivatives markets.
Conclusion
Cardano activated the van Rossem hard fork through its on-chain governance system after approval from DReps, stakeholder operators, and the Constitutional Committee. The upgrade moved the network to Protocol Version 11 and added Plutus and security improvements while ADA traded with mixed market signals.