Cardano launches hard fork with first upgrade by community vote

Cardano has made the hard fork, implementing the Van Rossem upgrade over the weekend and moving the network to version 11 of the protocol.

This is not the first time Cardano has implemented a hard fork, but it is He is The first time this has been done without the involvement of the blockchain’s founding development company, Input Output. This makes how it happens at least as important as what the upgrade does.

A hard fork — a permanent, mandatory update to the basic rules of the blockchain, applied simultaneously across every computer running the network — is a very dangerous deal. Throughout Cardano’s history, it has been inputs and outputs that have determined these type of network changes.

Paving the way for improved scalability and lower costs on the network, Van Rossem is the first major Cardano upgrade to be fully validated through on-chain governance, meaning elected community members, server operators, and the oversight committee voted on it directly.

The fork bears the name of Max van Rossem, a Dutch Cardano shareholder who died in October 2025. Van Rossem, a developer, elected representative, node operator, and constitutional delegate, helped design the very governance system that just activated this upgrade.

Three separate bodies signed. Plenipotentiary representatives known as “DReps” — community members elected to vote on behalf of Cardano holders, similar to elected delegates in Parliament — approved by 77.63%, crossing the 60% threshold. Stake pool operators — the companies and individuals who run the servers that keep Cardano running — supported it with 52.7%, just above the required 51%.

The Constitutional Committee, a seven-member board that verifies promotions’ compliance with Cardano’s founding document, also approved the proposal. Cardano has been moving towards this governance model since Zhang hard fork in 2024which first introduced voting on the series, followed Bloomin hard fork in early 2025which gave token holders real decision-making power.

What the upgrade actually does

Van Rossem is an epoch upgrade — a targeted improvement that does not rebuild Cardano’s infrastructure. Its main goal is to reduce the implementation costs of Plutos. Plutus is Cardano’s smart contract programming language — the code engine behind every DeFi app, NFT market, and cross-chain payment tool built on the network.

Cheaper implementation means developers can run more complex applications at a lower cost.

The upgrade includes various technical proposals, including new cryptographic tools to verify digital signatures faster and a security fix that requires each stake pool to use a unique encryption key, closing a known attack path.

For ordinary users, nothing changes today.

Last week, Input Output (the company that built the underlying database for Cardano) It announced that it would abandon development For external specialist teams starting in August. Van Rossem is the first promotion implemented under the shift.

The next goal is Ouroboros leus—Cardano’s planned overhaul of how transactions are processed, targeting 30 to 65 times current throughput with a specific goal of exceeding 1,000 transactions per second. Van Rossem is a technical prerequisite.

Cardano (ADA) price: stable but not falling

While this news may be exciting for Cardano fans, the markets don’t seem to believe that a hard fork provides enough hopium to move the needle just yet.

Cardano, which trades under the name ADA, has been essentially flat for three days, hovering around the $0.1662 mark at a market cap of $6 billion. The bulls are moving in, but the overall weight is still bearish – the hard fork announcement appears to have stabilized prices and prevented a retest of deeper support.

The 50-day EMA (trend-weighted tracking line toward recent price action) is below the 200-day EMA, a classic bearish formation. The Relative Strength Index — a momentum score from 0 to 100, where above 70 is overbought and below 30 means oversold — reads 48.8, which is considered neutral. The ADX, which measures trend strength, is at 16.1, a weak level, although its trend component has turned from bearish to bullish – an early signal traders are watching for potential turning points.

Whales holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA tokens pushed their balances to the highest level since 2023, per Santiment data. Smaller owners reduce exposure.

Charlie Hoskinson, founder of Cardano. expected Leios will hit the mainnet before the end of 2026, and the public testnet (dubbed Musashi Dojo) Fired June 23.