Cardano Triggers Hard Fork With First Community-Voted Upgrade
Cardano has activated the Van Rossem hard fork and moved to protocol version 11, marking its first major upgrade approved entirely through on-chain governance rather than by Input Output. The upgrade was backed by delegated representatives, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee, and it lowers Plutus execution costs to make smart contracts cheaper and more scalable. It also adds faster cryptographic checks, constant-time array indexing, improved list and value handling, and a security fix requiring unique stake pool keys. The fork is an intra-era upgrade and a key step toward Ouroboros Leios, Cardano’s planned transaction-processing overhaul aimed at much higher throughput. The upgrade comes as Input Output begins handing development to outside teams. ADA price action has remained flat, with technical indicators still broadly weak, though large holders have increased balances.
