Cardano’s Van Rossem hard fork is now live on mainnet, and the significance isn’t just technical. For the first time, a major upgrade to Cardano has been proposed and approved entirely through its onchain governance process.
The change was ratified by a vote, with 77.63% in favor among delegated representatives, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee, after being recommended by Intersect’s Hard Fork Working Group and endorsed by its Technical Steering Committee. Van Rossem moves Cardano to protocol version 11 and brings Plutus improvements aimed at reducing smart contract execution costs while preparing the chain for later changes, including the planned Dijkstra-era hard fork.
More than a routine software update, this serves as a governance milestone, showing that Cardano’s onchain process can coordinate and approve a major protocol change. The key watchpoint now is whether this becomes a repeatable model for future upgrades, rather than a one-off success.