Cardano activated its Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, at approximately 21:44:51 UTC, moving the network to Protocol Version 11 without any reported downtime.
Key Takeaways
Cardano activated Van Rossem on July 18, 2026, reaching Protocol Version 11 with no downtime. Whales holding 100K to 100M ADA pushed balances to their highest level since 2023.Cardano now moves toward Leios, targeting over 1,000 transactions per second in 2026.Three more proposals target performance directly. CIP-138 adds a native array type for onchain data. CIP-153 optimizes how the network handles multi-asset values. CIP-132 speeds up list manipulation through a new dropList function. CIP-109 adds modular exponentiation as a built-in operation. Together, developers say these changes cut execution costs and let scripts run faster.
Security Gets a Direct Upgrade Governance Ran the ShowUnlike earlier Cardano upgrades that ran on foundation-set timelines, Van Rossem moved through the network’s onchain governance system from proposal to activation.
Those votes closed on July 13, five days before the fork activated at the epoch boundary. Cardano describes the process as its first major upgrade fully governed by onchain voting rather than centralized coordination from Input Output, the company that built much of the network’s original codebase.
Whales Buy While Traders Wait What Comes Next
