Cardano completes the "Van Rossem" hard fork, the first upgrade led by community voting

According to CoinDesk, the Cardano mainnet completed the "Van Rossem" hard fork on July 18, upgrading the protocol version to 11, primarily reducing the cost of smart contract execution and paving the way for subsequent scaling solutions.

This upgrade was the first to be fully proposed, discussed, and voted on by the community through the on-chain governance process, rather than being directly led by the founding development company Input Output. On-chain data shows that the voting support rate was approximately 78.97%, all 7 members of the Constitutional Committee confirmed that the proposal complied with the "Cardano Constitution," about 53.02% of node operators voted in favor, and over approximately 93% of block production pledges have run the new version of the node.

This upgrade prepares technically and procedurally for the scaling solution Ouroboros Leios, which is planned to go live in 2026.