Cardano to Activate van Rossem Hard Fork on July 18 at Epoch Boundary

Ratification Completed

The governance action for the van Rossem hard fork cleared the required ratification thresholds across all voting groups on July 13. It was then ratified at the epoch boundary of Epoch 643, clearing the way for enactment under Cardano’s protocol rules.

Because of those rules, the hard fork does not require a separate manual trigger once ratified. Instead, it is set to be enacted automatically at the next epoch boundary following ratification.

Upgrade Scope

Van Rossem is described as an intra-era hard fork and centers on a technical upgrade to Protocol Version 11. The update includes Plutus improvements and enhancements to the Plutus cost model, changes aimed at improving performance for Cardano’s smart contract environment.

The upgrade also includes measures intended to improve ledger consistency and strengthen node security. In addition, it introduces enhanced primitives, VRF key uniqueness, and updated reference input rules.

Governance Handling

During the ratification process, the ledger gave priority to the hard fork governance action over other actions. Under the protocol, that priority could have delayed other governance actions if they had been set to ratify at the same time.

According to the source report, however, no other governance actions were directly affected by the hard fork reaching ratification status. None were delayed or expired as a result.

Foundation for the Next Era

Beyond its immediate technical changes, van Rossem is presented as a preparatory step for Cardano’s later Dijkstra era hard fork. That future upgrade is expected to introduce Ouroboros Leios to the network.

In that sense, the July 18 activation is not only a standalone protocol update but also part of a broader sequence of planned changes to Cardano’s architecture. The current hard fork focuses on near-term improvements to Plutus, the ledger, and node security while laying groundwork for the next major phase.

Cardano’s van Rossem upgrade had already completed its governance thresholds and ratification earlier in the week, leaving the epoch-boundary enactment as the final step. With no reported governance conflicts arising from its priority status, the network is set to transition to Protocol Version 11 on schedule if the process unfolds as described.