The developers of the Cardano blockchain have successfully activated the long-awaited Van Rossem hard fork on the main network. The update occurred during the planned transition of the system from epoch 643 to epoch 644, which marked the official launch of protocol version 11. The initiative received broad community support: more than 77% of delegated representatives and 52% of staking pool operators voted for it, using 4.44 billion ADA tokens for this purpose. The name of the hard fork was given in honor of Max van Rossem, a Dutch community leader who made significant contributions to the development of the Voltaire decentralized management system before his death in 2025. The coordination of the entire process was provided by the Intersect profile organization.

The main technical goal of the update was to significantly improve the operation of smart contracts based on the Plutus language. The developers have implemented new built-in functions and optimized script execution, which directly reduces operating costs for creators of decentralized applications. Such improvements not only improve the overall user experience, but also create a favorable environment for accelerated tokenization of real assets on the platform. In addition, the hard fork strengthens the overall security of network nodes, making the infrastructure more reliable and efficient for everyday use.

Strategically, Van Rossem is laying the groundwork for the next major era of development called Dijkstra. This stage, in turn, will pave the way for the implementation of the Ouroboros Leios protocol, which should dramatically increase network capacity without compromising its decentralization and security. The market reacted to the technical news with restrained optimism: the ADA coin rose in price by 0.24%, and the daily trading volume increased significantly to logical market values. At the same time, Santiment analytics recorded that large holders have accumulated more than 25.6 billion coins, reaching the maximum cumulative volume since February 2023.

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The material has been prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or recommendation.