Cardano completed the Van Rosem hard fork on July 18th, the protocol version rose to 11. The upgrade did not interrupt network operations, and, more importantly, it was the first major upgrade approved by Cardano through a chain-based governance mechanism and no longer led by the founding development company, Input Output.
For the first time, it was a chain-based board.
This upgrade is named after the late Cardano contributor Max van Rosem. He was involved in nodal operation, community governance and constitutional design, and the governance process that came into effect was part of his involvement in the construction.
According to the current governance structure of Cardano, the upgrade requires the co-approval of multiple entities. Community delegated representative DRep has a support rate of 77.63 per cent, above the 60 per cent threshold, and a pledge pool operator ' s support rate of 52.7 per cent, slightly above the 51 per cent requirement. The Constitutional Council, which is responsible for reviewing the conformity of the upgrade with the Cardano constitutional document, has also been released.
The governance transition of Cardano was not a complete one. In 2024, Chang ' s hard-drive voting was introduced on the chain, and in early 2025, Plomin ' s hard-done fork was given further decision-making power to currency holders, and Van Rossem was the first major upgrade to the formal landing of the mechanism.
Protocol version raised to 11
At the technical level, Van Rossem is a targeted upgrade, without rewriting the base structure of Cardano. Its central objective is to reduce the implementation costs of Plutus. Plutus is the smart contract language for Cardano, and DeFi applications, NFT markets and chain payment tools rely on this implementation environment.
Lower implementation costs allow developers to deploy more complex applications at lower costs. The upgrade was also packaged with five technical improvements, including a new password tool and a safe repair of the pledge pool: Each pledge pool must use a separate encryption key to block the known attack path.
Input Output also mentioned that protocol version 11 added a constant-time array index, original Value processing, faster list-crossing capability, and a new password source. The existing transaction structure remained unchanged and the built-in functions of Plutus V1, V2 and V3 were harmonized.
To pave the way for subsequent expansion
For ordinary users, this upgrade will not immediately change the daily use experience. But for the developers and network road maps, Van Rossem is an important precursor to the subsequent expansion.
Just last week, the Input Output indicated that the core development would begin to be transferred to outside professional teams in August. Van Rosem was also the first upgrade to be completed during this transition phase.
The next focus of Cardano is the Ouroboros Leos. This program plans to re-engineer transaction processing, with the goal of increasing network throughput to 30 to 65 times the current level and to achieve more than 1,000 transactions per second. Van Rosem is considered to be the technical preparation that must be completed before the programme can be advanced.
ADA price response is limited
Despite the governance and technical significance of upgrading in itself, the market response has been relatively modest for the time being. According to the report, the ADA has for the last three days been on a basic roll, with prices hovering around $0.1662, corresponding to a market value of approximately $6 billion.
Santiment, a data platform on the chain, shows that the total holding of 100,000 to 100 million ADAs has risen to a high level since 2023; in contrast, smaller holders have decreased. The report also mentioned that Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, expected Leios to enter the main network by 2026, and that Musashi Dojo, the public testing network, had been online on 23 June.