Cardano’s proposed “van Rossem” hard fork has moved into the mainnet governance process, putting Protocol Version 11 before voters as an intra-era upgrade focused on Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node-level security. Intersect, the Cardano member-based organization involved in ecosystem governance coordination, said the hard fork initiation governance action has been submitted on mainnet, with the proposal filed on June 16, 2026, in epoch 637 and set to expire on July 18, 2026, in epoch 644.
Cardano’s Van Rossem Hard Fork Enters Vote
The governance action proposes upgrading Cardano mainnet from protocol major version 10 to major version 11, with the minor version remaining at 0. The proposal states: “We propose to upgrade Cardano Mainnet to Protocol Version 11. This upgrade will be achieved via an intra-era Hard Fork (called ‘van Rossem’).” It adds that the ledger will remain in the Conway era, meaning the upgrade does not represent a full era transition.
Intersect described the proposal as an intra-era hard fork that introduces new features while laying groundwork for Cardano’s next major era, Dijkstra, which is expected to ultimately bring Leios to mainnet. The governance action carries the ID gov_action1lh2x3kjucjkggvwu6l3txggkvmrnhs3flpv8j35lvlcan4gax3xsq3cxfjc, with the legacy CIP-105 ID fdd468da5cc4ac8431dcd7e2b3211666c73bc229f85879469f67f1d9d51d344d#0.
The van Rossem hard fork initiation governance action has been submitted on the Cardano mainnet.
An intra-era hard fork that introduces some new features and lays the foundation for the next major era, Dijkstra, which will ultimately bring Leios to Cardano mainnet.
Looking to… pic.twitter.com/IiB3t0Akke
— Intersect (@IntersectMBO) June 16, 2026
The hard fork is named in memory of Max van Rossem, a Cardano community member described in the proposal as a developer, stake pool operator, DRep, Constitutional Convention delegate, and builder. Intersect said the naming followed a community vote after van Rossem’s death in October 2025, with the “Name Protocol Version 11 hard fork – van Rossem” info action receiving 83.62% DRep support, representing 4.44 billion ada. The proposal metadata states: “The Cardano community has lost one of its most dedicated builders. Max van Rossem passed away in October 2025, leaving behind a legacy woven into the foundations of Cardano’s governance, its community, and the generations of builders who will follow.”
Protocol Version 11 Targets Plutus Upgrades
The technical core of Protocol Version 11 is a set of Plutus upgrades tied to CIP-0109, CIP-0132, CIP-0133, CIP-0138, and CIP-0153. The proposal says the hard fork will make several new Plutus primitives available and unify built-in functions across Plutus V1, V2, and V3. It states: “Historically each Plutus language version exposed its own subset of built-ins, so newer functionality was generally reachable only by recompiling contracts to use the latest Plutus version. Following the hard fork, the full set of built-ins, including the ones that have been introduced, will become available across all Plutus language versions, expanding the capabilities of existing Plutus V1 and V2 scripts.”
The new primitives include modular exponentiation, dropList, multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381, a constant-time Array built-in type, and a native Value built-in type for more efficient handling of ada and native tokens. The proposal says: “Together, these additions address recognised throughput bottlenecks, enabling more efficient pairing-based zero-knowledge cryptography, and remove the need to off-load operations such as modular inverses to off-chain processes. Collectively, these changes increase script performance, reduce execution cost, and meaningfully extend what builders can accomplish in Plutus.”
Protocol Version 11 also adds case expressions over Bool, Integer, and Data in Untyped Plutus Core, a change intended to reduce the cost and complexity of data matching in scripts. Beyond Plutus, the proposal includes ledger and node enhancements, including ledger-level enforcement of VRF key hash uniqueness, revised reference input rules for Plutus V1 and V2, promotion of Constitutional Committee voting restrictions from mempool checks to ledger predicates, clearer withdrawal validation errors, and improved protocol parameter hash mismatch reporting. The governance action says: “These changes can only be activated by a hard fork. They alter the rules under which blocks and transactions are validated, so they require coordinated activation across all nodes on the network.”
Ratification will depend in part on readiness across the network, with the proposal stating that at least 85% of stake pools by active stake should be upgraded to a node version capable of supporting protocol version 11 before approval. Intersect’s Hard Fork Working Group recommended submission on June 15, 2026, and Intersect’s Technical Steering Committee endorsed it on June 16. The proposal says testing found no behavioral regressions, security audits were undertaken for Plutus BLS primitives and execution costs, and Cardano Node 11.0.1 performance results showed no regressions across standard value, Plutus, and voting benchmarks.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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