Cardano activated its van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, completing the network’s first protocol upgrade whose final approval and execution were determined entirely through its decentralized onchain governance system. The upgrade took effect at 21:44:51 UTC at the boundary of epoch 644, corresponding to Cardano slot 192,844,800. It moved the blockchain to Protocol Version 11 while keeping it within the existing Conway ledger era, making van Rossem an “intra-era” hard fork rather than a broader transition to a new ledger architecture. Unlike earlier Cardano upgrades that depended more heavily on the network’s ... (full story)