Cardano’s Next Major Upgrade Almost Here: What’s Left?

Intersect shares a fresh update on the van Rossem hard fork status in a recent post on X. The intra-era hard fork to Protocol Version 11 will boost Plutus performance, improve ledger consistency as well as the security of nodes. This upgrade also introduces enhanced primitives, VRF key uniqueness, and updated reference input rules.

Intersect’s update on the van Rossem hard fork is necessitated as the Cardano network approaches the final 12 hours of epoch 642.

Cardano currently has a number of governance actions that are imminent, as well as the hard fork ratification. Currently, the hard fork can ratify on July 8, 13, and 18. It expires on July 18.

Epoch 642 coincides with July 13, with one ratification date left, which is July 18 if all due conditions are not met today. The remaining possible enactment dates are July 18 and 23.

The van Rossem hard fork governance action has made progress in on-chain voting, with DRep and SPO support now above their required ratification thresholds and four of the five required Constitutional Committee approvals recorded.

Ecosystem adoption and readiness continue to increase, while attention shifts to the possible effect of a hard fork ratification on other active governance actions, according to governance-action priority rules. The ledger gives priority to the hard fork ratification over all other actions and will delay any other governance actions that would ratify simultaneously.

What’s remaining?

On-chain voting has passed several criteria, but one thing has not. Voting by Constitutional Committee (CC) members has not yet met the 5 out of 7 threshold. Four CC members have voted; three have yet to vote, thus one more constitutional vote or an abstain is required.

Current on-chain approval is at 76.81% for DReps (60% threshold), 52.76% for SPOs (51% threshold), and 4 of the 5 required Constitutional Committee approvals.

Overall adoption has steadily increased for the van Rossem upgrade, with 93% of current epoch block production occurring on Protocol Version 11. Exchange readiness has surpassed the required threshold, rising to 84.15% of tracked liquidity. The Hard Fork Working Group has also voted to formally recommend ratification of the upgrade, Intersect noted.