Inside Cardano's 'Van Rossum' hard fork, and what it means for users
Cardano has successfully executed its 'Van Rossum' hard fork, marking the first time a network upgrade was initiated and ratified entirely through on-chain governance. This shift moves power away from the founding engineering firm, Input Output, toward the network's decentralized stakeholders.
Why it matters
This represents a significant milestone in blockchain decentralization, demonstrating that a major network can evolve through community consensus rather than top-down corporate control.
But a more consequential change is who directed the upgrade. For the first time in Cardano's history, it wasn't Input Output, the engineering firm that designed and built the blockchain.
Every previous Cardano hard fork was coordinated top-down by the network’s founding entities, chiefly Input Output, but Van Rossem was initiated, debated and ratified entirely through Cardano's onchain governance system, the framework introduced in the so-dubbed Voltaire era that lets stakeholders vote directly on protocol changes.
It is the first Cardano upgrade approved end-to-end by the network's own participants rather than its creators.
Onchain data from Cardanoscan shows the network moved from version 10 in epoch 643 to version 11 in epoch 644, with the action enacted activated Saturday, July 18 at 21:44 UTC after ratification on July 13. Passage required sign-off from three separate bodies, and the tallies show how differently each treated it.
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