According to recent ecosystem data, the layer-1 blockchain is approaching full readiness for the V11 hard fork, which has been officially dubbed "van Rossem."
Major cryptocurrency exchanges, including industry giants Binance and Coinbase, have already signaled their operational readiness.
The much-anticipated upgrade is essentially ready to go, but it still needs to receive the final sign-off from the Constitutional Committee (CC).
The "van Rossem" hard fork?
The upgrade has been named after the late Max van Rossem, and it is meant to honor his substantial contributions to building the Cardano community and developing its governance structure.
Technically, V11 is categorized as an "intra-era" hard fork. This means developers can introduce new features and optimize the protocol without moving to a new blockchain era (this makes it possible to minimize protocol disruptions).
According to Cardano ecosystem contributors, the hard fork will introduce cheaper smart contracts, ZK-ready cryptography, as well as some new built-in functions.
The van Rossem hard fork is supposed to act as a bridge to Cardano's next Dijkstra era.
Full readiness
The van Rossem hard fork requires the decentralized approval of multiple independent actors.
The network has already successfully executed the hard fork on its Preview and Preprod testnets to make sure that it is stable enough for a grand launch.
Currently, on-chain metrics show overwhelming support and operational readiness.
Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) have rapidly upgraded their infrastructure. Currently, 88% of all blocks minted in the past seven days were produced using the V11 node software.
Binance and Coinbase, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, have thrown their support behind the fork.
The required voting thresholds from both Delegated Representatives (DReps) and SPOs have been reached.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
