Cardano Triggers First Fully Onchain Governed Hard Fork in Network History

Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, at 21:44:51 UTC, transitioning to Protocol Version 11 without downtime. This intra-era change within the Conway ledger era maintains the existing governance structure while lowering Plutus smart contract execution costs. This milestone represents the first fully onchain governed hard fork in the network's history and establishes the necessary technical groundwork for Ouroboros Leios, a significant scalability upgrade anticipated to launch later this year.