Cardano Shifts Focus To Dijkstra Era After Van Rossem Upgrade

From Van Rossem to Dijkstra

Cardano has shifted its development focus to the Dijkstra era after completing the van Rossem hard fork. The van Rossem hard fork, enacted on July 18, upgraded the protocol to Version 11, improving Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node security. Notably, Cardano activated the van Rossem hard fork, becoming the first blockchain to approve a protocol upgrade entirely through on-chain governance.

The van Rossem intra-era hard fork laid the technical foundations for this transition. Rather than a full era change, it was designed to add improvements while keeping Cardano inside the Conway era, reducing disruption for wallets, exchanges, stake pool operators, and dApps. The hard fork laid the foundation for the next upgrade, the Dijkstra era hard fork, which will introduce Ouroboros Leios to Cardano.

What Dijkstra Brings

Intersect, the member-based organization that coordinates governance and development across the Cardano ecosystem, confirmed that work is now underway on protocol development, governance, and technical delivery for the Dijkstra era. The initial Dijkstra rollout is expected to take place across a few phases, introducing Nested Transactions, Linear Leios, and Peras. The first phase will introduce Nested Transactions, a mechanism that allows nesting transactions within each other to optimize resource management and reduce network load. Next comes Linear Leios, a linear version of the Ouroboros Leios protocol, which is at the heart of Cardano's scaling.

Leios delivers a safe, phased throughput increase on mainnet, scaling from 2x to 30x current capacity, with full capacity demonstrated on testnet first.

The Haskell node team's current objective is to deliver the first two phases, Nested Transactions and Linear Leios, to mainnet by the end of 2026, enabling an incremental rollout of key Dijkstra capabilities. This staggered approach is designed to incrementally unlock new capabilities and ensure network stability throughout the evolution of the protocol. Constitutional amendments are expected to take place after the Dijkstra hard fork's completion.

Governance activity is also picking up alongside the technical roadmap. A parameter update action has been opened for voting, the election of the Constitutional Committee is now on-chain, and the Constitutional Amendment Portal has been launched in alpha for community testing.

Sources:
Intersect Weekly Update #122, July 31, 2026
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