Cardano Celebrates Six Years Of Staking Milestone
Cardano marks six years since the Shelley upgrade introduced staking and decentralized block production in July 2020, with 2,882 stake pools and 21.56 billion ADA in live stake secured on the network today.
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Six Years of Uninterrupted Staking
Cardano is marking six years since the Shelley hard fork, the July 2020 upgrade that transformed the network from a federated system into a community-powered blockchain. The Shelley era introduced stake pools and delegation features alongside a decentralized ledger structure and a new economic incentive system via ADA staking.
By the first quarter of 2021, Cardano's stake pool operator (SPO) community began producing all new blocks on the network, completing the shift to community-driven block production. Since then, the network has processed 9.25 million blocks across 439 epochs without interruption.
Current network explorer data shows 2,882 active stake pools and 21.56 billion $ADA recorded as live stake, indicating that the participation framework established six years ago remains central to security and consensus.
Ouroboros Leios: The Next Major Leap
The anniversary arrives at a pivotal moment for the protocol. Input Output is now advancing Ouroboros Leios, its most ambitious scaling initiative to date. Van Rossem is a preparatory update for Ouroboros Leios, a parallelized consensus upgrade undergoing testing through 2026 that targets throughput gains of roughly 30 to 65 times current levels and aims to exceed 1,000 transactions per second.
The groundwork for Leios is already being laid. Cardano has activated its van Rossem hard fork, upgrading the Cardano mainnet to Protocol Version 11, which is expected to lower smart contract execution costs and lay the groundwork for Ouroboros Leios. Van Rossem is Cardano's first hard fork ratified through onchain governance, marking a governance milestone.
Its strategic purpose is forward-looking: it lays the technical foundation for the upcoming Dijkstra era, which is expected to introduce Ouroboros Leios, the throughput scaling design targeted for mainnet rollout before the close of 2026.
Sources:
CoinDesk: Cardano Introduces Proof-of-Stake With Shelley Hard Fork
CoinTelegraph: Cardano Activates Van Rossem Hard Fork
Crypto.news: Cardano Activates Van Rossem Hard Fork as Leios Upgrade Draws Closer
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Soumen DattaSoumen has been a crypto researcher since 2020 and holds a master’s in Physics. His writing and research has been published by publications such as CryptoSlate and DailyCoin, as well as BSCN. His areas of focus include Bitcoin, DeFi, and high-potential altcoins like Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Chainlink. He combines analytical depth with journalistic clarity to deliver insights for both newcomers and seasoned crypto readers.