Intersect’s Hard Fork Working Group has proposed naming the next Cardano hard fork of protocol version 11 the “van Rossem” hard fork, after DRep Max van Rossem. The community has a tradition of naming hard forks to commemorate influential DReps in the blockchain ecosystem, starting with Byron.
Cardano said naming the 2026 hard fork after van Rossem will continue a long-standing tradition passed down from Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Vasil, Valentine, Chan, and Plomin. The Vasil, Chang, and Plomin hard forks are named after the recently deceased Dreps in honor of their family and the entire Cardano community.
Meanwhile, the Hard Fork Working Group stated that the Cardano community remembers Max as a bright and dedicated DRep, as those who worked with him attest. He was deeply involved in the development of Cardano’s constitution and contributed to many governance discussions that helped shape and optimize the network.
Max plays a key role in the first Constitutional Commission elections
D Rep van Rossen provided He is a member and co-leader of the Constitutional Commission Elections Working Group, which oversaw the first fully elected Constitutional Commission (CC). He was also integral to the network’s founding governance document, as a delegate representing the Dutch Cardano community at the Constitutional Conference in Buenos Aires, Brazil. Max is one of the main driving forces behind the inclusion of Article 8 in Cardano’s constitution.
Additionally, Max founded AdaMoments. This is a project that allows Ada owners to preserve their personal history by storing images, videos, and text as permanent moments on the Cardano ecosystem. He also facilitated meetups and connected people across the Cardano blockchain as members of the Dutch community.
Meanwhile, Intersect announced a proposed hard fork to protocol version 11 late last year. This upgrade is expected to improve node security, ledger consistency, and Plutus performance without requiring a transition to a new ledger era. These updates include lookup input rules, VRF key uniqueness, and enhancements to Plutus primitives. This change represents the next part of the Treasury-funded development of the Cardano ecosystem.
Cardano begins voting to confirm hard fork name
Hard fork working group launched A poll where members of the Cardano community vote on proposed names for the hard fork. Voting will run from January 13th to February 14th, 2026. Participating DRep must deposit a minimum of 100,000 ADA So far, eight Democrats have voted yes, or 1.57% (91.24 million people). ADA) Total bet (14.16B) ADA). The last vote was cast over 20 minutes ago at the time of publication.
Meanwhile, the final votes will be sent to the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) for review and approval. The hard fork working group will also establish a think tank, which will meet biweekly to discuss and coordinate issues related to hard forks. Future hard forks will require network-wide adjustments, but the integration burden will be much lower than during era transitions.
All other hard fork related information will be communicated later through the Intersect Knowledge Base. An open Intersect working group will also be established, including community members who wish to participate in current and future mainnet hard forks.
The latest upgrade proposal introduces improvements without moving to a new ledger era, and Cardano remains within the same ledger era (currently Conway). Intra-era hard forks introduce fixes, improvements, optimizations, and other new features that do not require an era transition.
These new changes enhance script performance, reduce execution costs, and expand the functionality of builders within the Cardano network. It also improves governance accuracy and transparency.
