Van Rossem Hard Fork Needs One CC Vote Before July 18 Expiry

Cardano news: Cardano’s van Rossem hard fork, the protocol upgrade to Protocol Version 11, stands at 76.81% DRep approval against a 60% threshold, 52.76% SPO support against a 51% threshold, and four of the five required Constitutional Committee approvals in place.

With three CC members yet to vote and just one additional yes or abstain needed to clear the 5-of-7 ratification bar before the governance action expires on July 18, 2026, the final possible ratification date remaining after the July 8 and July 13 windows have passed.

Intersect, the governance body coordinating the upgrade, confirmed as epoch 642 entered its final 12 hours that 93% of current block production is already running on node version 11 and that exchange readiness by liquidity has reached 84.15%, above the required threshold, with the Hard Fork Working Group having formally voted to recommend ratification.

van Rossem hard fork update 🍴

The hard fork initiation action was ratified at the epoch boundary on July 13, 2026 at 21:45 UTC.

Voting Result:
✅️ DReps: 77.63% / 60%
✅️ SPOs: 52.7% / 51%
✅️ CC: 6 constitutional, 1 did not vote

Following ratification, enactment will now… pic.twitter.com/GGcQSajRjm

— Intersect (@IntersectMBO) July 13, 2026

The open question the market must now resolve is whether the fifth Constitutional Committee vote materialises before July 18 and the van Rossem hard fork activates on schedule, or whether the governance action expires without reaching quorum and the entire ratification process must restart from submission.

Cardano News: What the Constitutional Committee Vote Gap Actually Reveals About Voltaire Governance

Context significantly enhances the raw figures here. The van Rossem hard fork is a protocol upgrade that is being coordinated through Cardano’s on-chain governance system. DReps, the delegated representatives who carry ADA holder voting power, have delivered 76.81% approval, well above their 60% floor and a signal of strong delegate-layer consensus.

SPOs, the stake pool operators who run the network’s block-producing infrastructure, cleared their 51% threshold at 52.76%, a narrower margin that reflects a more divided operational community but a cleared bar nonetheless.

The Constitutional Committee functions differently from the other two bodies. Its seven members serve a ratification role for governance actions, with a threshold of 5 of 7 CC members.

Four have voted in favour. Three have not yet voted. Critically, an abstain counts toward satisfying the threshold under the hard fork ratification rules, meaning the fifth CC member does not have to affirmatively approve, they simply need to engage. One more constitutional vote or an abstain is all that separates the network from ratification.

Cardano peeps, the van Rossem hard fork has met all threshold approvals and will execute! Congratulations 🥳

Fully on-chain, decentralized governance, in action. pic.twitter.com/l6XNfmqih2

— Rick McCracken DIGI 🇺🇸 (@RickMcCracken) July 13, 2026

What Protocol Version 11 actually delivers is a technically dense but meaningful set of improvements. The upgrade boosts Plutus smart contract performance, introduces enhanced cryptographic primitives, enforces VRF key uniqueness, updates reference input rules, and improves both ledger consistency and node security.

These are not headline-grabbing feature launches, they are the foundational plumbing upgrades that make Cardano’s execution environment more reliable and capable for the developer tooling and DeFi protocols building on top of it.

The ledger’s governance priority rule adds a further structural dimension: the hard fork ratification takes precedence over all other active governance actions, meaning any concurrent actions that would otherwise ratify simultaneously will be delayed until the hard fork is resolved.

The July 18 expiration date is a hard structural constraint, not a soft deadline. If the governance action’s due conditions are not met by the July 18 ratification point, the governance action expires.