Cardano's Dijkstra hard fork to ship three upgrades by end of 2026

Cardano's Dijkstra hard fork to ship three upgrades — Nested Transactions, Linear Leios, Peras — with first two phases on mainnet by end of 2026.

Intersect, the member organization coordinating Cardano ecosystem development, confirmed in its weekly update #122 that the Haskell node team's objective is to deliver Nested Transactions and Linear Leios to mainnet by the end of 2026. The scope of the first hard fork was presented to the Intersect Technical Steering Committee on July 29 and is expected to be finalized by July 31.

The Dijkstra rollout follows the van Rossem intra-era hard fork activated July 18, which upgraded Cardano to Protocol Version 11 and improved Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node security. A new parameter update action is now open for voting, proposing to cut minPoolCost from 170 ada to 75 ada and complete a 25 percent increase to Plutus transaction and block memory limits — raising maxTxExecutionUnits to 17.5 million and maxBlockExecutionUnits to 77.5 million.

The minPoolCost reduction is designed to ease the fixed-fee burden on smaller stake pools, which have become less attractive to delegators as reserve-funded block rewards decline. The Plutus memory increase, split into two steps due to constitutional guardrail MTEU-M-04, is intended to reduce optimization constraints for smart contract developers while preserving the number of maximally sized transactions per block.

Ouroboros Leios, the consensus protocol at the heart of the update, is designed to increase network throughput while maintaining security and decentralization. Peras will accelerate transaction finality, reducing the time required for transactions to become irreversible. These capabilities position Cardano to compete more directly with Ethereum and Solana on Layer-1 performance.

Governance activity is running in parallel. The Constitutional Committee election has moved on-chain, with 38 DReps representing 2.332 billion ada in delegated voting power. Four candidates were elected, led by Philip DiSarro with 1.979 billion ada (84.86 percent of participating voting power). The Constitutional Amendment Portal opened for alpha testing at cap.intersectmbo.org, allowing ADA holders to propose and discuss amendments to the Cardano Constitution.

The next hard fork's naming remains contested. A working group proposed naming it after Alexander Esgen, while an on-chain Info action suggests Fabian von Bergen. Community feedback is open on both options.

The phased deployment of Dijkstra capabilities through end of 2026, combined with active on-chain governance, creates a defining period for Cardano's technical roadmap. The convergence of protocol scaling and community-driven decision-making will determine whether ADA can narrow the throughput gap with competing Layer-1 networks.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.