Welcome to the Cardano Community Digest!
Published by the Cardano Foundation Community Team every two weeks, this Digest will provide you with news, updates and events about the project and ecosystem!
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In this edition of the Community Digest, we highlight:
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Van Rossem Hard Fork Activates: Cardano successfully crossed into Protocol Version 11, with the hard fork proposed, debated, and ratified entirely through on-chain governance.
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Constitutional Committee Election: With voting closing July 23, candidates discussed key governance roles and the future of the Constitutional Committee in the latest Roundtable Talk.
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Cardano Foundation Updates: The Foundation joined the x402 Foundation, released new developer guides on Aiken cryptography, and provided updates on enterprise blockchain pilots with Volvo Group.
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CIP Updates: New proposals, including CIP-0193 regarding stake pool pruning and handle provider registry updates, have entered the review cycle alongside recent completions.
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Intersect MBO Updates: Intersect covered the successful van Rossem hard fork coordination, Constitutional Committee election progress, and preparation for the upcoming Constitutional Amendment Portal.
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Community Content: Recent spotlights include Learn Cardano’s news update on AI-agent payments and the x402 Foundation, and Linda’s analysis of Cardano’s ecosystem resilience.
All this and more in today’s Digest.
Van Rossem Hard Fork Activates - Cardano’s First Fully Community-Governed Protocol Upgrade
On July 18, 2026 at 21:44:51 UTC, at slot 192,844,800, Cardano crossed into Protocol Version 11 with the activation of the Van Rossem hard fork, and it’s genuinely hard to overstate what a milestone this is. For the first time, a hard fork was proposed, debated, and ratified entirely through on-chain governance, with no intervention needed from Cardano’s founding entities. That’s the community, definitely, proving it can steer the protocol on its own.
The numbers back that up. DReps voted 77.63% in favour, well clear of the 60% threshold. SPOs came in at 52.7%, just past the 51% bar. Six of seven Constitutional Committee members backed it too, with ratification locked in on July 13. By activation, the ecosystem was already there in spirit: over 93% of blocks were being produced on the new protocol version, and 84% of exchanges by liquidity had prepared for the switch. Full readiness numbers are on Intersect’s van Rossem upgrade readiness page.
Technically, Van Rossem bundles a handful of CIPs that matter more than they sound on paper. New Plutus primitives, including native array types, case-expression support, multi-asset value handling, and multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381, bring smart contract execution costs down and lay cryptographic groundwork for Dijkstra, and eventually Ouroboros Leios. The Hard Fork Working Group has already shifted attention to Dijkstra prep. Intersect’s write-up on the upgrade covers the coordination effort across Input Output, Cardano Foundation, Midnight, Emurgo, and others.
The hard fork is named after Max van Rossem, a governance contributor who passed away in October 2025. Max’ work on Cardano’s constitutional development left a real mark on our community. His name is now engraved permanently on-chain.
Community Roundtable Talks
On July 16, 2026, the Cardano Foundation hosted a Roundtable Talk on the 2026 Constitutional Committee election, themed “Real Talk with the Candidates.” The recorded session is now available to watch here. Established under CIP-1694, the Constitutional Committee is one of Cardano’s three constitutional governance bodies alongside DReps and SPOs, tasked with determining whether governance actions are consistent with the Cardano Constitution before they can take effect. In the session, participating candidates discussed the realities of the role — workload, transparency, constitutional interpretation, collaboration, Committee fatigue, and whether the current incentive model is sufficient to support long-term participation.
With the election now in its final days and voting closing July 23 at 21:45 UTC, DReps are encouraged to watch the discussion and cast their vote on Ekklesia before the deadline.
Ambassador Stories, with Andi Schmitt
Meet Andi, one of the newest Ambassadors to join the Cardano Ambassador Program.
Based in Germany, Andi is a content creator, educator, and community builder with a passion for making blockchain technology more accessible. Through educational content, he helps translate complex concepts into language that anyone can understand.
Drawn to Cardano’s research-driven approach, long-term thinking, and commitment to governance and education, he now contributes as an Ambassador, DRep, and Midnight Nightforce Leader for the DACH region, helping others navigate the evolving Web3 ecosystem.
His message is simple: “The Future must be decentralized.”
Want to learn more about Andi’s journey and what motivates his work in the ecosystem? Read his full Ambassador Story here:
Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIP) Updates
Once again, Robert Phair brings us a snapshot of the Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) process, the mechanism by which any stakeholder can propose changes to the protocol. Proposals may be technical in nature, covering things like address formats or transaction metadata, or conceptual, framed as a Cardano Problem Statement (CPS) that names an issue before a solution is defined. Once submitted, proposals enter open review, gathering feedback from across the ecosystem before either advancing toward adoption or settling in as reference material.
Below is an update on the newly submitted proposals, proposals currently in review, and ones that have recently been completed.
New Proposals
CIP-0193 candidate: Pruning Abandoned Pools - in the interest of consolidating block production and SPO voting stake, while alerting delegators to lost rewards to effectively unregister stake pools after a long interval without either a registration renewal or a produced block.
Handle Provider Registry & Resolver - continuing discussion from CPS-0032 of “opening” Cardano handles from the de facto standard of ADA Handle to a voluntary registry of handle service providers for use by Cardano wallets.
DRep Pledge (closed at author’s request) - a proposal intending to legitimise DReps and confirm their interest in Cardano’s governance processes by enabling a “pledge” as currently implemented for stake pool operators.
Active Review
CIP-0113 candidate: Programmable token-like assets - project leaders assembling responses to second-stage security audit, agreeing to continue review cycles until absolutely confirming token safety, with a future-proof update process for the protocol itself.
CPS-0033 candidate: DRep Voting Power Concentration - last-round editorial review in conjunction with community governance advocates.
Completed
- CIP-0169: Governance Metadata - On-Chain Binding
- CIP-0175: Stake Pool Hot Credentials
- CIP-0190: Proof of Existence Transaction Metadata
- CPS-0025: Small pool disadvantage in VRF tiebreakers
- CPS-0032: Handle Provider Interoperability
Cardanians: Weekly Ecosystem Updates
On July 20, 2026, Cardanians released its latest Ecosystem Newsletter (#132), highlighting the Cardano Foundation joining the x402 Foundation alongside AWS, Google, Stripe, Visa, and Circle to develop Coinbase’s x402 protocol as an open standard for AI agents and stablecoin payments. The newsletter also covered the van Rossem hard fork going live on mainnet with new Plutus capabilities and protocol preparation for Leios, Google adding Midnight to its Cloud Web3 portal with direct links to validators and an integrated testnet faucet, Strike securing a $1M liquidity commitment expected to lift available liquidity by more than 5x, and RealFi passing 1,000 testnet users in its first week.
Charles Hoskinson also confirmed Leios is expected by year-end, already on testnet and projected to raise throughput roughly 50x. For this and more, view the X thread.
Cardano Newsletter: Weekly Cardano Digest #135
On July 20, 2026, Issue #135 of the Weekly Cardano Digest leads with the van Rossem hard fork activation, calling it the first Cardano upgrade “entirely initiated, debated, and approved through on-chain governance.”
Lucas also covers the Cardano Foundation’s new membership in the Linux Foundation’s x402 Foundation, noting the strategic value of positioning Cardano in the emerging AI-agent payment space (more on this below in the CF section). Rounding out the edition is a look at Volvo Group’s blockchain supply chain pilot, including its test of a proprietary cryptocurrency for closed-loop supplier transactions, definitely a compelling enterprise use case, covered via a CF interview with Volvo’s Ivan Branco. Head to Lucas’s newsletter to read the full issue.
Spotlight on Cardano Content Creators
This week, we’re shining a light on some of Cardano’s community-driven content creators and ecosystem contributors. Across interviews, educational sessions, technical deep dives, and community discussions, these individuals and teams continue to help make Cardano more accessible, informative, and engaging for builders and community members alike. Here are a few recent highlights from across the ecosystem:
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Learn Cardano published a Cardano news update that starts with the Linux Foundation’s x402 Foundation and the rise of internet-native AI agent payments, where Cardano is present through the Cardano Foundation. He walks through how x402 connects to Masumi, Hydra, Leios, DeltaDeFi, AlphaGrowth, Blockfrost, and the upcoming Van Rossem hard fork, showing why Cardano’s eUTXO model and Hydra scaling give it a credible technical stack for AI agent payments and the next wave of ecosystem growth: Watch it here
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Linda published a video making the case for Cardano’s resilience during the current market phase. She focuses on the network’s fundamentals and research-driven development approach, arguing that Cardano’s methodical roadmap and steady protocol progress give ada strong long-term potential once broader sentiment recovers: Watch it here
Community Learning & Developer Engagement
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CIP-113 KYC: From Standard to Implementation | Developers Office Hour - In this session, the discussion moves beyond the CIP-113 specification to how programmable token standards and KYC-style compliance logic can be implemented on-chain, and what that means for developers building regulated or permissioned assets on Cardano. The full episode can be viewed here.
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Zero-Knowledge on Cardano: The Journey to PTAU | Developers Office Hour - In this session, the conversation turns to the privacy frontier, walking through the powers-of-tau (PTAU) trusted setup that underpins zero-knowledge proofs and the work required to bring practical ZK tooling to the Cardano ecosystem. The full episode can be viewed here.
Updates from the Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation has shared several updates this week, covering developer tooling, open standards membership, enterprise engagement, and ecosystem infrastructure.
On the Summit front, the Cardano Foundation announced that the Cardano Summit 2025 has been recognised at the International Corporate Events Network Awards in London, winning the Best International Event category. Definitely a win for the entire ecosystem Read more about it here.
And that’s not all. On July 14, the Cardano Foundation released an interview with Ivan Branco, Head of Information Management, AI, and Analytics at Volvo Group’s logistics operations in Belgium, to discuss how the company is approaching blockchain for supply chain management. As per the interview, Volvo has explored creating a closed blockchain environment for transactions between material suppliers, transport providers, and Volvo itself, including a proprietary cryptocurrency created specifically for that exploration. According to Branco, the biggest barrier to enterprise blockchain adoption is a false stigma tying the technology to cryptocurrency speculation, and Volvo’s approach starts from business value first. Curious to learn more about this? Listen to the full conversation here.
Also on July 14, the Cardano Foundation joined the x402 Foundation as an Associate Member, following its operational launch under the Linux Foundation. As per the announcement, the x402 protocol, originally contributed by Coinbase, embeds payment capabilities directly into HTTP interactions, allowing AI agents, APIs, and applications to process transactions as seamlessly as they exchange data. The Foundation joins a membership of 40 organizations spanning finance, cloud infrastructure, and blockchain, including AWS, Google, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Coinbase. As an Associate Member, the Cardano Foundation can contribute to discussions shaping the protocol’s future development. Read the full announcement here.
And that’s not all. On July 16, Pawel Jakubas, Senior Software Engineer at the Cardano Foundation, published a practical hands-on guide covering elliptic curve cryptography in Aiken, aimed at developers working on multi-party verification and advanced on-chain logic. The guide walks through concrete patterns for working with these cryptographic primitives directly in Cardano smart contracts. Interested in learning more? Read the guide here.
Rounding things out, and in case you missed it, the Cardano Foundation updated its Layer 2 landscape page on cardano.org, providing a consolidated overview of the scaling solutions currently live or in development on Cardano. The page covers state channels, including Hydra and Hydrozoa; rollups, including Midgard, Sundial, and zkFold; and sidechains and private chains, including Midnight, Vola Network, Strike Node, and Materios. Explore the full Layer 2 landscape here.
Update from Intersect MBO
Intersect shared the final run-up to the van Rossem hard fork in Intersect Weekly Update #120, which ratified across all voting groups on July 13 and is set to enact on July 18, closing out months of coordination. On-chain, the action carried 77.63% DRep support (60% threshold), 52.7% SPO support (51% threshold), and 6 Constitutional Committee approvals (5 required), with one CC member not voting, and no other governance actions were impacted. With the fork enacting, the Hard Fork Working Group has turned to the next milestone, the Dijkstra era that will bring Ouroboros Leios to mainnet, whose public testnet Musashi Dojo went live on June 23.
Intersect also reported that the Constitutional Committee election has entered its final week, voting closing July 23 at 21:45 UTC. DRep participation increased to 20 DReps casting a combined 3.3 billion ada in voting power, with the current top four by voting power Marek Mahut (deliberative.cc) at 854.3M ada, Cardano Curia (776.4M), Leandros BSP (741.6M), and Philip DiSarro (709.4M) — though the standing can still change before the deadline. Audited results are expected by July 27, with on-chain submission planned for the epoch starting July 28.
Beyond the election, Intersect previewed the Constitutional Amendment Portal (CAP), the shared workspace for proposing constitutional amendments or raising concerns via Constitutional Issue Statements, which is preparing to enter a public testing phase with live demos at Rare Evo in Las Vegas (July 28–31). The Intersect core budget proposal, the treasury-funded stewardship and coordination package, is in its final days on-chain, with DRep voting open until July 23 and 569.6M ada of treasury withdrawals administered to date, while a vote on updated Intersect bylaws remains open until July 29.
Cardano Forum Top 9 Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
- Cardano Has the Tech. So Why Is Everyone Else Winning Deals?
- The Hype Cycle is Over, Welcome to the Era of Utility. Why Cardano is Just Getting Started
- I´m Cristian Rojas, I´m building K’altik, a traceability platform where every step of the supply chain becomes a verifiable on-chain record
- Hello Cardano — Anzus from Gem Wallet
- Don’t Let Your ADA Sleep: Why Participation Matters
- Governance Hour #9 - Daedalus Wallet Maintenance and Improvements 2026-2027 (22 July)
- Cardano Projects Showcase || July’s Edition || W/ GameChanger Wallet
- IOR Cardano Vision Work Program 2026: Mid-Year report (Draft)
- Recover of Eternl wallet
Upcoming Community Events
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07-23 Masumi Office Hours: A weekly open session for builders, curious minds, and anyone following the agent economy, covering ecosystem updates, product demos, and team AMAs. - More Details Here
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07-28 Rare Evo 2026 (28–31 July, Las Vegas): ​Rare Evo returns to ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas for its annual cross-chain blockchain and AI conference, featuring speakers from across the blockchain, fintech, and policy worlds. Intersect Enterprise member Rare Network LLC hosts the event. rareevo.io
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07-28 Hard Fork Working Group: ​​​​Intersect has been informed of a proposal in brief, for the next Cardano mainnet hard fork. ​A tranche of work related to the core haskell node, funded by the treasury, has neared completion, been identified and put forward as a candidate for a mainnet hard fork - More Details Here
For more weekly events, visit Cardano Events
Many thanks and greetings from the Community Team!