July 18, 2026
Epoch644van Rossem
Intra-era upgrade delivering cleaner ledger rules, VRF key uniqueness, Plutus smart contract performance improvements and new cryptographic built-ins
Conway Era
What hard forks were implemented, and what functionalities did they introduce?
Hard forks in Cardano do not signify division and differences within the ecosystem. On the contrary, they define a specific and collectively agreed-upon exact time (slot) when all nodes switch from the current era to a new one, applying new functions, validation rules, or parameter values. All stake pool operators need to install the upgrade, and they also have a say and must agree to it. A Cardano hard fork is, therefore, not a separation but a precise collective evolution.
Intra-era upgrade delivering cleaner ledger rules, VRF key uniqueness, Plutus smart contract performance improvements and new cryptographic built-ins
Introducing the second batch of decentralized governance features of CIP-1694. Enabling the full set of governance actions and the DRep role.
Introducing the first batch of decentralized governance features of CIP-1694. Enabling only parameter changes and hard fork initiations.
Introduced further improvements to Plutus smart contract functionality and overall network performance.
Improved the scalability and performance of the network, named after Vasil Dabov, a Cardano community member.
Introducidas capacidades de contratos inteligentes usando Plutus, permitiendo el despliegue de aplicaciones descentralizadas (dApps).
Proporcionó funcionalidad nativa de token a Cardano, permitiendo a los usuarios crear y transaccionar con tokens personalizados.
Se añadieron capacidades de bloqueo de tokens, lo que era un requisito previo para la funcionalidad del contrato inteligente.
Se introdujeron características de staking y descentralización, pasando de una federada a un sistema descentralizado.
El lanzamiento de la red principal de Cardano y la introducción de la ada criptomoneda.
Note that some hard forks, particularly Byron and Shelley, transitioned through a series of updates and may not have a single specific transaction id associated with them. For the others, the provided transaction ids correspond to significant parameter updates leading to the hard forks.