Cardano Transfers Core Development to External Teams as Van Rossem Upgrade Activates July 18

According to Input Output's announcement on Friday, Cardano is handing control of its core blockchain infrastructure to outside specialist firms, beginning in August. The Haskell node, Plutus smart-contract platform, Daedalus wallet, and Hydra scaling technology will be transferred to Se7en Labs, Teragone, and other partners, with the full transition completing through 2027. At least three independent node implementations in Haskell, Rust, and Go will run in parallel, overseen by community bodies Intersect and Pragma.

The move comes one day before the Van Rossem hard fork activates on July 18 at 21:44 UTC, upgrading Cardano to Protocol Version 11 and introducing new Plutus built-in functions designed to reduce smart contract execution costs. ADA rose about 2% on Friday to $0.165, with a market capitalization of $6 billion and open interest in ADA futures around $193 million.