Overview
- Input Output disclosed Friday that it will begin transferring control of Cardano’s Haskell node, Plutus platform, Daedalus wallet and Hydra scaling technology to external specialist teams starting in August with a multi-year handover through 2027.
- Se7en Labs and Teragone are named as initial specialist firms, while community organizations Intersect and Pragma will oversee formal specifications and require at least three parallel node implementations in Haskell, Rust and Go.
- The Van Rossem hard fork is set to activate on July 18 at 21:44 UTC, moving Cardano to Protocol Version 11 and adding Plutus built-in functions intended to lower smart-contract execution costs.
- Cardano’s network metrics remain weak, with roughly $70 million in total value locked and ADA trading near $0.16, though the token saw a modest price uptick after IOG’s announcement.
- IOG will focus more on research through IO Labs and IO Ventures and says the handover will test whether independent teams and community oversight can maintain development speed, preserve interoperability and rebuild developer activity.