Cardano News: Preview Network Milestone Tracking the 80% SPO Threshold for Mainnet

Cardano van Rossem hard fork news landed on the preview test network on May 5, with Intersect, the member-based organization coordinating Cardano’s technical roadmap, confirming both the governance action submission and the release of Cardano Node version 11.0.1 Pre-Release simultaneously.

The upgrade moves Protocol Version 11 one step closer to mainnet, with the critical variable now shifting entirely to SPO (Stake Pool Operator) readiness: at least 85% of stake pools by active stake must upgrade before ratification can proceed.

For ADA holders watching the Voltaire era governance machinery run in real time, this is the preview phase working exactly as designed.

Node 11.0.1 is the first release to formally support Cardano’s intra-era hard fork mechanism – meaning the chain upgrades protocol version without triggering an era transition out of Conway.

Transaction shape doesn’t change. Ecosystem disruption is structurally minimized. The release also bumps cardano-api and cardano-cli to their 11.0 series and advances the experimental hard fork target to protocol version 12, signaling the development pipeline is already looking beyond the current upgrade.

The upgrade bundles five new Plutus primitive sets, defined in CIP-0109, CIP-0132, CIP-0133, CIP-0138, and CIP-0153, and unifies built-in functions across Plutus V1, V2, and V3. That last point matters: existing V1 and V2 scripts gain access to the full expanded built-in set after the fork, which expands DApp capabilities without requiring contract rewrites.

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What are the 85% SPO Threshold News Triggers for Cardano

The 85% active-stake threshold is not a soft target; it is a constitutional requirement embedded in Cardano’s governance framework.

Under the rules established through the Voltaire era’s on-chain governance model, the hard fork governance action cannot be ratified until SPOs representing at least 85% of active stake have upgraded to a node version supporting Protocol Version 11.

DReps (Delegate Representatives) and the Constitutional Committee must also vote before the action is enacted on-chain.

The threshold logic exists to prevent a chain split. If a critical mass of block-producing nodes hasn’t upgraded, the network risks producing incompatible blocks at the fork boundary, the same failure mode that caused a mainnet chain partition in late 2025 when a malformed delegation transaction forced emergency SPO upgrades to node 10.5.3.

That incident made clear that SPO coordination isn’t procedural theater; it’s the actual security layer.

The current SPO upgrade percentage on preview is not yet publicly confirmed at a precise figure, but the historical pattern from prior Cardano hard forks, including the Chang upgrade cycle, suggests the initial wave of large, professionally run pools upgrades within the first 72 to 96 hours of a preview release.

Smaller home-hosted pools typically lag by one to two weeks. Community tracking tools, including Cardano Scan and PoolTool, are the live data sources to watch as the count climbs toward the 85% mark.

Intersect’s announcement was direct:

“ATTENTION The van Rossem Hard Fork GA has been submitted to the Preview test network today. Cardano Node version 11.0.1 Pre-Release is also now available. This version is an essential requirement to safely cross the hard fork. SPOs, DApps, and developers are urged to upgrade immediately.”

The Chang hard fork experience – where exchange and dApp lags delayed mainnet activation even after SPOs crossed the initial threshold – means the pressure is now on the full ecosystem stack, not just pool operators.

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