Cardano (ADA) Targets End-2026 for First Dijkstra Phases

Cardano News

Cardano (ADA) has moved into formal planning for the Dijkstra era after the Cardano ecosystem organization Intersect reported progress across protocol work, governance and technical delivery. Intersect is a member-based organization that coordinates governance and development processes across the Cardano ecosystem. Its weekly review is intended to make engineering, voting and community tooling visible at the same time. The group said the van Rossem intra-era hard fork went live on July 18, shifting the network to Protocol Version 11 and delivering improvements to Plutus performance, ledger consistency and node security. That change is now the technical base for the next major upgrade, which is expected to bring Ouroboros Leios scaling features to the chain. Intersect also said a fresh parameter-change action is now available for stakeholder voting, while the Constitutional Committee election is running on-chain and the Constitutional Amendment Portal has reached an alpha testing stage for community users. Those governance tracks matter because Cardano’s on-chain system requires parameter changes, committee legitimacy and amendment tooling to move in parallel with engineering. The Dijkstra roadmap is being framed as a phased release rather than a single switch. The first stage is expected to cover Nested Transactions, Linear Leios and Peras, while developers continue to define the exact contents of the opening upgrade. The Haskell node team now targets shipping Nested Transactions and Linear Leios, the first two Dijkstra stages, to the main network before 2027, allowing key capabilities to arrive incrementally. Intersect said Product Committee delegates and outside contributors are trying to design a repeatable path for community input on later hard-fork scope beyond the initial Dijkstra release. The update added that constitutional adjustments tied to Dijkstra are likely to arrive only after the upgrade is active, but public discussion should begin early enough to allow meaningful feedback. As an altcoin with a formal governance layer, Cardano is trying to keep engineering, voting and community review synchronized rather than sequencing them after the fact.

Intersect’s Weekly update #122 on Cardano (ADA), published July 31, 2026, framed the Dijkstra transition as part of a wider delivery cycle rather than a single engineering milestone. The update listed several parallel work items: a new minPoolCost and Plutus memory parameter action, audited Constitutional Committee election results, the alpha launch of the Constitutional Amendment Portal, completion of the Eryx ZK Bridge, and contributions from Rare Evo and Tweag. minPoolCost affects the minimum cost stake pools can declare, while Plutus memory parameters influence how much execution space smart contracts can consume. Those settings can affect operator economics and developer resource planning, so they are often reviewed alongside broader protocol upgrades. For holders tracking the network as an appchain-style layer-1, the important point is that governance and execution improvements are being advanced together. The Dijkstra era is expected to introduce Ouroboros Leios to Cardano, a scaling approach designed to increase transaction capacity by distributing data availability and processing load more efficiently. Intersect said the first Dijkstra deployment would be split into stages covering Nested Transactions, Linear Leios and Peras while the scope of the opening hard fork is finalized. The organization also emphasized community participation: Product Committee delegates and external contributors are expected to build a framework that lets stakeholders influence later upgrade scope beyond the first Dijkstra version. Any governance-document changes needed for Dijkstra are expected to lag the software activation, but discussions are intended to start early enough for feedback. The naming question remains separate from the engineering schedule. After an earlier working-group decision, the present preference is to honor Alexander Esgen by naming the upgrade after him, while a separate on-chain informational action has nominated Fabian von Bergen. By presenting the Dijkstra path alongside parameter, governance and bridge updates, Intersect is signaling that Cardano’s next cycle is intended to be a coordinated protocol and governance release, not only a throughput upgrade.

COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine shows ADA trading near $0.1716, with the strongest support at $0.1704 rated 77/100 from Ichimoku Senkou A and Pivot Point confluence. The nearest resistance, $0.1718, scores 59/100, driven by R1 and EMA 50, making the current range tight. Derivatives positioning is leaning bullish: funding is positive at 0.0022%, open interest is $172.9 million, and the long/short account ratio is 2.59, or 72.2% long. Fear and Greed at 27 remains fearful, closer to a bear-market posture than an all-time-high setup. A break above $0.1718 could fuel momentum toward $0.1950, while losing $0.1704 would weaken the uptrend thesis.