Cardano's hard fork upgrade process is steadily advancing, with the pre-release version of the landmark node version 10.7.0 expected to launch within days. Intersect, the member-driven organization within the Cardano ecosystem responsible for this work, announced this timeline in its latest technical update.
Once developers officially release node 10.7.0, relevant tools within the Cardano ecosystem will immediately integrate this version. Subsequently, the development team will conduct comprehensive integration testing and performance evaluations of various services. Based on the test results, developers may release a series of minor updates to refine functionalities.
Intersect stated: "Cardano Node 10.7.0 Target prerelease version is expected to be released in the coming days." The organization further noted that the 10.7.0 prerelease version will support testing of new features. Following this, the 10.7.x version series will transition to version 11 for subsequent testnet forks.
Protocol 11 Introduces New Plutus Built-in Functions
This Cardano hard fork to Protocol 11 will introduce a suite of new Plutus built-in functions. These include CIP-138, which supports array types, and CIP-153, which supports MaryEraValue types.
Additionally, developers will integrate CIP-109 to provide support for modular exponentiation and implement the 'drop list' built-in functionality of CIP-132. Meanwhile, CIP-133 will enable multi-scalar multiplication operations on the BLS12-381 curve.
Intersect has confirmed that the SanchoNet testnet is already running Protocol 11, meaning developers can先行 test these newly added built-in functions on this network. The Scalus project has also updated its smart contract tools to be compatible with and support these new features.
Notably, this upgrade will not alter the transaction shape, so the disruption to existing integrations is expected to be minimal. Hardware wallets should also be able to handle serialization issues smoothly after this release.
The DBSync tool will receive a compatibility update shortly after the release of node 10.7.0. Intersect emphasized that this upgrade does not include any changes at the serialization layer; its core objectives are to enhance performance and clarify ledger rules.
This hard fork, named 'van Rossem', is essentially a minor, intra-era upgrade. It aims to improve Plutus execution efficiency and introduce new cryptographic capabilities. Existing smart contracts will continue to operate normally after this upgrade without compatibility interruptions.