Welcome to Intersect’s Development Update #98. This week, we bring you the latest on the Cardano blockchain upgrade, highlights from events in Nairobi and Hong Kong, current governance actions, and more. We also have two opportunities for you to help shape Cardano's future through short surveys.

Cardano hard fork update

Pre-Release Cardano Node 10.6.2

• Release likely this week
• A Pre-Release node containing hard fork functionality
• Once released it will enable hard fork features testing via SanchoNet

Cardano Node 10.7.0

• Target release within two weeks
• Mainnet hard-fork-ready candidate release
• Will be used to fork Preview, PreProd and then Mainnet
• Formal benchmarking and performance tests ran

The 10.6.2 release aims to get the ball rolling and engage stakeholders before a Hard Fork candidate node is prepared. 10.7.0 is marked as the hard fork candidate, but dependent on successful testnet deployments and formal benchmarking results.

Hard fork naming

The Hard Fork working group has submitted an info action for DRep consideration to rename the hard fork, continuing the tradition from previous hard forks.

See, Name Protocol Version 11 hard fork - van Rossem via

• AdaStat
• Cardanoscan
• Cexplorer
• CGov

This action has now surpassed 70% DRep support, with voting concluding Friday, February 13.

This level of backing represents strong community consensus, making it highly likely that the upcoming intra-era hard fork (Protocol Version 11) will be named the van Rossem Hard Fork in memory of Max van Rossem, a much-loved member of the Cardano community.

As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement, the Delivery Assurance team has introduced a new feedback form for Intersect’s Administration Services. Whether you’re a community member, vendor, or DRep, your experience matters to us.

Your input helps us refine our processes, strengthen support, and ensure our services evolve alongside the needs of the ecosystem. If you’ve interacted with Administration Services, we’d really value a few minutes of your time.

The Open Source Committee (OSC) is focused on delivering the programs of the Paid Open Source Model (POSM), with direct support from the Open Source Office (OSO). Early 2026 has been busy – the OSC and OSO are closely collaborating to ensure effective delivery of programs that have not started yet. The OSO is committed to ensuring successful implementation of POSM.

There is just one week remaining to contribute to the State of Developer Experience Survey. Available in 5 languages, the survey enables our Developer Advocates to gather insights that will help them shape improvements to developer experience in Q2 2026.

Take the survey here: English / French / Japanese / Chinese / Portuguese.

Membership and Community

Events - Cardano Africa Tech Summit (CATS)

Intersect was on the ground meeting members in Nairobi, Kenya for the Africa Tech Summit.

The event was a hands-on innovation event focused on showcasing projects, with inspiring speakers such as elected Intersect Board Member Mercy Fordwoo, who shared a strong message around interoperability and collaboration in Cardano.

“We don’t see other blockchains as competitors. We see them as potential collaborators.”

Jack Briggs, Intersect Executive Director, took to the stage and traced Cardano’s journey, speaking about governance, participation, and Intersect’s role in enabling members to shape global ecosystem development. At Cardano Corner, he expanded on how builders and partners can engage more directly in governance processes.

At our booth, locally produced Intersect t-shirts, made in Kenya by Kitu Kali with a brand new design inspired by the local environment, sparked fantastic conversations. It was a great opportunity to connect with builders, and community members keen to learn more or participate more actively in the ecosystem.

Incredible engagement, meaningful conversations, and infectious enthusiasm from the African Cardano community.

Events - Consensus Hong Kong 2026

The energy from Nairobi carried forward to Consensus Hong Kong, bringing the same focus on governance and community engagement to one of Asia's premier Web3 gatherings.

The event brought together thousands of builders, investors, founders, and policymakers from across Asia and beyond. At the Cardano ecosystem booth, Abhik Nag engaged directly with community members, partners, and organizations curious about how governance in Cardano is evolving in practice.

Throughout the event, there was strong curiosity about how Delivery Assurance works, how funding oversight is handled, and how organizations can engage more directly in governance through Intersect’s enterprise memberships.

And that's not all - coming up:

Tokyo, Japan – 2026 Budget Process & DRep Session

On February 25 at 5PM JST, EMURGO (@emurgo_io), in collaboration with Intersect, will host an in-depth session focused on the 2026 Cardano budget process. The event will provide a practical walkthrough of timelines, administrative flow, decision points, and key updates from the 2025 cycle, alongside a governance and constitutional perspective on what these changes mean for DReps in practice. Participants will also explore how KPIs are defined and applied to support more structured and transparent proposal evaluation.

Japanese interpretation will be available, followed by an interactive Q&A, networking, and dinner.

Speakers include Fred Tanaka (Intersect), Yuta (DRep), Phillip Pon (EMURGO), and Shunsuke Murasaki (EMURGO).

Register here: https://luma.com/gigyr8ok

Current Governance actions

Here are the current standings for active Governance Actions, as of the time of writing.

Name Protocol Version 11 Hard Fork – van Rossem: This info action expiring on February 13 proposes naming the Protocol Version 11 hard fork the “van Rossem Hard Fork” in memory of Max van Rossem, honoring his significant contributions to Cardano’s governance, constitutional development, and community building. The proposal continues Cardano’s tradition of naming hard forks after impactful contributors whose work helped shape the ecosystem.
Current standings: (at the time of writing)

Constitutional Committee

• Cardano Curia: Not voted ⏳
• Tingvard: Constitutional ✅
• Eastern Cardano Council: Not voted ⏳
• Ace Alliance: Constitutional ✅
• Cardano Japan Council: Constitutional ✅
• Phil_uplc: Not voted ⏳
• KtorZ: Not voted ⏳

DReps

• DReps: 82% Yes votes

This is an info action and does not require specific approval thresholds.

Increase Transaction and Block Memory Units (Part 1 of 2): This parameter update governance action expires on February 14, and proposes increasing Plutus script memory unit limits per transaction and per block by 25%, enabling more work to be performed by Plutus scripts within a single block while maintaining network security, performance, and consistency with constitutional guardrails. The change is intended to reduce friction for DApp developers, improve scalability, and increase Plutus throughput with minimal risk. This action represents the first of two linked updates required under the current guardrails.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

Constitutional Committee

• Cardano Curia: Constitutional ✅
• Tingvard: Constitutional ✅
• Eastern Cardano Council: Not voted ⏳
• Ace Alliance: Constitutional ✅
• Cardano Japan Council: Constitutional ✅
• Phil_uplc: Not voted ⏳
• KtorZ: Constitutional ✅
  
  

• DReps: 87% Yes votes

• SPOs: 57% Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional Committee: Approval from five of seven members
• DReps: 67% approval
• SPOs: Majority approval by active block production stake

 

Cardano DeFi Liquidity Budget - Withdrawal 1 (₳500,000): This Treasury Withdrawal action expires on February 18, and requests 500,000 ada to establish the foundational legal and technical infrastructure for the broader Stablecoin DeFi Liquidity project. The funds are earmarked for three specific pillars:

• The legal formation of a Cayman Islands Foundation Company to provide the DAO with a separate legal personality
• The setup of an Amaru multisig contract by Sundae Labs for secure fund management.
• A comprehensive security audit by Invariant0 LLC. This action is the first functional step following the community-approved Budget Info Action, ensuring that subsequent large-scale liquidity deployments are governed by a robust, constitutionally compliant framework.

Current standings: (at the time of writing) Constitutional Committee

• Cardano Curia: Not voted ⏳
• Tingvard: Unconstitutional ❌
• Eastern Cardano Council: Not voted ⏳
• Ace Alliance: Not voted ⏳
• Cardano Japan Council: Unconstitutional ❌
• Phil_uplc: Not voted ⏳
• KtorZ: Not voted ⏳
  
  

• DReps: 58% Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional Committee: Approval from five of seven members
• DReps: 67% approval

Net Change Limit (Epoch 613 to Epoch 713): This Net Change Limit info action expires on March 11, and proposes setting a maximum treasury withdrawal cap of 300 million ada for the period from the beginning of Epoch 613 (February 13, 2026) to the conclusion of Epoch 713 (July 3, 2027). Establishing this limit is constitutionally required before any treasury withdrawal actions can be submitted and serves as a guardrail to ensure fiscal discipline, transparency, and compliance with Article IV of the Cardano Constitution. For the purpose of maintaining fiscal discipline, the proposed NCL is set with reference to the previous year’s total treasury inflows. Total treasury inflows for 2025 are defined as the sum of inflows from Epoch 532 through Epoch 604. These inflows totaled 306,940,195 ADA.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

Constitutional Committee

• Cardano Curia: Not voted ⏳
• Tingvard: Not voted ⏳
• Eastern Cardano Council: Not voted ⏳
• Ace Alliance: Not voted ⏳
• Cardano Japan Council: Not voted ⏳
• Phil_uplc: Not voted ⏳
• KtorZ: Not voted ⏳

DReps

• DReps: 27% Yes votes

• SPOs: 1% yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional committee: 66.67%

Reduce minimum Constitutional Committee size (committeeMinSize) from 7 to 5:

This parameter update governance action expires on March 16, and proposes to reduce the minimum Constitutional Committee size (committeeMinSize) from 7 to 5 in order to improve operational resilience while maintaining constitutional safeguards. The Constitutional Committee is designed to operate with seven members. However, maintaining a minimum size of seven creates operational fragility, as a single resignation or temporary unavailability can prevent the Committee from functioning.

 

Reducing the minimum size to five provides an operational buffer, allowing the Committee to continue operating as intended and reducing the risk of governance inoperability.

Current standings: (at the time of writing)

Constitutional Committee

• Cardano Curia: Not voted ⏳
• Tingvard: Not voted ⏳
• Eastern Cardano Council: Not voted ⏳
• Ace Alliance: Not voted ⏳
• Cardano Japan Council: Not voted ⏳
• Phil_uplc: Not voted ⏳
• KtorZ: Not voted ⏳
  
  

• DReps: 13 % Yes votes

Ratification thresholds:

• Constitutional Committee: Approval from five of seven members
• DReps: 67% approval

 

We strongly encourage all members to engage with the governance process, whether that is being involved directly through a committee/working group, actively voting, letting your representatives know how you’d like to vote, or simply engaging in discussion! We thank each and every member for their constant drive!

That’s it for this week’s update. Thank you for reading. To learn more about Intersect’s work, explore our Knowledge Base, which provides detailed information on governance structures, committees, and funding. Additionally, visit the Intersect website for the latest news, updates, and roadmap information.

Join the conversation on Discord, and follow us on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn to engage with fellow members, working groups, and the broader community.

Your voice helps shape the future of Cardano governance.