Major Cardano Hard Fork Will Give ADA Holders a Say in Network's Future

Cardano is changing via its Plomin hard fork Wednesday, with the aim of giving users of one of the world’s biggest blockchains more say on how the network runs. 

The proof-of-stake network’s upgrade on Wednesday night will give those holding ADA “real voting power,” according to the Cardano Foundation, allowing them to weigh in on changes to the protocol and future upgrades. 

Cardano is the blockchain network behind the ninth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, ADA. As a blockchain, it competes with the likes of Ethereum—which Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson helped create before departing the project—and allows developers to build smart contracts upon it.

Wednesday’s upgrade will be a “a milestone in blockchain governance,” the foundation said via X (formerly Twitter). 

In the crypto world, hard forks sometimes occur when developers working on the network no longer agree on the best way to upgrade the network and break away to form a new project—usually creating a new coin in the process.

But in this instance and in others, a hard fork almost means the opposite: “a specific and collectively agreed-upon exact time when all nodes switch from the current era to a new one,” according to the project’s website. 

Developers working on the blockchain have to agree on the update, and upgrade their nodes to keep taking part in the network.

Cardano got a boost back in December when Hoskinson said he would be spending more time in Washington to help with crypto policy. “A large part of my time in 2025 will also be devoted to the political process,” Hoskinson said. 

President Donald Trump has positioned himself as a crypto-friendly leader that would help grow and formalize the industry in the United States, plus he has his own crypto token and NFT projects, along with a stake in a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial.

Edited by Andrew Hayward