Cardano Node 11.2 Nears Pre-Release, Leios Planned for 11.3

Cardano node 11.2 is expected to be pre-released by the end of this week, according to Intersect’s minutes of the October 13 Hard Fork Working Group meeting. It covers everything planned for Dijkstra except Linear Leios, the throughput upgrade at the center of Cardano’s next hard fork to protocol version 12.

Node 11.2 and the DijkstraNet Respin

Mainnet-ready refers to the node software; activating Dijkstra still requires a governance vote. The October 6 minutes state that 11.2 should not be considered capable of surviving the hard fork event and that it is intended for DijkstraNet, not for Musashi, the Leios testnet.

DijkstraNet, the test network for the new era, will be relaunched on protocol version 11 and forked to version 12, after which the community is invited to test the Dijkstra features other than Linear Leios. These include nested transactions under CIP-118, which let one transaction contain child transactions with their own signatures, and a new guard script type under CIP-112 whose validator can run without the transaction spending a script-locked input or minting tokens.

Both feed into Plutus V4, the next version of Cardano’s smart contract language.

Linear Leios Planned for Node 11.3

Linear Leios (CIP-164) is planned for node 11.3, which the minutes describe as the first candidate for promotion to node 12.0, the version able to cross the hard fork, if testing finds no blocking issues. In this design, a block producer can publish a larger endorser block referencing extra transactions, which a committee of stake pools must certify with a 75 percent stake quorum before they enter the ledger.

The October 13 minutes place 11.3 a few weeks away and state that its availability will inform further progress toward the hard fork. They do not repeat the dates set a week earlier.

The October 6 minutes had described an earlier, conditional path to enactment in 2026: an 11.3 release candidate by about October 23, a hard fork initiation governance action around November 10 and enactment by December 15, the last reasonable date for this year. That path assumed a flawless 11.3, and needing an 11.4 would rule out 2026. December 15 is therefore not a confirmed hard fork date.

Leios is already under load on the Musashi testnet, now in its Fire phase. Its operators state that the program aims for an initial five to 20 times increase in throughput capacity. For the start of the Dijkstra era, the October 6 minutes describe a conservative mainnet configuration, perhaps around 2x throughput, with later parameter updates raising capacity as testing and operational results support further increases.

Constitutional Guardrails and the CIP-23 Request

Protocol version 12 is expected to require around 100 constitutional guardrails, which define acceptable values and conditions for protocol parameters. An initial guardrail script is expected next week, with benchmark results shaping the final version.

Whether CIP-23 takes effect with version 12 remains open. Intersect’s Dijkstra upgrade overview lists it as conditional: the new parameter minPoolMargin, a minimum percentage fee for pools, is defined in version 12, and the fee rule activates with that hard fork if implementation and governance readiness align, or otherwise in a later intra-era hard fork within the Dijkstra era. A sizable group of stake pool operators, represented by Martin of ATADA, asked for CIP-23 to be fully implemented in version 12, without waiting for a later activation.

Development teams are willing to include it if circumstances allow, but adding it this late might delay version 12’s originally planned dates. If unrelated delays occur, they intend to ship it complete in the release candidate. The fixed minimum fee, minPoolCost, remains 170 ADA; a governance action to cut it to 75 ADA expired this month without reaching the required DRep approval threshold.

The working group also plans to contact Keystone, Ledger, Trezor and BitBox about a transaction format change adding a field for BLS keys, which stake pools use to certify Leios endorser blocks.