Intra-era hard fork overview
Intersect plays the role of coordinator, as a functional servant-leader on behalf of the community and delivery teams working on hard fork activity. The functional teams within Intersect will work with the various committees, working groups, and delivery teams, relaying information here on the knowledge base. Ultimately the date for the hard fork is directly influenced by the community, the relevant constitutional approval and required on-chain voting.
Upgrade Release
Plutus upgrades
All built-in functions are available across Plutus V1, V2, and V3: Expanding the capabilities of Plutus V1 and V2 scripts and unifying the feature availability across versions.
case Expressions for built-in types: Enables case expressions on Bool, Integer, and Data within UPLC. Provides significant performance improvements and cleaner script logic. Addresses one of the major performance bottlenecks in data matching.
New built-ins and native types:
CIP-138 | Array type – adding efficient, native on-chain array handling
CIP-153 | MaryEraValue type – optimised multi-asset value operations
CIP-109 | Modular exponentiation builtin – critical for advanced crypto
CIP-132 | dropList builtin – efficient list manipulation
CIP-133 | Multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381 – useful for advanced cryptographic operations, specifically with zero-knowledge proof systems
All of these new builtins will be introduced across all Plutus versions. Collectively, these changes increase script performance, reduce execution cost, and meaningfully extend what builders can accomplish in Plutus.
Ledger and Cardano Node enhancements
VRF Key uniqueness enforcement:
Ensures no two stake pools reuse the same VRF key
Strengthens pool security and mitigates possible attack vectors
This means that from the point of hardfork, VRK key hash uniqueness is enforced at the ledger level
Revised reference input rules for Plutus V1/V2:
Adjusts predicate checks that previously caused issues for scripts using reference inputs
This fixes a scenario where
Constitutional Committee voting restriction moved to a ledger rule:
Shifts a mempool-only check into a proper ledger predicate failure
Improves transparency and governance correctness
Non-matching withdrawals predicate:
Clearer error messaging and safer validation of withdrawal structures
Improved protocol parameter hash mismatch reporting:
Better diagnostics when PPView hashes differ
Helps operators identify and resolve configuration issues quickly
Governance Actions
To be determined
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