Chang Upgrade

The Chang upgrade is the culmination of many years of hard work, including all the community participation that has taken place through community workshops and testing on SanchoNet. This moment represents a significant step towards minimum viable on-chain governance as defined in CIP-1694. As stake pools upgrade their nodes to support the new protocol, Cardano will have moved from the Basho era into the Voltaire Era, creating a self-sustaining blockchain and trailblazing the way forward for the industry.

The first of two upgrades (Chang Upgrade #1) will deploy governance features to Cardano and enter the technical bootstrapping phase as described in CIP-1694.

The second upgrade (Chang Upgrade #2) moves CIP-1694 out of technical bootstrapping phase and unlocks the final features of on-chain governance including DRep participation and treasury withdrawals.

The Chang upgrade will follow a similar path to that of the Vasil upgrade. The final decision to hard fork will be made – in consultation with members of the SPO, DApp and community – against 3 key criteria:

• No critical issues outstanding on node (including ledger, CLI, consensus, etc.)

• Benchmarking and performance-cost analysis is acceptable

• Community (including exchanges and DApp projects) has been properly informed and has had sufficient time to prepare for the hard fork combinator event