Intersect Opens Dijkstra Testnet to Cardano (ADA) Stake Pool Operators Ahead of Node 11.2

DijkstraNet Opens to Stake Pool Operators

Stake pool operators, who run the staking layer of the network, now have a public venue to point their infrastructure at. Cardano's ($ADA) DijkstraNet testnet reopened on Wednesday, and Intersect's Upgrade Bulletin #39, published on X on Thursday, invited operators to begin joining before the next blockchain node release. The bulletin names stake pool operators, wallet providers and tooling teams as the affected participants, which makes DijkstraNet the first venue where their software has to run against the Dijkstra feature set in practice. The test network currently runs node 11.1.3 under protocol version 11, inside the Conway era of Cardano's proof of stake design. Once the node 11.2 pre-release lands, a hard-fork initiation action will move DijkstraNet to protocol version 12, the release known as Dijkstra. Intersect expects a tagged 11.2 build during the week and scopes it as every Dijkstra hard fork feature except Leios, the throughput design being prepared on a separate network. The bulletin set no mainnet activation date and no operator threshold for the upgrade. Operators joining now find Cardano ($ADA) book pointing them to configuration files and a testnet faucet, with one-day epochs and a Kleioscan explorer listed among the testing resources. The bulletin adds that node 11.2 is expected to clear LSM for mainnet use, with memory requirements estimated at roughly 12 GB when LSM is enabled, and that Intersect is already working with operators to test LSM and gather feedback. Market context sits apart from this work: the Cardano price slipped 6.8% over the last 24 hours, coming after a failed 50-day EMA reclaim for the coin, while the bulletin itself is a development milestone rather than a trading event. Operators weighing participation can first review how to choose a Cardano stake pool and delegate $ADA.

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MusashiNet Carries the Leios Prototype

The bulletin lays out two parallel testing paths. DijkstraNet will carry the Dijkstra feature set without Leios on node 11.2, while MusashiNet gives downstream teams early access to a prototype containing the Leios-inclusive feature set, the weekly RC 2026w42 pre-release. Node 11.3, the formal Leios-ready release, remains in substantial development, and Intersect put a tagged version at least two weeks away at the time of publication. Context matters for scale: Cardano ($ADA) activated the van Rossem hard fork on July 18, moving mainnet to protocol version 11 and setting the baseline for the network's current Cardano upgrade path. Everything in this bulletin concerns separate test networks, not another completed mainnet upgrade. Input Output's rollout plan, dated Oct. 20, sets initial Leios capacity targets at three to five times Cardano's current capacity for transactions, then 10-15 times later; the figures remain targets, not delivered performance. Before Leios can operate, pools must register BLS voting keys after the fork, and roughly 90-95% of all stake must be registered before it can start, after which the sequence runs through mainnet load exercises and at least two protocol parameter updates dependent on network results and governance approval. BLS key management is still open: the existing pool registration certificate mechanism needs the pool cold key's signature plus the signature of every pool owner, and Intersect is weighing a dedicated BLS key management certificate against permission to update BLS keys in pool parameters without owner signatures. The organization calls the second approach the more likely option for Dijkstra, with a fuller solution possibly deferred to the Euler era. On scope, CIP-23 is fully included in Dijkstra, a response several operators had long requested. Governance work runs alongside: the Hard Fork Working Group walked through the Dijkstra risk log, a revised constitutional draft was due during the week, and a constitutional update and guardrails session is set for Oct. 23 at 14:00 UTC, with access open to Constitutional Committee members, pool operators and delegated representatives in Cardano's delegated proof of stake system, a class thinned after a recent DRep resignation left delegators' votes uncounted. Intersect also listed a Node Diversity Workshop for Nov. 12-13 at the London Marriott Hotel Canary Wharf.

The 90-95% Registration Bar

The open testnet is the easy part of this sequence; the gating work sits with participants who have not moved yet. Node 11.2 had no tagged build when the bulletin went out, node 11.3 is at least two weeks from one, and no mainnet activation date or operator threshold exists for Dijkstra itself. The 90-95% BLS registration bar is the hard dependency: Leios cannot begin until nearly all stake registers voting keys, and the mechanism that would spare pool owners from signing every rotation is still being selected. Wallet and tooling teams have been asked to compare the Leios impact assessments against their own integrations and flag missing dependencies; until those teams ship, DijkstraNet's opening is a rehearsal, not a rollout.