Cardano is set to introduce new Plutus primitives as defined in five CIPs, which are CIP-109 | Modular Exponentiation Built-in for Plutus Core; CIP-132 | New Plutus Builtin dropList; CIP-133 | Plutus support for Multi-Scalar Multiplication over BLS12-381; CIP-138 | Plutus Core Builtin Type - Array; CIP-153 | Plutus Core Builtin Type - MaryEraValue.

On May 8, the Cardano Preview test network hard forked to Protocol Version 11. According to Intersect, this means that these new primitives introduced by the prior Plutus Cost Model parameter update are now available for testing.

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On May 8, 2026 00:00 UTC, the Cardano Preview test network hard forked to Protocol Version 11. This means that the new primitives introduced by the prior Plutus Cost Model parameter update are now available for testing.

The new Plutus primitives are defined in…

— Intersect (@IntersectMBO) May 11, 2026

As reported, Node v11.0.1 has now been fully released and is mainnet hard fork-ready as momentum toward the intra-era van Rossem hard fork continues across node, infrastructure, and ecosystem coordination, with Preview now moved into the first live governance-driven activation stage.

Also, the DB-Sync 13.7.0.5 has been promoted to a full mainnet-ready release with compatibility for node v11.0.1.

Cardano set to update core functionality

The upcoming intra-era hard fork to Protocol Version 11 introduces targeted improvements across Plutus performance. Plutus refers to Cardano's native smart contract language, based on the Haskell programming language. The intra-era hard fork named van Rossem Hard fork is also set to enhance ledger consistency and node security.

As a result of the upgrade, all built-in functions will be available across Plutus V1, V2, and V3, thus expanding the capabilities of Plutus V1 and V2 scripts and unifying the feature availability across versions.

The new built-ins and native types include CIP-138 | Array type which adds efficient, native on-chain array handling; CIP-153 | MaryEraValue type which adds optimized multi-asset value operations; CIP-109 | Modular exponentiation builtin which is critical for advanced crypto; CIP-132 | dropList builtin which allows for efficient list manipulation; CIP-133 | Multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381 which is useful for advanced cryptographic operations, specifically with zero-knowledge proof systems.

All of these new builtins will be introduced across all Plutus versions. Overall, these changes are expected to increase script performance, reduce execution cost, and meaningfully extend what builders can accomplish in Plutus.

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