Cardano has entered epoch 666, a minor scheduling milestone that has drawn community attention largely due to the number itself. Since its launch in September 2017, the network has used five-day epochs, each containing 432,000 one-second slots, with the cycle also serving as the basis for staking snapshots and reward calculations. According to Cexplorer, epoch 666 began on Nov. 5, 2026, and is expected to close on Nov. 10.
Symbolic, not technical
Although the number 666 carries biblical associations, no protocol event is tied to this epoch, and no hard fork or major upgrade is scheduled around it. For Cardano, the milestone serves as a reminder of how the proof-of-stake chain tracks time and staking cycles. While possibly interesting to the community, the number does not change how the network operates, and it required no action from node operators or stake pool operators.
Transactions pass 127 million
Separate data from Cexplorer shows that Cardano has processed more than 127 million transactions on mainnet, with the explorer putting the total at 127,203,164. This figure reflects activity accumulated over years rather than a sudden spike, offering a rough sense of network usage—though transaction counts alone do not capture the value moved or the number of active users.
Dijkstra testnet moves to protocol 12
On the upgrade front, DijkstraNet, the testnet for the Dijkstra hard fork, has been hard forked to protocol version 12. It is now available for testing and integration against the full Dijkstra feature set, except for Linear Leios. Node 11.2 was pre-released on Oct. 28 and used to move DijkstraNet into the Dijkstra era, and DB Sync 13.8.0.0 was also released for all networks.
Midnight completes Ledger 9 upgrade
Midnight has completed its move from Ledger 8 to Ledger 9. The upgrade adds support for common cryptographic standards, including ECDSA and Keccak-256, expands wallet and custody compatibility, and allows contracts to interact directly with one another. Keccak-256 is the hashing algorithm Ethereum uses to create fixed-length cryptographic fingerprints, while ECDSA is a digital signature method used by networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to prove ownership of a wallet address. The changes are aimed at developers, security, compatibility, and performance across the network.
