Dijkstra testnet opens October 21, 2026: What it means for the Cardano price

Published on 10/25/2026 at 07:04 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS

Epoch 660 processed 1.78 million transactions. The Cardano price stands at 0.2080 USD on October 25, 2026, down 1.54 percent.

Upgrade testing and network activity

Cardano's public Dijkstra testnet phase began on October 21, 2026.
The test network currently uses protocol version 11 and node 11.1.3.
The Cardano price stands at 0.2080 USD as of October 25, 2026, 1.54 percent below the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026.
Epoch 660 carried 1.78 million transactions between October 6 and October 11, 2026.

Cardano, XCCRYPTOADA0, Illustration mit AI erstellt.

Cardano (ADA) entered public testing for the Dijkstra upgrade when its testnet reopened on October 21, 2026. Intersect said the network was available to participants on protocol version 11 and node version 11.1.3. The Cardano price stands at 0.2080 USD as of October 25, 2026, down 1.54 percent compared with the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026.

Dijkstra testing starts on October 21, 2026

The public testnet is the current stage of Cardano's next protocol upgrade. According to Intersect, stake pool operators can begin onboarding with configuration files and a testnet faucet, while the test network uses one-day epochs. A node is the software that validates blocks and transactions, and the testnet is running node 11.1.3 during this phase.

U.Today reported on October 23, 2026, that development was continuing toward node 11.2 and a later hard fork to protocol version 12. The planned testing sequence covers the node release, a hard-fork initiation action and integration work for the Dijkstra feature set. The report said the initial testnet scope excludes Leios, a separate throughput initiative.

Record activity meets a usage caveat

Cardano also recorded 1.78 million transactions in Epoch 660, a five-day period ending October 11, 2026. Phemex said the total was the largest complete epoch in the chain's history and that network fees reached 337,700 ADA, compared with 49,490 ADA in Epoch 659.

The same Phemex report said a sample of 1,776 transactions sent most payments to one recipient. That concentration limits what the 1.78 million transaction count can show about the number of distinct users, even as the figure remains a dated network metric for October 2026.

ADA market data on October 25, 2026

According to Investing.com, ADA trades at 0.2080 USD as of October 25, 2026. The price is 1.54 percent below the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026, with a daily high of 0.2093 USD and a daily low of 0.2076 USD for the UTC day. Cardano has a market capitalization of 7.65 billion USD and ranks 15th, while 24-hour volume is 263.15 million USD. Circulating supply is 36.81 billion ADA.