Charles Hoskinson announced the release of Cardano Node 9.0.0 during a live broadcast in Colorado, including on-chain governance via SIP 1694, support for Plutus V1 reference scripts, and support for Plutus script signing via SIP 69. It also includes Plutus version 3.0, which prepares Cardano for its Chang hard fork by moving it into the boot phase of SIP 1694.