Intersect released cardano-node 11.1.0 as a pre-release and explicitly says it is not yet recommended for mainnet use. The build prepares infrastructure for the Dijkstra-era hard fork, completes removal of the old iohk-monitoring-framework and leaves the new tracing system as the only supported path. Configurations that still contain legacy tracing keys must be migrated before adopting this branch.
At the storage layer, V1 LedgerDB and the LMDB backend are removed. Ledger snapshots become more predictable and Mithril-compatible so snapshots can be compared and shared across nodes. LMDB operators therefore face a real operational migration and need another storage backend. The notes also flag about a 12% memory increase when loading testnet genesis files with large preseeded datasets, while stating that mainnet is not affected by that known issue.
Performance work includes more efficient transaction forwarding between peers, mempool snapshots that stay responsive as the mempool grows and faster Plutus script validation. Initial network and consensus support for Peras is present but disabled by default behind the experimental NodeToNodeV_16 protocol version. The release also expands experimental gRPC and UTxO-RPC methods and reworks cardano-cli ping around CIP-0155.
For ADA, this is a developer and operator signal about the next node line rather than evidence that Dijkstra or Peras has activated on mainnet. The practical task is testing tracing and storage migrations plus dependent tooling ahead of a later production release and protocol activation.