Starting July 3, the four-week window for app developers and exchanges to test the next Cardano update before it is released to the mainnet begins.
Cardano (ADA) Blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) has submitted an upgrade proposal to fork the Cardano testnet, kicking off the countdown to the Vasil mainnet upgrade.
The Vasil upgrade will bring “significant performance and capacity improvements” to the Blockchain. IOHK describes the fork as the “biggest and best update to date”, which will provide higher performance, better script performance for developers, and lower costs.
Significant Updates
One of the most significant updates noted by the team is the implementation of the broadcast pipeline, which aims to improve the scalability of Blockchains for decentralized applications (DApps).
The update will allow faster block creation, as they can be transmitted without full validation.
If all goes well, the testnet update will take place on July 3, and the mainnet update is scheduled for around the end of July. The Cardano community has requested a minimum of four weeks to allow time to test and update applications on the testnet, and IOHK says that the hard fork for the mainnet will take place “once everyone is comfortable and ready.”
The Cardano mainnet upgrade was previously due to take place on June 29 but was pushed back a month on June 22 citing several pending bugs. IOHK has called the project the “most complex work program we have ever undertaken.”
A Few Concerns
IOHK’s “primary concern” is to ensure that the update is handled in a “secure” manner. He reports that the Vasil node is creating over 75% of the testnet blocks and believes that there is “good chain density to proceed safely.”
The last significant update to the Blockchain came in September 2021 with the Alonzo hard fork, which first introduced the long-awaited functionality of smart contracts by using Plutus scripts, a smart contract development language built especially for Cardano.
The update was widely considered a disappointment, as Cardano still only has 11 DApps according to DeFi Llama. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson previously predicted that there would be “thousands of DApps” on Cardano by 2021 and believes that developers are waiting for the Vasil update to launch their projects.
About Vasil
The Vasil node is named in honor of Vasil Stoyanov Dabov, an artist and Cardano community member and ambassador who passed away in December 2021 after a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.
Cardano is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain and is promoted as a so-called “Ethereum Killer”, which aims to outperform Ethereum (ETH) by providing better scalability, transactions per second, and lower fees.
Currently, its native coin ADA ranks eighth with a market capitalization of $15.7 billion at a price of about $0.45, down 85% from its all-time high of over $3 in September 2021, according to data from CoinGecko.
ADA has a history of plunging hard after its hard forks in a sell-the-news fashion.
Cardano could be set up to resume its downtrend after Vasil goes live in July, which would fall in line with the bear trend observed these past weeks.
By Audy Castaneda
