Tag: hfc

Cardano’s Shelley Hard Fork Successful, Network on its Way to Become the World’s Financial Operating System

Cardano’s second developmental phase, Shelley has been successfully launched, the hard fork was successful in transforming Cardano into the Shelley era from Byron.

The hard fork took Cardano from its Byron era to Shelley, to enable the network to become more decentralized and autonomous. As Cardano has officially entered into the Shelley era, IOHK CEO and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said in excitement:

“It was an amazing moment, it all worked, and immediately after, we already saw transactions being pushed to the chain. […] We are in the Shelley era.”

The engineers on the Cardano team went through an exhaustive 72-hour burn-in of going through all the checklists before the hard fork. Hoskinson said:

“This is the Shelley era. We are not longer a static and federated system, we’re a dynamic and decentralized system. […] So many people from here on out are going to be making blocks, running the system, and every day we’re going to get a bit more decentralized, […] and every day this network is going to grow.” 

The Shelley era of the Cardano blockchain will become 50-100 times more decentralized than other blockchain networks. Network participants, the Cardano community, and ADA holders will be able to decide how the system will evolve. There will also be incentives to be part of the Cardano network, as individuals who hold ADA, Cardano’s native token will be able to delegate their crypto to a stake pool and earn rewards.

According to Hoskinson, Cardano has received a lot of discouragement in the past. Responding to those criticisms, he said:

“Today we showed everybody how to do proof of stake right, from Ethereum on down. A lot of people said it wasn’t going to work, a lot of people were critics. […] Today we showed them what we could do.”

Addressing stake pool operators, with every block made and signed, Hoskinson said that is a testimony to the Cardano network. “You’re now part of something that’s going to be around for many decades, hopefully longer than I am. Long after I’m dead I’d still like to see Cardano still here. […] You’re all part of one long unbroken chain that will eventually become the world’s financial operating system.”

No more forks after Shelley

IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson mentioned that there will be no more hard forks after Shelley. However, there will still be new protocols after the Shelley era to be implemented.

To enable a new update to the Cardano network, a vital tool for combining two protocols, is the hard fork combinator. The hard fork combinator combines two protocols into one protocol, while the first protocol runs for a while and switches to the second protocol.

Cardano will be continuing to rolling out native assets, smart contracts, and overlay protocols, amongst other new capabilities. Hoskinson added that the Shelley hard fork will be the last time Cardano will see an upgrade “this profound”.

Cardano’s Goguen era, which marks the next period after Shelley, will be the era of implementing smart contracts and enabling decentralized applications (Dapps) on the network. The Goguen era is Cardano’s third development phase, which is expected to start in the third quarter of 2020 with the release of its testnet. Cardano’s last phase is Voltaire.

Cardano’s Allegra Hard Fork Scheduled for Next Week, Node Release 1.24.2 Successfully Deployed

Cardano has recently successfully deployed the node release of 1.24.2 to the Cardano mainnet, ahead of its hard fork, Allegra. The next Cardano protocol update, which includes the hard fork combinator (HFC) event Allegra, will take place on Dec. 16.

According to Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain development company behind Cardano, after extensive testing on its QA networks, node release 1.24.2 has been deployed on the Cardano mainnet. IOHK announced:

“This morning, after extensive testing on our QA networks, we’ve successfully deployed Node release 1.24.2 to the #Cardano mainnet. This release supports the next Cardano protocol update (‘token locking’ HFC event codenamed ‘Allegra’) planned for 16 December, so looking good.”

Sebastien Guillemot, the lead research and development engineer at Emurgo recently explained that the upcoming Allegra hard fork does not fundamentally change anything about how transactions are made. He added, “any translation that is valid right now for Shelley will be valid in Allegra.” 

What is Cardano’s Allegra hard fork?

Cardano’s upcoming hard fork, Allegra, is a hard fork combinator (HFC) that is different from hard forks on other blockchains which allows the hard fork to be deployed before the hard fork happens. This upgrade is part of the next transition for the Cardano blockchain from the Shelley era to the Goguen era. 

What it means for the end-user is that there would not be a time where the server would need to go down before the first upgrade, and they would not see any interruption at all. IOHK’s recent blog explained:

“To enable a smooth transition, Cardano automatically preserves the history of previous blocks. This allows the protocol to be upgraded without radical interference to the chain. The previous state does not vanish. Rather, it is extended to include new capabilities. Instead of splitting into two different chains, Cardano combines the original blocks that comply with the current block production rules with new blocks that comply with the new block production rules.”

The Allegra hard fork will introduce a token locking mechanism as part of Project Catalyst and Voltaire, the treasury system for Cardano. The treasury system would ensure the funding of the blockchain network indefinitely. As part of on-chain voting on Cardano, tokens must be locked up before voting can happen, to avoid attacks. 

As Project Catalyst is expected to launch soon, Guillemot explained that the token locking mechanism is needed ahead of time. 

ADA price predictions are high ahead of Allegra hard fork

As witnessed during the last time where the Cardano blockchain went through a hard fork, ADA’s price surged ahead of the Shelley update. As Cardano takes one step further towards becoming a fully decentralized blockchain, ADA’s price could benefit and see a rally. 

ADA is currently trading at $0.145 according to CoinMarketCap and currently ranks the 8th by market capitalization. Coinswitch modestly predicts that by 2023 ADA coins will reach the $2 dollar mark.

What is Cardano’s Mary hard fork?

Cardano’s Mary hard fork adds a new concept of multi-asset support. Cardano aims to have multiple assets on the blockchain to enable any user to create their own asset. Guillemot explains that non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or assets on other blockchains could be added to the network. All the assets created on the blockchain network would be treated “almost as the same way as ADA.”

Guillemot further explained that the other assets could be sent in the same transaction with ADA, however, every transaction on Cardano needs to contain ADA, fees would be paid in ADA, and delegation rewards would only be paid in ADA. 

The Mary hard fork is expected in Q1 of 2021.

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