What Cardano's Vasil hard fork means for the blockchain
Cardano's Vasil hard Fork
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What Cardano's Vasilhard fork means for the blockchain
Afterseveral delays and some setbacks, Cardano's long-awaited Vasil upgradefinally went live on Sept. 22. From the outside looking in, the hard fork isdesigned to help improve the ecosystem's scalability and generaltransaction throughput capacity as well as advance Cardano's decentralizedapplications (DApps) development capacity.
Tocommemorate the event, an announcement was made by blockchain firm Input OutputHong Kong (IOHK) — which currently oversees the design, building andmaintenance of the Cardano platform — just minutes after the development.
Bar-Geffenfurther noted that the hard fork will significantly improve the efficiency ofDjed, an algorithmic stablecoin developed jointly by IOHK and the COTIGroup, increasing the number of transactions carried out on the Djed platformand thus helping position Cardano as a prime contender for stablecointransactions.
Acloser look at what Vasil has to offer
Beforelooking at the functional and operational benefits afforded by the Vasil hardfork, it would be best to understand what exactly a hard fork is. In its mostbasic sense, a hard fork is a network upgrade set in motion when thosegoverning a blockchain platform decide to add or fix certain featuresto the ecosystem.
In otherwords, when a hard fork takes place, the network splits into two versions thatrun separately, where one version follows existing features and rules while theother continues as an upgraded version of the network.
Lastly, itis worth noting that Vasil is not Cardano's first major network upgrade becausea year or so ago, the project witnessed the launch of another hard fork calledAlonzo, which was designed to allow users to devise DApps using smartcontracts. The Alonzo upgrade, alongside many other developments, was Cardano'sway of providing users with an attractive alternative to Ethereum, anotherplatform that allows for the seamless development of novel applications usingsmart contracts.
Why isVasil so important?
Named aftera prominent member of the Cardano community who passed away in 2021, Vasil St.Dabov, the upgrade will enhance the ecosystem's transaction throughput,efficiency and block latency speeds. Furthermore, the hard fork will see theimplementation of a technique called diffusion pipelining, which seeks toimprove block propagation times while increasing the network's transactionprocessing capabilities.
The Vasilhard fork will introduce three key Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs), namelyCIP-31, CIP-32 and CIP-33. In this regard, CIP-31 will spur the introduction ofa new reference input mechanism that will allow DApps to access transactionaloutput data without having to recreate it as before, making the entire processextremely streamlined and time-saving. At the same time, CIP-32 is designed toenhance Cardano's native decentralization levels by introducing an on-chaindata storage feature for network participants.
Potentialeffects on ADA
While thefirst round of the hard fork started on Sept. 22, the remaining upgrades areset to take effect on Sept 27. To this point, the second phase of the hard forkwill look to redefine Plutus' cost model, which has a direct effect on theprocessing power and memory fees required to govern Cardano's native smartcontracts.
In additionto the Vasil upgrade, the Cardano team revealed that it has been workingtirelessly on the development of its layer-2 scaling solution — the Hydra headprotocol — which is capable of processing transactions from the Cardano blockchainwhile still making use of it as its core security and settlement layer.
Vasil wasoriginally slated to go live earlier this year but faced numerous setbacks.Even though the upgrade is live now, the ecosystem continues to reel in fromthe impact of these delays. For example, since the start of 2020, Cardano'snative cryptocurrency, ADA, has continued to witness a dip in its transactionvolume. Not only that, but from a purely price-performance standpoint, theupgrade has not been able to do much in terms of spurring ADA's value, with thecurrency trading down less than 1% on the week.
DespiteADA's price action continuing to remain quite lackluster, the fact that theCardano ecosystem has made such tremendous strides over the past year showsthat the project seems to be primed for big things in the near to mid-term.
Cardano's contentious fork, called Vasil, that was originally slated to go online this month has been delayed again. This, while the Cardano Foundation's Ecosystem Foundation will be announcing several high-profile initiatives designed to drive adoption and growth in blockchain technology.