Cardano Confirms Launch Date For Smart Contracts Mainnet Upgrade

Cardano’s developer IOHK has now confirmed smart contracts capability is set to launch on the network on September 12th. The long-awaited upgrade to the Cardano Mainnet will see the addition of smart contracts capability to the network, which would open the door to both developers and investors alike on the network. The launch is scheduled for Sunday, only four days away.

LAUNCH CONFIRMED: Today, around 17:26 UTC we successfully submitted an update proposal to the #Cardano mainnet, to trigger a hard fork combinator event on Sunday 💪🙌 #Cardano $ADA 1/6 pic.twitter.com/rEtjrdGiBV

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 7, 2021

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Taking to Twitter, the developer shared with the wider community that they had successfully submitted an upgrade proposal to the Cardano Mainnet. This would trigger the hard fork combinator (HFC) event that would take place on Sunday. “The Alonzo HFC event will be the most significant upgrade yet, laying the firmest of foundations for an exciting new era of smart contracts on Cardano,” said the developer.

Using the HFC technology will enable the deployment of smart contracts capability with the core Plutus, which will come will all compatibility upgrades across the entire software stack. Testing has already been underway for the smart contracts capability with trusted testers from previous upgrade iterations. So far, the smart contracts are processing transactions accordingly and developers have taken to building their DApps on the platform.

Gearing Up To Compete

The final deployment will see Cardano competing with other networks successfully operating in the space. Going up against well-known smart contracts platforms like Ethereum, and a new contender that has taken the market by storm, Solana.

Alonzo Hard Fork will bring decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized exchanges (DEX) to the ecosystem, as well as capabilities like being able to mint NFTs on the Cardano blockchain. Effectively expanding the scope of use cases of the network.

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The network ran into some problems earlier when rumors started making the rounds on social media that the smart contracts could only handle one transaction at a time. But this was soon after cleared up by the developers, who showed that the problem was not with the network, but rather with the DApp Minswap. IOHK further encouraged developers to keep testing on the network, adding that “this is what a testnet is for.”

Cardano (ADA) Price Reaction

Cardano, like the rest of the market, is still reeling from the flash crash which it experienced yesterday. Although it has recovered from the lows of the flash crash, the digital asset continues to struggle to find footing back to positions before the crash. The announcement from Cardano’s developer did not do much to push the price upwards, which has left the asset trading around the $2.3 range. Putting it back down below highs from May.

ADA price struggles as market reels from crash | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $2.38, down more than 9% in the last 24 hours. The crash in its value has brought the total market cap of the asset down to $76 billion. Although remaining the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Featured image from Ethereum World News, chart from TradingView.com