Cardano Successfully Launches Vasil Upgrade On Testnet

The successful forking of the Cardano testnet signifies that the only step left in the Vasil Upgrade is the forking of the mainnet. 

Testnet Live, Team Planning For Mainnet

The much-awaited Vasil Upgrade just got one step closer to forking the mainnet. Cardano’s parent company, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) earlier announced on Twitter that the testnet forking has been accomplished. 

The tweet read, 

“We’re happy to report that today at 20:20 UTC the IOG team has successfully hard forked the Cardano Testnet. This is an important next step in the journey towards the Vasil upgrade on mainnet.”

The team is encouraging project developers, stake pool operators (SPO), and exchanges to deploy their code on the testnet to prepare for a smooth integration once the mainnet is forked in a month’s time. Due to the complex nature of the Vasil upgrade, backward compatibility will have to be accounted for, and SPOs will have to adjust their scripts. The next four weeks will be dedicated to testing, during which the teams at Cardano and Input-Output Global will work closely with the Cardano community of exchanges and developers. The proposal to update the mainnet will only be submitted once all players are comfortable with the upgrade. 

Improving Scalability

The testnet hardfork was previously scheduled for June 20. However, CEO Charles Hoskinson revealed that in the aftermath of the Terra LUNA crash, the team is erring on the side of caution following the revelation of minor code bugs. Therefore the testnet upgrade was postponed to June 29. The previous upgrade to the Cardano network was the Alonzo hard fork during the Goguen phase of the Cardano blockchain development, which introduced smart contracts. 

However, there have been issues of network throughput slowing down due to certain scripts. The Vasil hardfork will be implementing four scheduled upgrades which will reduce transaction sizes, and therefore increase network throughput and lower fees. The upgrade will basically allow faster block creation and improve scalability for decentralized apps (dApps). 

The team tweeted, 

“The Vasil upgrade will also include Cardano cryptographic primitives improvements (enabling greater interoperability options for other blockchains), a tuned Plutus interpreter, and a new cost model, which are all part of Plutus V2 scripts.”

Interoperability And Governance

The main attraction of Vasil is the interoperable functionality it will bring to the network. The current Basho phase, which is the fourth development phase of the blockchain, will witness interoperability between the Cardano sidechains. In the next Voltaire phase, the network will focus on governance. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.