The long-awaited Cardano Vasil hard fork went live on September 22. The upgrade will improve ADA's scalability and introduce new features to the blockchain.
The Vasil hard fork was delayed several times owing to problems discovered on Cardano's Vasil testnet.
Now that the upgrade is complete, many investors are asking what the future holds for Cardano and its place in the cryptocurrency market.
Cardano (ADA) Vasil Hard Fork is live
After the Vasil upgrade went live, many Cardano users and supporters took to Twitter to celebrate the launch in a similar fashion to Ethereum’s merge.
The upgrade will bring greater scalability and optimisation to the Cardano blockchain. Transactions will be significantly cheaper than before, the network will be able to do block transmissions without extensive validation, and enhancements to Cardano's Plutus language will allow developers to build better decentralised apps.
The Cardano (ADA) Roadmap
With the Vasil hard fork out of the way, a path has been cleared for additional significant improvements. Cardano's layer 2, Hydra head protocol, is still in continuous development.
The protocol will allow transactions to be processed outside of the Cardano blockchain while maintaining the security and finalisation of the Cardano network. The protocol will also be able to process transactions faster than Cardano’s mainnet.
Hydra head protocol is due before the end of 2022 or early 2023, but there is no set date announced.
Cardano’s algorithmic stablecoin DJED is also due to be released after the Vasil hard fork.
The stablecoin is being developed by IOG (Input Output Global) and Coti, a decentralised payment network. In a June 21 update, the Coti team assured the Cardano and Coti community that DJED is on track to be released Cardano's mainnet soon after the Vasil hard fork is done and audits are completed.
With over 1000 projects being developed for Cardano's blockchain, Cardano's future and the strength of its network are optimistic.
Cardano price
Cardano's ADA coin reacted minimally to the release of the Vasil hard fork. Prior to September 22, ADA went from lows of $0.43 and climbed throughout the day to $0.46. On September 23 the token climbed further to $0.47 before falling briefly to $0.45. Cardano is down 1.1% over the past 7 days but is up 1.0% in the last 24 hours.
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