Key takeaways:
- Vasil upgrade rolled out on the Cardano mainnet on September 22
- Vasil brings new Plutus v2 features, security improvements, and optimized data transactions
- The set of improvements is believed to improve Cardano’s overall scalability and increase the network’s throughput
Vasil has been successfully deployed on the Cardano mainnet
Following Ethereum’s Merge earlier this month, another leading blockchain has successfully deployed a major software upgrade. Yesterday, a new hard fork of the Cardano (ADA) blockchain, known as the “Vasil” upgrade, went live on the mainnet.
Cardano Foundation shared the news on Twitter on Thursday.
The launch followed a series of postponements that pushed the eventual roll-out date from early in the summer of 2022 to September. Vasil improves the Cardano blockchain across virtually all fronts, from smart contracts functionality to faster transactions and better scalability.
Arguably the most important aspect of the new upgrade is the release of Plutus v2, the second iteration of Cardano’s smart contract platform (initially launched as a part of the Alonzo upgrade in September 2021). Plutus v2 introduces data sharing on-chain, inline datums, reference scrips, and a series of other smart contract-related improvements.
Here’s how Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) – the company behind Cardano development – summarized the upgrade in a recent blog post:
“New Plutus v2 features and enhancements will enable DApp developers to create novel and exciting experiences, while diffusion pipelining unlocks the potential for greater throughput and network capacity.”
Thanks to Vasil, the Cardano network now uses a more optimized security system, “resulting in faster block validation and network syncing times overall.” According to the devs, Cardano users can look forward to better performance without security compromises.
Both improvements in smart contracts – which will reduce the size of transactions and make the network more efficient and capable of processing more data transfers – and security, should increase the networks’ overall scalability,
It is worth noting that the full deployment of Plutus v2 features on the mainnet is expected on September 27.
The price of ADA saw relatively modest price activity following the upgrade – the coin saw mostly sideways trading action in the last 24 hours, changing hands at $0.453 at press time.
