Cryptocurrency Network Cardano is two days away from the next hard fork on September 12th and the community is expecting to see functional smart contracts. They can be used for decentralized finance (defi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other types of decentralized applications (dapps). Cardano has managed to grab the 3rd largest cryptocurrency market cap out of more than 10,000 crypto assets but over the past seven days, Cardano has lost over 16% in terms of value.
Cardano expects to upgrade in two days
With over $400 billion under the hood, the Ethereum (ETH) market is by far the largest smart contract platform today in terms of monetary valuation. Ethereum has held this position for a few years now, but a number of other smart contract crypto asset networks are moving towards ETH. Besides ETH, today’s smart contract markets by market valuation include Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Terra (LUNA), Avalanche (AVAX), and more.
Ethereum’s fees and difficulty in scaling it has led to funds moving to other smart contract competitors with lower fees and faster transaction times. Cardano has promised to be a competitor to Ethereum and the next upgrade is expected to give developers functional smart contract capabilities. The upgrade on September 12 is called “Alonzo” and the smart contract capabilities were there for the previous Alonzo stages, but only for tech participants.
Goguen phase will see “integration of smart contracts”, Goguen adds “ability to build decentralized applications”
If all goes well, the community hopes that the network will be expanded to take advantage of Defi, NFTs, tokenization, and other types of dapps. Alonzo is part of Cardano’s roadmap of five different eras including Byron, Shelley, Cogwen, Basho, and Voltaire.
For now, Cardano’s network is in the Goguen era. The developers have been working on Goguen in parallel with Shelley and after Goguen is completed, both technical and non-technical savvy individuals will be able to produce Cardano smart contracts.
“With the integration of smart contracts, the Goguen era represents a major step forward in the capability of the Cardano network,” the Cardano team explained on their website. “Where the Shelley era of decentralization was the core of the system, Goguen adds the ability to build decentralized applications (dapps) on Cardano’s solid foundation of peer-reviewed research and high-certification development.”
Outlier Ventures this week published a report on blockchain development in the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, and the Cardano project is one of the best in terms of development. In terms of active developers, Ethereum owns 168 while Cardano owns 165, according to an Outlier report published by Robin Andre Nordnes. While Cardano (ADA) has lost more than 16% over the past seven days, stats to date show that ADA is up more than 2,555%.
What do you think of the upcoming upgrade to Cardano network? Tell us what you think about it in the comments section below.
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