Cardano has completed its Alonzo Hard Fork to introduce Smart Contracts developed on Plutus framework.
On September 12, during epoch 290, Cardano’s Alonzo update went live on the mainnet.
It is an important update that aims at delivering smart contract functionality to the chain.
Smart contracts are chunks of codes that self-execute when predefined conditions are satisfied. As a result, they form the bedrock of DeFi facilitating a trustless system for the exchange of money.
Cardano has been developed by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) and Charles Hoskinson and aims to be an alternative to Ethereum, which too Hoskinson had co-founded.
IOHK announced the update in a blog post and on Twitter.
The Alonzo Update
Alonzo hard fork is an update from the Goguen era in the Cardano Roadmap. This phase is solely focused on hosting smart contracts on the chain, opening the doors for DApps and DeFi.
The smart contracts will be powered by Plutus, “a purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform using the functional programming language Haskell.”
A couple of days ago IOHK stated in a blog explaining how Cardano’s Extended Unspent Transaction Output (eUTXO) approach to smart contract execution offers greater security and cost predictability.
Transition May Have Some Bumps
The Layer-1 project has also issued a caveat about the smart contracts that they may not be seamless from day-1 but may become so over time.
“Early user experiences might not be perfect. Some early DApps will have issues. We’ll see some great development teams and some poor ones. This is a permissionless, decentralized blockchain, so this is inevitable,” the announcement reads.
IOHK also stated, “There are high expectations resting on this upgrade. Some unreasonably so. Cardano watchers may be expecting a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready DApps available immediately after the upgrade. Expectations need to be managed here.”
Renowned crypto angel investor and crypto educator, Anthony Sassano also pointed out that the fork did not go as planned even after years of meticulous planning.
Cardano is known for minutely peer-reviewed research and testing. Consequently, it rolls out upgrades or features very slowly.
Its native token ADA continued to tumble even after such promising news. At the time of writing this article, its price stood at around 2.3 USDT. Maybe a lackluster performance of the update had a part to play in its fall.
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