Cardano hard fork is getting closer as 42 percent of blocks now come from improved SPOs

By: Dickson Arinze

Cardano hard fork is getting closer as 42 percent of blocks now come from improved SPOs

August 27, 2022 6:33 AM

When deciding whether or not to implement the Vasil hard fork, IOHK is waiting for three "critical signs," one of which is that at least 75% of new blocks originate from upgraded nodes.

 

Cardano's blockchain business, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), has said that the highly awaited Vasil hard fork is "ever closer" after disclosing the status of three important signs that would activate the mainnet update.

 

On August 25, IOHK updated its 265,800 followers on the "rollout status" of the Vasil upgrade and provided information on the "three critical mass indicators" that will determine when the mainnet update will take place.

 

It's estimated that 75% of mainnet blocks are being produced by nodes running 1.35.3, and that about 25 exchanges have upgraded (representing 80% of liquidity) along with the top ten significant mainnet Dapps.

 

Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) operating the latest node 1.35.3 already account for 42% of mainnet block production in the current epoch, which is more than halfway to the 75% required, according to the blockchain business on Thursday.

 


IOHK also mentioned that one of the biggest exchanges in the world, Binance, apparently updated their Cardano nodes to the most recent version. Since this would account for about 80% of the overall liquidity of its native token, the company has been aiming to upgrade the nodes of about 25 exchanges.

 

Regarding the decentralized applications (DApps) running on its mainnet, IOHK said they'll continue to work closely with several of the Cardano DApp teams, with four out of ten saying they're already actively testing against node 1.35.3 on the pre-production testnet.

 

IOHK also revealed that no new bugs have been found, leaving nine minor bugs that need to be fixed. None of these minor bugs will result in an unintentional hard fork.


Vasil, a long-awaited improvement, aims to cut costs while increasing network activity and reducing transaction size.

 

After IOHK published a roadmap on May 19 that called for a hard fork on June 29, the Vasil upgrade has been plagued by delays as engineers make sure the network transfer goes properly.

 

In response to accusations that the upgrade was rushed, Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson recently made a statement. He proposed postponing the launch for months so that the already tested and operating code could be retested, but the DApp developers would likely not agree that this was a good use of their time.