The Cardano ecosystem underwent yet another update—Plutus V2 enhancement— on 27 September 2022. Input Output Hong Kong, the team behind Cardano, took to Twitter to announce the new upgrade and its dApp-specific benefits.
On September 27th, Plutus V2 functionality became available for developers on #Cardano mainnet. Dapps utilizing new Plutus V2 scripts & cost model are already seeing the power of #Vasil upgrade.
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 29, 2022
The upgrade didn’t come as a surprise. Much before the Vasil upgrade took form, Cardano had promised an upgraded version of its existing Plutus scripting language. Now that the update is finally live, we can expect developers to make the most out of it, courtesy of better smart contract running speeds and an improved cost model.
More about the upgrade
While the Vasil hard fork aimed at achieving broader scalability, the Plutus V2 update mainly focused on dApps—in an effort to make them faster and receptive to complex scripting. Put simply, post-Plutus, dApp developers will find it easier to create complex applications on Cardano.
But that’s not all. The improved cost model looks set to make dApp development cheaper. A Cardano-specific NFT project (Artano) implemented the Plutus V2, only to see the script size and the corresponding development costs come down by 90% and 75%, respectively.
However, the initial results and developments shouldn’t be deemed conclusive. The company stated that network monitoring will continue for a minimum of four epochs (20 days) before a final call on the improved network capacity and capability is taken.
Input Output Hong Kong also mentioned that while the positive effects on the dApps will be evident, the extent of the benefits will eventually depend on the type of dApp under consideration.
