After months of deliberation and delays, Cardano’s Vasil upgrade is finally live on the mainnet. The upgrade officially went live on Friday, 23 September 2022, at 3.14 am IST.
The Vasil upgrade had been rescheduled multiple times due to compatibility issues.
Despite the delays, the entire Cardano community has been waiting for the Vasil upgrade with bated breath because of how much change it brings in. It makes the ecosystem faster, more secure, and a lot better in terms of user experience.
Up next: Plutus
Now with the Vasil upgrade out of the way, the new version of Plutus, Cardano’s scripting language, is scheduled to make its debut with a follow-up upgrade on 27 September 2022.
This second upgrade will make Cardano more receptive to hosting complex dApps and DeFi protocols. The new Plutus version will also upgrade Cardano smart contracts, bringing in greater efficiency and transaction affordability for BUIDLers.
The Final Frontier: Hydra
Once Plutus comes in, Cardano’s is likely to shift its focus to its Layer-2 solution, Hydra.
Cardano is a Layer-1 blockchain. Layer-1 blockchains like Cardano are self-sufficient and can verify transactions on their own, but they do need some help with improvements. That’s what Layer-2 blockchains built on top of them are there for. Cardano has been working on its Layer-2 scaling enhancement for some time now.
Even though no launch date has been set, IOHK, the body behind Cardano, aims at an early 2023 release.
The Vasil upgrade aims to make Cardano faster via concurrent smart contract execution, while the upcoming Hydra upgrade will focus on processing Cardano transactions off-chain.
