Bitrabo Editorial
On Friday, Cardano celebrated its seventh anniversary, reinforcing its status as a leading cryptocurrency protocol. Its native token, ADA, is currently the eleventh largest in the market, with a market cap around $14 billion.
Input Output Global (IOG), the firm behind Cardano, marked this occasion on social media, reflecting on major milestones achieved since its founding by Charles Hoskinson, who was also instrumental in creating Ethereum.
Cardano’s Growth Over Seven Years
In a video tribute, IOG presented impressive figures that highlight Cardano’s evolution. Over 95 million transactions have taken place on the blockchain, illustrating its widespread adoption.
Moreover, over 74,000 Plutus scripts have been executed, which are key for deploying smart contracts on the Cardano platform.
Community involvement has also flourished, evidenced by the creation of 1.3 million delegated wallets and the publication of 226 research papers. Approximately 1,373 projects have been launched on the Cardano blockchain, showcasing the active community engagement.
The Catalyst funding initiative, which has completed 12 rounds of funding, has significantly contributed to the advancement of the Cardano ecosystem, backing more than 1,800 funded projects and fostering further developments.
Alongside its successes, Cardano has gone through various architectural transformations over the past seven years, including the pivotal transition from the Shelley era to the Alonzo hard fork.
Advancements in Decentralized Governance
Beginning in 2020, the Shelley era emphasized decentralization and improved network security through the Ouroboros upgrades. These enhancements optimized stake pool performance and enabled better ADA delegation, resulting in greater staking rewards for participants.
The Alonzo hard fork, introduced in 2021, brought smart contract capabilities to Cardano, significantly enlarging the block size and refining script memory parameters. This update empowered developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) utilizing the platform’s features.
The Vasil and Chang upgrades followed, with the latter marking the first hard fork of the Voltaire era, Cardano’s concluding phase. The Vasil upgrade, launched in 2022, introduced several upgrades to Plutus scripts to lower transaction fees and implemented diffusion pipelining for quicker block propagation.
Currently, the Chang upgrade is being implemented in two phases to add on-chain governance to the network. The first phase, involving governance features via CIP-1694, lays the groundwork for decentralized voting and governance capabilities.
The subsequent phase will introduce more governance features, allowing for delegated representative participation and treasury withdrawals, further empowering the Cardano community.
Next Steps in the Voltaire Era
The next phase of the Voltaire era will replace the genesis keys that have managed the network since its inception, supported by greater involvement from stake pool operators (SPOs), delegated representatives (DReps), and the Constitutional Committee (CC).
Future advancements toward decentralized governance will focus on ensuring that stake pool nodes meet operational thresholds and that decentralized applications (DApps) are nearing their completion.
Cardano will achieve full transition to the Voltaire era once the genesis keys are no longer used, triggering a hard fork that will establish Cardano as a self-sustaining blockchain. However, the timelines for additional upgrades remain unspecified.
As of now, the ADA token is trading at $0.403, reflecting a nearly 15% increase over the past week amid a broader market surge.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com