Cardano’s Vasil Hardfork launches tomorrow. Here’s what you need to know
Important takeaways
- Cardano’s Vasil upgrade is set to launch tomorrow.
- Vasil is expected to bring improvements to make the blockchain more scalable and efficient and lower transaction costs.
- While the upgrade has suffered two delays, Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has hinted that the project is on track for tomorrow’s launch.
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The upgrade will make Cardano more scalable and introduce several other improvements.
Cardano is waiting for Vasil
Cardano‘s Vasil hard fork is finally at hand.
Layer 1 blockchain’s long-awaited upgrade is set taking place over five days, with the first round of upgrades scheduled for tomorrow and the second on September 27.
“We don’t expect there will be any problems, but there is no going back now,” said Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson during a live broadcast on September 18. “No amount of testing or anything can save us because [the] rocket is in the air. It either explodes in midair or reaches orbit, and obviously it’s going to reach orbit.”
Vasil is set to improve several aspects of the Cardano blockchain. According to a blog post by Cardano developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), Vasil wants to enable applications built on Cardano to become “faster and more sophisticated,” making the blockchain easier to build on while improving the user experience. It will also improve the network’s scalability and lower transaction fees.
IOHK has said that Vasil is Cardano’s “most significant update” so far. The hard fork was originally scheduled for June 29, but suffered two delays to allow for more testing and patching issues.
Last month, Cardano developer Adam Dean said the blockchain’s testnet was “catastrophically broken” due to a compatibility issue with the current version of the blockchain’s client software. Dean suggested that the failure may have been due to IOHK rushing to deploy Vasil. “If there was an ‘atomic clock’ for Cardano, we came perilously close to striking ‘midnight,'” he wrote after revealing the discovery.
Cardano is one of the world’s largest blockchain networks with a market capitalization of over $15 billion, per CoinGecko data. However, the network only has $79.1 million in total value locked up, according to Defi Llama data. That’s significantly less than competing projects like Ethereum ($30.87 billion), BNB Chain ($5.24 billion), Avalanche ($1.62 billion), and Solana ($1.28 billion). While Cardano fans will likely welcome the Vasil launch, the network’s ADA token has not reacted ahead of the event. According to CoinGecko data, it is currently trading at $0.44, down 0.4% in the last 24 hours. ADA is about 85.6% below the September 2021 record high.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
