The Cardano Alonzo update brings the network closer to realizing its full capabilities. What is the essence of the update and what stages is it divided into?
The Alonzo hard fork is a major update to the Cardano network, which will activate the long-awaited smart contract feature. After the upgrade, any user will be able to create their own smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain. This opens up opportunities for the creation of decentralized applications (dApps).
The developers plan to roll out the latest phase of the update to the Cardano mainnet in September. The hard fork marks the end of the Shelley era and the beginning of the Goguen phase.
Era of Cardano
The Cardano roadmap is divided into six main milestones – eras, each of which aims to expand the functionality of the network.
Byron. Deploying the core Cardano code. Users have the opportunity to exchange ADA and mine cryptoasset based on proof of stake (PoS) consensus.
Shelley. The main focus is on decentralizing the network by creating incentives for users to deploy their own nodes. The main goal of the era is to make sure that nodes or individual computers are managed by a heterogeneous group of network participants, and not by a small centralized group of users.
Goguen. By activating the functionality of smart contracts on the network, developers can create decentralized applications on the Cardano blockchain.
Basho. Improve the underlying performance of the Cardano network to handle more transactions and scale. This era will enable the power of sidechains, a scaling tool using a blockchain “tree”.
Voltaire. Deploying a voting and funding system to manage the community network. Users will be able to vote with their crypto assets and influence the development of the network.
Cardano is now in the final stages of the Shelley era. During this development phase, many new features were added to Cardano, including the enhanced Ouroboros PoS protocol and staking and delegation pools.
Cardano operates using its own “hard fork method” – a system that combines two different protocols (such as Byron and Shelley) into a single ledger to ensure a smooth transition between eras. One of the problems that Cardano developers faced when activating hard forks is that after the update was approved, a significant part of the community did not switch to the new version.
This could be due to the fact that users do not agree with the changes or did not update the wallets in time. The method of combining hard forks allows nodes to run multiple versions of the blockchain at the same time, which ensures smooth transitions and no hassle when upgrading.
Alonzo Hard Fork Stages
Alonzo hard fork activation is divided into three stages:
Alonzo blue
Alonzo white
Alonzo purple
There are also two smaller phases after Alonzo Purple – Alonzo Red and Alonzo Black. At each stage, more users are added to the testnet and bugs are identified to be corrected. Alonzo Blue has activated smart contracts for about 50 network members – mainly staking pool operators. Minor bugs were discovered and fixed at this stage. According to the developers’ plan, these standard bugs will appear and will be fixed as Alonzo is tested further.
Alonzo White added more features to Alonzo Blue and expanded the range of test takers. Hundreds of new users went through a kind of “training camp” that helped test the capabilities of the network. This experiment was conducted by IOHK, a Cardano company led by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. The duration of the stage is about four weeks, it was launched in July.
Alonzo Purple is a public testnet with several thousand users participating in it. This stage is divided into two distinct phases: light purple and dark purple. The first phase activates the ability to use simple smart contracts, and the second – more complex ones.
Then there are the final phases of Alonzo Red / Alonzo Black, which are meant to finalize bug fixes / clean up the code and prepare the hard fork deployment. After they are completed, it will be difficult to make any changes to the update, so the developers pay special attention to these stages.
Dividing each stage into a stage increases the developer’s ability to fix bugs – the code is frozen, and the exchanges have time to prepare for the Cardano hard fork. Deploying the Alonzo Mainnet will officially activate the final upgrade code.
The transition of the network to the Goguen era will for the first time allow the creation of decentralized applications on the Cardano network thanks to the new capabilities of Alonzo smart contracts. At this stage, the developers plan to launch the platform for creating smart contracts Plutus Platform, which will give users with different levels of technical skills the ability to create decentralized applications.
Plutus
Plutus uses the Haskell programming language. Plutus and Haskell share the same codebase for both on-net and off-net development. This means that in essence the coding process is identical, so there will be no complexities with programming languages when developing smart contracts.
This makes Plutus contracts even simpler and opens up testing opportunities – developers can improve their products for large projects. Charles Hosinson explained that the choice of Haskell is due to the presence of code with a high degree of reliability.
Plutus core
Plutus Core is a programming language that connects smart contracts to the final settlement layer, the Cardano blockchain. When the developer finishes building the code with Plutus, it is compiled into Plutus Core, where the code is simplified for the Cardano blockchain. This method allows Cardano to better process data and reduce the amount of space it occupies on the blockchain.
In addition, the network supports Marlowe, a new domain-specific programming language that allows anyone to create and test their own smart contracts without having advanced programming knowledge. Marlowe is built on top of Haskell and Plutus and includes the necessary elements to create smart contracts.
Simplifying the process of creating smart contracts and expanding the development capabilities on Cardano opens up the opportunity for the development of many projects, including the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry. Developers of projects that require high transaction speed and low fees may be interested in deploying to Cardano. After activating Alonzo, more than 65 projects are planning to deploy on this blockchain, including Synthesis, Miniswap, Stasis, and CardWallet.
