The next update to the Cardano network seems to be proceeding as noted on the calendar. The Vasil hard fork is approaching quickly.
Testnet later this month
According to Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson, the development of the Cardano network is going according to plan. As a result, the expected hard fork called Vasil in June will take place on schedule. In addition, the testnet supporting the event is expected to launch as early as May.
This information appeared in the public space on May 14, during a briefing on the network’s development to date. During the broadcast, taking place via Twitter, Hoskinson explained what will change in Cardano’s functionality. According to him, we can expect a huge increase in the network’s efficiency, as well as an expansion of smart contract capabilities. It is expected to introduce four different CIPs:
CIP-31 (Reference Inputs), CIP-32 (Inline Datums), CIP-33 (Reference Scripts) and CIP-40 (Collateral Outputs). Meanwhile, work undertaken to date, has already resulted in improved pipelining and login permissions. UTXO HD integration efforts are also underway to assist with troubleshooting. Eight IOG nodes have been reposted for the P2P test network and 51 pre-registered SOPs have been added. The hard fork itself will likely take place on June 29.
Cardano continues to grow, although the price does not reflect this
There is no doubt that Cardano has been one of the fastest growing ecosystems over the past few months. Just in the past week, Cardano developers have released a new version of the Deadalus wallet, improving the display of unnamed native tokens and adding support for the Windows environment. They also fixed pairing issues with the Ledger Nano wallet S. Hoskinson took this opportunity to point out that there are currently 937 projects built in the Cardano ecosystem. At the same time, the number of independently created NFT collections has increased to 5549.
Despite the upcoming hard fork, Cardano is suffering along with the rest of the cryptocurrency market. At the time of writing this article, the price of the native ADA coin is trading around $0.50, down 84% from the ATH reached in September 2021.