Cardano now has smart contracts, after a victorious hard fork

Cardano announced on August 12 that the successful completion of the update at epoch 290. Therefore, allowing for the first time the development and execution of smart contracts on the public blockchain.

A Big Achievement of Cardano

Despite the achievement, Cardano emphasizes that the initiative is still in its early stages. Additionally, claiming that now is when “the mission truly begins” in a post shared the very same day.

“The mission truly begins now, as we start delivering on the vision we were working towards for so long. Building a decentralized system that extends economic identity and opportunity to everyone, everywhere.”

Plutus scripts is “a purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform utilizing the functional programming language Haskell,”. Developers say its use is to write smart contracts for Cardano using the Alonzo branch.

High Expectations

The team, on the other hand, has urged its fans to have realistic expectations for Alonzo, saying:

“High expectations are resting on this upgrade. Some unreasonably so. Cardano watchers may be expecting a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready DApps available immediately after the upgrade. Expectations need to be managed here.”

Cardano is a public blockchain created by Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, and his research firm IOHK.

Cardano promised to challenge Ethereum’s supremacy in hosting decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 apps. However, despite launching in September 2017, the project chastised for failing to offer innovative contract capabilities.

Dominic Williams, the founder of competitor platform Internet Computer, blasted Cardano for taking so long to introduce intelligent contract support, saying, “It amazes me that this chain had been in the market for two years and is only just adding support for smart contracts, and people are happy with this progress.”

Cardano, in early September when the first DApp to launch on its testnet suffered into problems with failed concurrent transaction processing, underwent further chastisization

“Seriously six years of “peer-reviewed” research and a $90bil+ market cap later and the first dapp on Cardano can’t even do concurrent transaction processing (aka the very thing you need for DeFi),” tweeted Anthony Sassano, an outspoken Ethereum maximalist.

Pushing the Critics Away

Despite its critics, the excitement surrounding Candano’s enhancements recently propelled its native token ADA to new highs, with ADA surging 192 percent from a low of $1.06 in late July to $3.10 on September 3, according to CoinGecko. Since the beginning of 2021, ADA has increased by almost 1,600%.

However, ADA has subsequently dropped and has spent the last week fluctuating between $2.30 and $2.80, implying that many traders bought the rumour and dumped the news.