Cardano One Step Closer to Welcoming Plutus V3 Following Launch on Testnet

The Cardano development arm, Input Output Global (IOG), has unveiled significant progress with Plutus V3, with its launch on SanchoNet marking a step forward in smart contract capabilities. 

The launch of the release on SanchoNet, Cardano’s testnet, brings in sophisticated Plutus components, giving developers improved tools and opening up a range of opportunities for creating smart contracts. IOG revealed the latest development in a press release.

Notably, the launch of Cardano node v.8.8.0-pre would usher in Plutus V3 on SanchoNet. With this move, the Cardano community could leverage a fully regulated testnet environment to explore the features of the upcoming Plutus upgrade.

Plutus V3, a platform for smart contracts, has been improved by the joint work of IOG’s Plutus and cryptography teams and MLabs.

The upgrade, which emphasizes performance, smart contract size and throughput, could help lower costs and attract new developers to the Cardano ecosystem.

Upgrades from Plutus V3

According to the IOG report, Plutus V3 delivers essential upgrades to the functions of Plutus Core, including new cryptographic primitives, Bitwise primitives and sums of products. The team believes these upgrades would help Cardano match up to the latest standards in the industry. 

Regarding the new cryptographic primitives, the team confirmed that these components could enable developers to follow industry standards, use the best cryptographic methods, and easily transfer smart contracts from Ethereum while building bridges for sidechains.

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The set of new primitives include the curve pairing BLS12-381 and the crypto hash functions Blake2b-224, and Keccak-256. Notably, each of these is designed to enhance security and expand the versatility of Cardano. 

Moreover, with Plutus V3, a new method of encoding data types in Plutus Core was introduced, namely the “sums of products” approach. This method is superior to the Scott encoding method, as it results in smaller scripts which are much cheaper.

The goal of the optimization is to improve the efficiency of scripts and the generation of code, which could speed up programs by 30%. The smooth operations facilitate fast execution of smart contracts, a significant performance boost for developers.

With the inclusion of CIP-58 bitwise primitives, Plutus V3 empowers developers by enabling advanced bit manipulations. This feature enhances performance, cryptographic capabilities, integer-string conversions, and the implementation of proper algorithms and data structures.

Cardano Aims for Constant Improvements

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, expressed his enthusiasm for Plutus V3, emphasizing that it constitutes a substantial upgrade coinciding with the Chang hard fork. He highlighted the extensive advantages it brings to dApps on Cardano especially in terms of interoperability with other chains.

Plutus V3 is massive upgrade coming with the Chang hardfork that brings so much to the table for Cardano DApps and blockchain interoperability https://t.co/0ZSTQFJLK4

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) February 12, 2024

The latest development comes over a year after Cardano welcomed Plutus V2 with the introduction of the Vasil hard fork in September 2022. These constant improvements are part of IOG’s efforts at facilitating the growth of the Cardano protocol.