Cardano plans 2 developer events before next hardfork

Cardano (ADA) will hold two developer events in Barcelona and Austin within the next couple of weeks before it commences its hard fork in June. The Vice President of IOHK, Tim Harrison, announced this on Twitter. 

We’re hosting two #Cardano developer events between end of May and mid June, in Barcelona (focus on audit and certification) and Austin, Tx (focus on Plutus plus some Marlowe) respectively. If you are #buildingonCardano and want to get involved, @benohanlon is your man 👍

— Tim Harrison (@timbharrison) May 5, 2022

Cardano developer events

The Barcelona event will focus on certification and audit and will be held by the end of May. And the next one in Austin will focus on Marlowe and Plutus and will be in the middle of June.

Marlowe is one of the programming languages on Cardano and is used for developing and executing financial contracts. On the other hand, Plutus is a smart contract platform based on Cardano.

Upcoming Cardano improvement proposals

By June 29, Cardano will have its Vasil hard fork, which is expected to improve the network and its smart contract capabilities. Already, IOHK has outlined Cardano improvement proposals (CIPs) coming with the hard fork.

CIPs coming with June’s HF:

CIPs (Cardano Improvement Proposals) present new features to the #Cardano network that are key to bettering our blockchain

The upcoming HF introduces:
CIP-31: Reference Inputs
CIP-32: Inline Datums
CIP-33: Reference Scripts
CIP-40: Collateral Outputs pic.twitter.com/bx8vOKDF3H

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) May 2, 2022

Users can expect four improvements which are CIP-31 (Reference Inputs), CIP-32 (Inline Datums), CIP-33 (Reference Scripts ), and CIP-40 (Collateral Outputs). According to IOHK, these CIPs provide new features to improve the network.

Inline Datums will allow storing data on-chain rather than just storing a hash of it. 

This provides a more convenient architecture where devs don’t have to include the data when interacting with the script.

Reference Scripts will make transactions cheaper by making them smaller. Users won’t have to include new scripts in each transaction as they can interact with a script by referencing it.

Collateral Output will improve the transaction validation process with enough collateral to complete a transaction. This means that users will no longer lose their collateral if a transaction should fail.

All these CIPs aim to improve Plutus’s performance and make Cardano more efficient while allowing its apps to execute faster when the hard fork is complete.

Retail interest in Cardano rises

Data from IntoTheBlock shows that retail investors in Cardano have increased by close to 190% within the last 30 days. They have been holding the digital token for less than a month. 

@Cardano retail interest is rapidly increasing.

The balance held by traders – addresses holding for <30 days, has increased by 186% in just 30 days.

These addresses now collectively hold 36.14% of the $ADA supply. pic.twitter.com/CqwyDhY3zq

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) May 4, 2022

Users holding ADA for at least one year increased over 6%, while those holding ADA between a month to 12 months increased over 10% on a monthly basis.

All of this shows that interest in Cardano is rising amongst crypto enthusiasts. The blockchain has been one of the most active networks in recent months as it has over 900 projects which are currently building on it.