Cardano postpones its highly expected Vasil hard fork event following bug discovery

Cardano’s Vasil hard fork will no longer hold this month as scheduled.
The network’s development team isn’t bothered by the criticism it is receiving for postponing the updates severally.

The development team behind the Vasil upgrade for the Cardano network has released a blog post regarding the upgrade. According to the input out global (IOHK), the Vasil upgrade will no longer take place this month.

Rather, it has been rescheduled for next month. Based on the blog post about the matter, the team decided to postpone the upgrade during last Friday’s evaluation call. On Monday, the team evaluated its progress so far regarding the upgrade. However, it discovered up to seven bugs following the evaluation.

While the Cardano team stated that the bugs weren’t severe, it decided not to take any risks. Hence, they decided that the best option was to postpone the deployment of the hard fork proposal to the public testnet on Monday as planned.

#VASIL UPDATE: Progress continues positively with only minor bugs remaining. Today, however, we have agreed to ensure the core dev team and #Cardano ecosystem collaborators have more time for testing before commencing the mainnet countdown.

More here: https://t.co/1p5YW4wloe

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) June 20, 2022

IOHK sets a new date for testnet and mainnet deployment

While the IOHK discovered seven bugs, it also noted that it plans to make some other checks. The team wants to be sure that nothing regarding the upgrade is left to chance. Hence, the team has set aside this month-end as the new date for the public testnet of this upgrade.

The IOHK team further said it plans to deploy the live Vasil mainnet by the end of next month. However, it notes that the date would not change unless the exchanges fail to complete all the important integrations.

Part of the IOHK announcement reads,

today, the IOHK and the Cardano foundation have chosen June ending as the new date for the hard fork testnet. Then, four weeks from that date, we expect all exchanges and stake pool operators (SPOs) to have completed testing work and the necessary integration. Hence, we assume the Cardano mainnet hard fork should occur in the last week of next month.

Working on a hitch-free deployment

It is important to note that the IOHK development team is making efforts to ensure that there are no issues during the deployment of the hard fork. One of the efforts it has put in place was to hire 35 developers from 27 other projects.

These developers are testing various decentralized applications (DApps) to uncover possible bugs with the Vasil. 16 SPOs and top API providers such as Blockfrost are providing their support for the Vasil implementation.

The main goal of this upgrade is to smoothen the running of operations within the Cardano network. Some important features that upgrade are expected to add to the network include greater speed, enhanced scalability, and smart contract features.

Not bothered by criticisms

The discovery of some minor bugs by the IOHK team has caused them to push the Vasil mainnet deployment till next month-end. Many industry players have strongly criticized the IOHK team for constantly delaying the deployment of this upgrade.

However, the team has stated that such criticisms don’t bother them. According to them, their goal is to ensure the upgrade is successful. Also, users can start using these new features without fear that hackers can access their accounts.