Cardano's Chang Update: Major Node Upgrade Call

Cardano is preparing for one of its most historic upgrades, the Chang hard fork, and a major alert has been issued for node providers. 

Intersect, a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem, sounds this alert in a tweet: "It's upgrade season for SPOs. Node 9.0.0 is out and includes all the changes needed for the Conway ledger era. Better known as the first node candidate to bring on-chain decision making to Cardano mainnet." 

Cardano node v9.0 heralded a significant milestone for the Cardano blockchain, marking the completion of primary development work for the bootstrap phase of on-chain governance, with just minor updates required to add Cardano constitution elements.

Cardano node v9.0 includes much-anticipated features, such as support for Plutus v1 reference scripts and Plutus script signatures via CIP-69. This milestone is critical to achieving the decentralized government concept outlined in CIP-1694. 

Major upgrade alert issued 
The Chang upgrade impacts the whole Cardano ecosystem, with a focus on stake pool operators (SPOs), exchanges and decentralized applications. To proceed with the upgrade, the community must have 70% of SPOs upgraded and 85% exchange liquidity on the Chang mainnet candidate - hence the need for SPOs, exchanges and dApps to upgrade to the latest Cardano node version. 

As outlined in an Intersect blog post, stake pool operators (SPOs) and exchanges are required to upgrade to the latest mainnet, hard fork-capable node candidate, version 9.0. 

Exchanges are crucial to Cardano's liquidity and stability, and they must guarantee that their systems are compatible with the new node to facilitate seamless transactions and operations following the update. 

Similarly, decentralized applications (dApps) must be prepared by testing with the most recent node release. Specific modifications may vary, with noteworthy updates in Plutus v3 potentially delivering breaking changes that necessitate extensive testing. 

The Chang upgrade schedule will be defined by the community's readiness, while the hard fork date will be determined when the community meets the required SPO and exchange readiness levels.

Tomiwabold Olajide