Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson reveals ‘age of Voltaire’

According to Hoskinson, the Voltaire era will show the industry "how to do decentralized governance."

Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate

Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson said the blockchain network will soon enter the Voltaire era, showing the industry “how to do decentralized governance.”

The Age of Voltaire will soon be upon us as an ecosystem. It's going to unlock the power of the millions of Cardano users and builders. It will also, once again, show the rest of the industry how to do decentralized governance just like we did with Staking. pic.twitter.com/HO8PgA5J2G

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 3, 2022

What is Cardano’s Age of Voltaire?

The Voltaire era is when Cardano will become fully autonomous by introducing a voting and treasury system. The era will mark the complete decentralization of Cardano, which started with the introduction of distributed infrastructure in the Shelley era.

By then, the blockchain users will have more say in the direction of the network because they can submit Cardano improvement proposals.

The treasury will also be in place to fund any CIP passed by the community. A portion of the transaction fees will be pooled for the treasury.

According to Cardano’s roadmap, Voltaire will mark the end of IOHK’s management of Cardano and the beginning of its evolution into a “truly decentralized” blockchain network.

Cardano begins preparation for the Voltaire era

A blog post published by Bingsheng Zhang on the IOHK blog explained that Project Catalyst tests the concept of treasury and democratic voting.

“IOHK has now applied treasury mechanism capabilities in Project Catalyst, which combines research, social experiments, and community consent to establish an open, democratic culture within the Cardano community.”

Input Output stated that the “Project Catalyst will very soon be opened up to its first public beta program” after its closed summer group trial.

The firm also revealed the first public fund for the project, which contains up to $250,000 worth of ADA. The fund focuses on how the network can “encourage developers and entrepreneurs to build Dapps and businesses on top of Cardano in the next six months?”

Meanwhile, the community is beginning to see the effect of the latest upgrade. A Cardano user pointed out that the Vasil upgrade has reduced transaction fees by 50%.

CONFIRMED: #Cardano vasil hardfork has cut $ADA gas fees by nearly 50% and transaction space by 10x

— Michael Wrubel (@michaelwrub) October 2, 2022