Cardano’s Vasil Upgrade Inches Closer; Testnet Changes Begin From July 3

Cardano’s highly-awaited Vasil hard fork countdown has begun. In their latest update, Input-Output announced that they have put forward an update proposal to split the testnet.

Changes are scheduled to take place at 20:20 UTC on 3 July.

Previously the R&D team had publicly notified of the successful tagging and release of the blockchain’s node 1.35.0. This new node is touted to be the “final candidate” before the mainnet Vasil upgrade goes live.

Till June 28, over 75% of testnet blocks have been created by the newly deployed Vasil node, which the team said is a good indicator.

After the Vasil hard fork is implemented to the Cardano testnet, “staking pool operators [SPOs], developers, and exchanges will have roughly four weeks to test an upgrade before the mainnet is hard forked,” the team revealed.

Cardano’s Vasil fork is its most complex program work to date

Terming it as the biggest and best upgrade to date, IOHK quoted, “Vasil improvements include higher throughput through diffusion pipelining to a better developer experience via much-improved script performance & efficiency [plus lower costs].”

Adding “It is also the most complex program of work we’ve undertaken. And the whole community is involved.”

For those unfamiliar, Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain and the first to be founded on the peer-reviewed, verifiably secure blockchain protocol known as Ouroboros, the key behind the network’s decentralization.

The upcoming Vasil upgrade on the blockchain seeks to improve the performance and capabilities of the Ouroboros-based proof-of-stake [PoS] blockchain platform.

Another interesting thing to note, the latest upgrade is named in honor of Cardano’s long-standing community member, Vasil St Dabov.

Meanwhile, the Vasil hard fork was postponed from being launched in June as earlier planned. The team explained that it was due to the discovery of some “seven minor bugs.”

In addition, Cardano’s Co-founder Charles Hoskinson blamed it on Terra’s meltdown which according to him also played a role.

Hoskinson in the recent video said the update was ready but the team was asked to exercise caution before releasing major products following the crash of the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD [UST] and Terra [LUNA].