Cardano Vasil hard fork now live on testnet

The eagerly awaited Vasil hard fork has been achieved on the Cardano testnet, taking it one significant step closer to becoming a reality on the mainnet and promising significant performance improvements.

The company that created Cardano, Input Output HK (IOHK), stated in a tweet on Sunday that developers will gain from “much-improved script performance and efficiency” in addition to the performance improvements and cost savings.

Vasil hard fork brings forth faster block creation

To facilitate seamless integrations when the mainnet receives the Vasil upgrade in around four weeks, project developers, stake pool operators (SPO), and exchanges are now invited to deploy their work on the testnet.

Once finished on the mainnet, the Vasil hard fork will enable speedier block production and increased scalability for Cardano decentralized apps (DApps).

Vasil will also enable interoperability between Cardano sidechains, which is one of the primary features developers aim to launch in the current Basho phase of the blockchain’s development. Cardano’s fourth development phase, Basho, focuses on scaling and will be followed by the Voltaire phase, which will emphasize governance.

Cardano upgrades

IOHK also stated that a proposal to hard fork the mainnet will not be issued until “ecosystem partners are comfortable and ready,” but that it is likely in around four weeks.

According to ecosystem tracker Cardano Cube, the previous phase, Goguen, saw the introduction of Cardano’s smart contract capabilities, which decentralized finance (DeFi) developers took advantage of by establishing many decentralized exchanges (DEX) and DeFi protocols.

The DEX WingRiders are currently Cardano’s top DApp with $49.7 million in total value locked (TVL), according to the DeFi data aggregator DefiLlama.

Cardano (ADA) has barely changed as a result of the testnet hard fork; according to CoinGecko, it is only up 0.1% over the previous day to $0.45.