Cardano's Chang hard fork is almost here: What is it and what to expect?

Cardano is preparing for the Chang hard fork, which will bring in the Voltaire era by introducing on-chain governance. The upgrade allows ADA holders to vote directly on key decisions, moving the platform closer to a fully decentralized blockchain ecosystem.

A deep dive into Cardano’s development stages

Cardano’s development is divided into phases known as “eras,” named after influential poets, mathematicians, or computer scientists. Every era introduces new features through hard forks.

• Byron: Launched Cardano’s foundational network, enabling ADA transactions.
• Shelley: Transitioned the network to decentralization with community-driven block production.
• Goguen: Introduced smart contracts and the capability to build decentralized applications.
• Basho: Focused on optimizing scalability and interoperability.
• Voltaire: Will introduce decentralized governance.

In addition to the main phases, eras often include multiple sub-eras, as seen with Goguen (e.g., Allegra, Mary, Alonzo), which bring more specific features. The Chang hard fork will be the first hard fork and sub-era of Voltaire.

The Chang hard fork allows (ADA) holders to vote on protocol changes and governance actions, with the option to delegate their voting power to designated representatives, known as DReps.

In addition to governance, Chang brings enhancements to Cardano’s smart contract platform through the introduction of PlutusV3. PlutusV3 includes new cryptographic primitives, which are used to secure data and transactions on the blockchain. For example, the new BLS12-381 and Keccak-256 cryptographic functions improve the security and efficiency of operations like zero-knowledge proofs and digital signatures, making them more reliable and faster.

Moreover, Chang adds bitwise primitives, which are tools that allow developers to perform low-level data manipulations within smart contracts. Bitwise primitives can optimize how contracts handle and store information, leading to faster execution and reduced costs for DApps. These improvements make it easier for developers to create more complex and efficient DApps on Cardano.

The upgrade will also refine how transaction fees are calculated for DApps by adjusting protocol parameters related to reference scripts. Reference scripts help reduce the size of transactions, thus lowering the cost for users and increasing the network’s capacity to handle more transactions simultaneously.

Node operators, particularly stake pool operators, need to upgrade to version 9.1 to support the new governance mechanisms and smart contract improvements. For the hard fork to take place successfully, 70% of the network’s stake pool operators must upgrade their nodes to version 9.1. The new version was released on July 25, and just 12 days later, more than one-third of the network is already running it. As of August 5, around 63.7% of operators are running version 8.0, 1.3% are still on version 9.0, and about 35% are using version 9.1.

Historically, ADA’s price has shown a pattern of downturn following major Cardano upgrades, with one exception. The Allegra upgrade is the sole instance of significant price appreciation, with a 133% increase. This anomaly skews the overall average, creating a misleading impression of a 9.88% average price increase one month after upgrades. However, when the Allegra hard fork is removed from the dataset, the average price change reveals a decline of -14.74%.

Given the current market downturn, it remains difficult to predict the exact direction ADA will take after the Chang upgrade.

But if the historical trend holds, ADA could drop by around -15% in the month following the hard fork.