IOHK Looks Towards A ‘Secure Switch’ to Full Decentralization For The Cardano Network

The Cardano network seems to be ramping up its full functional launch days after its Cardano360 event. Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano, had said that the Cardano network would finally fulfill its dream of becoming a smart contract platform in the coming month.

This would be possible after the launch of the Alonzo hard fork combinator in April. In a recent press release, the Cardano (ADA) network addressed another critical area needed to deploy the blockchain network.

Cardano To Become Fully Decentralized

Input-Output Hong Kong (IOHK) Senior Research Fellow Professor Alexander Russell published a blog post on Cardano’s secure switch to decentralization. This will be possible through a public event dubbed a “Public Assertion of Randomness” held in the coming days.

According to Russell's release, Cardano’s Ouroboros consensus protocol plays a critical role in the network’s decentralization.

This protocol chooses block producers through a continued evolving sequence of leadership nonces. Each nonce holds the grid for a 120-hour ‘epoch.' This epoch is used to select the staking pools that will serve as the one-off leader for block creation.

Once the Cardano blockchain becomes fully decentralized on March 31st, the running leadership nonce would be infused with a ‘transition nonce.' The transition nonce is meant to introduce a degree of unpredictability and disorder to the blockchain network.

Transactions posted on the blockchain before April 7 of slot 151200 of epoch 258 would help create the decentralized blockchain. Their accumulated hash value would be used to aid the protocol’s continuous cycle of randomness generation.

IO Global scientists and engineers would supply primary disordered datasets. These scholars would introduce a certain number of external, unpredictable sources of entropy. Aside from this body of academics, the general scientific community has been invited to join the on-chain event. Stake pool operators and developers will also be allowed to contribute their datasets.

Russell says the exercise would create a once-in-the-system’s-lifetime random 256-bit transition nonce that would fully launch the Cardano network into a decentralized blockchain platform.

Smart Contract Capability Coming To Cardano

Charles Hoskinson had announced in a live event that the long-awaited smart contract feature was coming to the Cardano network.

Showing that the blockchain startup is on schedule according to its roadmap, Hosinkson said that the Alonzo hard fork combinator would finally make Cardano a smart contract platform.

The hard fork would be available on the testnet for security checks in early April before the mainnet launch.

Cardano’s ADA currently sits fifth after losing some steam in the weekend.

Jimmy has been following the development of blockchain for several years, and he is optimistic about its potential to democratize the financial system. When not immersed in the daily events in the crypto scene, he can be found watching legal reruns or trying to beat his Scrabble high score.