Network Upgrade “Alonzo Hard Fork” Finally Goes Live On Cardano Mainnet

The highly anticipated network upgrade “Alonzo hard fork” has finally gone live on Cardano mainnet. Reports indicate that the newly upgraded network will facilitate the creation and execution of smart contracts on the public blockchain for the very first time.

In a September 12 Twitter post, Cardano confirmed the successful completion of its highly anticipated network upgrade dubbed “Alonzo hard fork,” with the newly updated network going live on 21:47 UTC at epoch 209.

Despite celebrating such achievement, Cardano has noted that the project is still in its early stage, asserting that this is just the beginning of the mission:

 “This is where the mission truly begins as we – the whole community – start delivering on the vision we have all been working towards for so long. Building a decentralized system that extends economic identity and opportunity to everyone, everywhere.”

The Alonzo network upgrade will enable smart contracts to be written on the Cardano ecosystem using Plutus script onto the blockchain.

While commenting about the Alonzo upgrade, the team behind the network upgrade development described the Plutus Script integration as

“a purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform using the functional programming language Haskell.”

Nonetheless, the team has also issued a strong warning to the Cardano community over high expectations for Alonzo for now, stating:

 “There are high expectations resting on this upgrade. Some unreasonably so. Cardano watchers may be expecting a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready Dapps available immediately after the upgrade. Expectations need to be managed here.”

Founded in 2017, Cardano is an open-source public blockchain development established by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and developed by his research firm IOHK.

Since its inception, Cardano has been pledging to rival Ethereum’s domination by hosting decentralized finance DeFi and Web3 applications.

In that context, Cardano publicly announced plans to establish smart contracts in its mainnet, with the crypto firm unveiling a network update project called Alonzo hard fork in September of the same year.

But four years later, the project Alonzo has attracted heated discussion and criticism within the crypto community for failing to deliver the smart contract functionality for all this time.

The founder of rival platform Internet Computer, Dominic Williams, has taken this opportunity to severely criticize Cardano for the amount of time taken for the protocol to launch smart contracts, stating:

 “It amazes me that this chain had been in the market for more than two years and is only just adding support for smart contracts, and people are happy with this progress.”

Earlier this month, Cardano faced similar flak after the first Dapp hosted on its mainnet encountered technological issues relating to failed simultaneous transaction processing during the Alonzo test net.

During this time, Anthony Sassano, an Outspoken Ethereum maximalist sarcastically, tweeted:

 “Seriously six years of “peer-reviewed” research and a $90bil+ market cap later and the first Dapp on Cardano can’t even do concurrent transaction processing (aka the very thing you need for DeFi).”

The first dapp went live on Cardano today and ADA fanboys are finally discovering that you can't peer review your way out of fundamental issues. pic.twitter.com/tYQXNcVKGN

— Anthony Wassano 🦇🔊 (@sassal0x) September 4, 2021

But, Cardano refuted the criticism, asserting that DApps powered by the protocol “are not limited to one transaction per block.”

Despite gaining more detractors, the hype for the Cardano Alonzo upgrade has recently pumped its native token ADA to a new all-time high. Remarkably, ADA rallied 192% from a local low of $1.06 in late July to oscillate around $3.10 on September 3, according to CoinGecko. ADA has soared more than 1600% since the start of 2021.

But, ADA has plunged slightly over the past week oscillating between $2.30 and $2.80, with deep analytics reportedly suggesting that many speculators may have bought the rumor and sold the news.