The Cardano Vasil Hard Fork is finally live

After months of delay, the Cardano Vasil upgrade and hard fork finally launched on Thursday. This major upgrade should make Cardano significantly faster and cheaper. The success of the hard fork was shared on Twitter by blockchain company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK).

Less attention than Ethereum

Where the Merge of Ethereum dominated the headlines for weeks, that was not the case for the hard fork of Cardano. Of course, that also has to do with the fact that the Merge for Ethereum marked the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. But in fairness we must say that Ethereum is simply a more popular platform than Cardano for decentralized applications and other applications.

For years, Ethereum has outperformed Cardano and the project has reaped the benefits. The majority of developers and users eventually ended up with Ethereum, making it difficult for Cardano to catch up. The Vasil hard fork may well change that, but we’ll have to see in the coming months.

What does the Vasil upgrade do?

Thanks to the Vasil upgrade, it is possible for participants in the Cardano network to send blocks that are not yet fully validated. This can speed up the pace considerably and the project can develop blocks faster. Furthermore, the Plutus smart contracts have been upgraded, making them more efficient and able to run decentralized applications with relatively low costs.

The upgrades for Plutus will be available to developers on September 27. Bill Barhydt, the founder of the trading platform Abra, called the upgrade a “big win” for the developers. It remains to be seen to what extent this also boosts the use of Cardano. Only time can give us the answer to that question.