Vasil Hard Fork Confirmed for September 22, Set to Bring Scalability Improvements for Cardano

Key takeaways:

• Cardano devs have confirmed September 22 as the Vasil upgrade rollout date
• The Vasil hard fork will reduce the size of transactions and make the network more efficient and capable of processing more data transfers
• Vasil upgrade will be launching a year after the smart contract-focused Alonzo hard fork, the most recent major Cardano upgrade

Vasil is finally rolling out after months of delays

Initially slated for a June release, the release date for Cardano’s Vasil hard fork has finally been confirmed. According to a Twitter post by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the developers of Cardano, the next major blockchain update for the Cardano mainnet will launch on September 22, 2022. 

The IOHK team shared the news about the upcoming release in a Twitter thread. 

Vasil will focus mainly on scalability improvements, which will reportedly result in faster transaction times and lower costs. IOHK summarized the upgrade in the following quote:

“Vasil is the most significant Cardano upgrade to date, bringing increased network capacity and lower cost transactions. The upgrade will also bring enhancements to Plutus to enable devs to create more powerful and efficient blockchain-based applications.”

In a YouTube video published earlier this year, Cardano and IOHK founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that Vasil is slated to bring “massive performance improvement to Cardano” through a collection of Cardano network improvement proposals. Once fully integrated with the mainnet, CIP31, CIP32, CIP33, and CIP40 will reduce the size of transactions and make the network more efficient and capable of processing more data transfers. 

The Vasil upgrade will further enhance Cardano’s smart contract functionality, which initially launched in September 2021 as a part of the Alonzo hard fork.

For more information about the readiness of crypto exchanges and decentralized applications (dApps) for the upcoming Vasil hard fork, you can check the dedicated third-party upgrade readiness website.

Cardano is not the only major blockchain undergoing a significant network upgrade in September – The Merge, Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), is predicted to take place on September 15th.