Cardano Hard Fork Teased, Here’s What to Expect

Key Notes

Intersect has announced plans for a less disruptive hard fork on the Cardano network.
Core developer teams are working hard to cut two releases of Cardano Node.
These are Cardano Node 10.6.2 and Node 10.7.0.

Intersect on X shared a detailed article on future Cardano upgrades, which are designed to increase in frequency. This insight comes as the blockchain approaches the Intra-era hard fork to Protocol Version 11.

Two Cuts for Cardano Nodes

In the X post, Intersect shared new details on the small intra-era upgrade. With the hard fork, it means that transaction shape will not change, minimizing ecosystem upgrade effort. Its focus will be to deliver performance boosts for Plutus, new cryptographic capabilities via builtins, and cleaner ledger rules, without breaking existing contracts.

For now, the team is in the first stages of the upgrade process, with a focus on socialization and planning. Meanwhile, the IOE teams are investing effort and resources into cutting two releases of the Cardano Node. The first one will be Pre-Release Cardano Node 10.6.2 with a target release within one week.

This pre-release node contains hard fork functionality, and its target is to get the hard fork features into the community’s hands as soon as possible. It is also involved in SanchoNet testing. This is aimed towards getting the ball rolling and engaging stakeholders before a Hard Fork candidate node is prepared.

Related article: Cardano Ratifies Proposal to Bring More Stablecoins Onchain

Ultimately, it spotlighted Cardano Node 10.7.0, which has its target release within three weeks. This is the mainnet hard-fork-ready candidate release. It will be used to fork features like Preview, PreProd, and then Mainnet. Formal benchmarking and performance tests were run on this node.

Past Hard Fork Upgrades on Cardano

This update comes exactly a year after Cardano’s Plomin hard fork went live. It marked the introduction of decentralized governance to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain network. The Plomin hard fork requires Stake Pool Operators to update their nodes and approve the upgrade through a 51% majority vote.

At the time, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson was pushing for decentralized governance. He talked about how Cardano’s Voltaire-era governance aims to strike a balance between decentralization and efficient decision-making, addressing a gap in the blockchain industry.

Cardano’s Chang hard fork is another key upgrade that boosted decentralized governance on the protocol. The focus was on empowering the Cardano community through on-chain governance features. ADA holders were granted the power to elect representatives (Delegate Representatives or dReps) and participate in voting on crucial proposals.