Alonzo Hard Fork: The Cardano makeover that changes everything?
Cardano has indisputably been one of the fastest-growing crypto-assets this past year.
Year to date, ADA has seen returns of over 1,300% and in the process unseated Binance Coin to secure the coveted (and ever-changing) third spot in the crypto market cap ranking.
Despite this impressive growth, there’s little awareness of what Cardano actually is. Nor is there much understanding about the imminent Alonzo hard fork, expected to occur sometime on Sunday 12 September and promising to deliver smart contract capabilities to Cardano.
The five epochs of Cardano
Founded in 2015, Cardano is open-source, proof-of-stake platform and the brainchild of mathematician, technology entrepreneur and Ethereum co-founder, Charles Hoskinson.
Hoskinson, who serves as CEO of the company behind Cardano, IOHK, is said to have founded Cardano based on ‘rigorous peer-reviewed research’ and a comprehensive development model.
Cardano’s development road map is divided into five main stages — each focused on expanding the functionality of the network. These are: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire.
At the time of writing, the project is reportedly on the cusp of achieving the objectives outlined in the Goguen stage of the roadmap. This will see smart contract functionality arrive on the network via the Alonzo hard fork, which has the crypto universe waiting with bated breath.
Alonzo Hard Fork
Named after Alonzo Church, a US mathematician and one of the founding fathers of computer science, the major upgrade is being rolled out in colour-coded stages: Alonzo Blue, Alonzo White and Alonzo Purple, leading up to a hard fork expected at around 12 September 2021.
At the time of writing, the Alonzo upgrade is in phase Purple, having completed the Blue and White upgrades. There are also two smaller components post Alonzo Purple, colloquially referred to as Alonzo Red and Alonzo Black, which are reserved for final bug fixes.
Once the upgrade is successfully implemented, developers will be able to create projects in niches such as DeFi, NFTs and dApps, to finally allow Cardano to become a challenger in the smart contract space.
Programmers for Cardano’s smart contracts will use one of three languages: Plutus, Marlowe or Glow. Plutus and Marlowe are both embedded by Haskell, a programming language popular in academia and industry, earning it a strong reputation for robustness.
Will slow and steady win the smart contract race?
Vitalik Buterin’s brainchild Ethereum is today’s most dominant smart contract blockchain, but the platform isn’t without its hiccups. Scalability issues and high network fees have paved the path for rivals such as Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot and Solana to steal market share.
Cardano, on the other hand, has garnered both criticism and praise for its preference in taking a meticulous, research-based approach to the blockchain, which has ultimately led to the project developing less quickly than its competitors.
Smart contract capabilities for Cardano have been a long time coming. Now we wait and see whether the emergence of easier dApp building will result in projects on the chain that can help solve real-world problems.
