Vasil Upgrade Officially Launches on Cardano Mainnet
After Ethereum’s Merge comes The Dump – could Cardano (ADA) face a similar fate following the Vasil hard fork?
Endless Efforts
Cardano's founder, Charles Hoskinson, admitted that this is “the hardest update we’ve ever done,” as it involves nearly all technical layers within the Cardano network.
The Vasil hard fork is part of the Basho era in Cardano's development roadmap, focusing on optimization, scalability, and interoperability across the blockchain network. It is also the result of relentless collaboration among Cardano's core development team, IOG, Emurgo, and the Cardano community through Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs).
Finally, the Vasil update was successfully activated at epoch 365 without any user issues at 4:44 AM on September 23 (Vietnam Time).
#Vasil mainnet HFC event successful!🍾
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 22, 2022
We’re happy to announce that today, at 21:44:00 UTC, the IOG team, in collaboration with the @CardanoStiftung, successfully hard forked the Cardano mainnet via a HFC event, thus deploying new #Vasil features to the chain.
🧶1/5
Post-Vasil Hard Fork Changes
One of the most significant changes following the Vasil upgrade is the reduction in transaction fees on Cardano. Block aggregation and transaction validation have been streamlined without compromising system security, resulting in faster transaction processing for users. Additionally, updates to Plutus (Cardano's programming language) will enhance the development experience for blockchain developers.
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, acknowledged that this is “the hardest update we’ve ever done,” due to its involvement with nearly all technical layers of the Cardano network.
For the Vasil upgrade to be activated, at least:
(i) 75% of blocks on the mainnet must be produced by nodes running the latest node version 1.35.3 (currently at 99%);
(ii) around 25% of exchanges (representing approximately 80% of ADA liquidity in the market) must be prepared for the update; and
(iii) the top 10 DApps on Cardano (by TVL) need to confirm they have upgraded to the node version 1.35.3.
Following this, on September 24, the new features updated for Plutus will launch on the PreProduction testnet, and three days later (September 27), these features will officially go live on Cardano’s Mainnet.
Price Movements After the Vasil Hard Fork
After this hard fork, ADA’s price saw a positive adjustment to $0.46, up from $0.43 before the Vasil upgrade. This surge occurred within less than a day after the FED's interest rate adjustment announcement, which caused significant volatility in the crypto market. Thus, considering ADA's price was at $0.45 before the FED meeting, this movement is more of a return to its initial value rather than an unexpected “flip” as some might have anticipated.
1-hour Chart of ADA/USDT on Binance at 07:50 AM on September 23, 2022
