The update to Cardano’s smart contracts was one of the most eagerly awaited events on the cryptocurrency calendar; however, when will it be released?
ADA will undergo some substantial modifications shortly after the Cardano Goguen upgrade. It isn’t the only currency to get upgrades; Ethereum 2.0 and the Bitcoin Taproot advancement are underway.
Cardano Smart Contract Launching Plans
A smart contract upgrade occurred as part of the Cardano Alonzo hard fork; IOHK stated it would occur on 12th September at 21:44:51 UTC.
IOHK has now validated and affirmed that the hard fork at Epoch 290 was a success, thereby kicking off Cardano’s Goguen phase.
Cardano’s Director of Delivery, Mr. Nigel Hemsley, reported the Alonzo mainnet hard fork scheduled for August 13 during the Goguen Alonzo Development Upgrade.
Binance also said they’d defer ADA deposits and withdrawals at 21:14 UTC to prepare for the hard fork until the update is fully operational and stable.
The testnet hard fork began on September 1.
IOHK projects about 80% of pools to pools to be available for the Cardano Alonzo upgrade by September 12. Over 85% of pools had been renovated as of September 11.
The smart contract release took place before the Cardano Summit 2021, scheduled for September 25-26.
The smart contracts will enable the establishment of dApps on Cardano, bringing up a slew of new applications for the blockchain, setting it against Ethereum, thereby escalating the Cardano vs. Ethereum clash.
While the Cardano community is celebrating the launch of Alonzo, and it looks that smart contracts are already being deployed on the Cardano network, the actual consequences of the Alonzo upgrades will take some time to manifest.
On September 12, Tim Harrison (from IOHK) stated the following in a blog post:
There’ll be difficulties—the first user experience may not be ideal. We expect challenges with the initial DApps. There will be excellent development teams and mediocre ones. This is unavoidable because it’s a permissionless and decentralised blockchain.”
Debunking the Delayed Release Dates of Cardano Smart Contract
Following their August development announcement, the smart contract upgrade and Alonzo mainnet hard fork appear on track.
On August 27, IOHK revealed that it had presented Cardano testnet with an upgrade plan for the Alonzo hard fork. It took advantage of the testnet timespan to do dry runs before September 12.
The complications that arose during the testnet stage may have caused the smart contract upgrade. However, the IOHK team was optimistic about the September 12 release date.
Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, hinted at these plans in early August during a Periscope video. He initially indicated an August 2021 launch during the Cardano360 event in March.
Cardano Goguen, the third phase of Cardano’s roadmap, was initially scheduled for March 2021. However, this deadline has been pushed back, like with prior Cardano updates, due to additional delays.
