Cardano’s Chang Upgrade: Hoskinson Claims Superiority Over Bitcoin
Cardano blockchain achieved a significant milestone on Sunday by implementing the Chang hard fork, a crucial upgrade that establishes it as one of the pioneering blockchain networks to embrace a token-based governance system.
Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s CEO, expressed his delight in the accomplishment, asserting that the upgrade propels Cardano ahead of Bitcoin in terms of decentralization.
Describing the recent upgrade and the network itself as a remarkable technological feat, Hoskinson emphasized the scale of the distributed system, operating in over 100 countries without central coordination. He highlighted Cardano as a “governance virus” with a will to self-replicate and grow, positioning it as an entity with unparalleled intelligence and resilience.
The Chang hard fork, executed on block number 10764778, introduces the “Conway ledger era” as part of a broader initiative to enhance Cardano’s governance through the Voltaire phase. This upgrade empowers every ADA holder to engage in decision-making processes, marking a significant shift towards a self-governing decentralized network, as acknowledged by the Cardano Foundation.
The technical advancements include the activation of Plutus v3, which introduces advanced cryptographic capabilities such as efficient zero-knowledge proofs and versatile on-chain computations. Noteworthy upgrades involve transaction signature validation through the Blake2b-224 hash function and Ethereum signature verification using the Keccak-256 hash function, promoting enhanced cross-chain interoperability.
Furthermore, the update optimizes smart contract performance by introducing “sums of products” encoding, leading to smaller scripts and up to 30% faster execution times.
Despite the successful deployment of these enhancements, a technical issue related to ledger state snapshots was encountered during the hard fork, necessitating a hotfix to address prolonged synchronization times when nodes restart. The hotfix, labeled as node version 9.1.1, is currently in preparation for release.
At the time of reporting, ADA was trading at $0.329, reflecting a 12% decline in the seven-day timeframe, despite the implementation of the Chang upgrade within the network, which failed to evoke a bullish response from investors amidst the broader market downturn.
