• The Cardano team is pushing advanced capabilities in its scaling solution Hydra.
• The ecosystem is getting ready for the infamous Chang Upgrades in August.

The Cardano Hydra team continues to see progress, recently updating specifications in incremental decommits to refine the process. In addition, the team updated dependencies to ensure compatibility with Cardano node v.9.0.0 and enhanced documentation.

Hydra Tackles Cardano’s Scalability Issues

The Cardano blockchain is a platform known for building Decentralized Applications (dApps). However, as the network grows and adoption increases, scalability has become a critical concern. To tackle this challenge, the Hydra team developed Layer 2 scaling solutions such as decommits, allowing for updates to the Open state on-chain.

Besides this, the team welcomed a new contributor, worked on the SDK wallet concept, and held an early design discussion focusing on payment channels and Blockfrost. As the Cardno ecosystem prepares for the upcoming Chang upgrade, all node users are advised to upgrade to Cardano node v.9.0.0.

As highlighted in our previous article, the Chang upgrade is a major milestone in Cardano’s evolutionary roadmap. It is scheduled for release in August. Notably, this upgrade is the first hard fork on the network in the Voltaire era of Cardano’s roadmap. It aims to address key challenges and unlock new capabilities for the Cardano network.

To accelerate adoption, Chang is being conducted in two stages: Upgrade to Node 9.0.0, and Upgrade to Node 9.1.0. As a component of Voltaire, Chang brings the ledger into the Conway era and provides the groundwork for decentralized decision-making by putting CIP-1694 on-chain governance mechanism in place.

Meanwhile, the Mythril team also released distribution 2428.0, which includes support for Cardano node v.9.0.0, addressing bug fixes and optimizations. Additionally, they implemented the certification of Cardano transactions by calibrating the signature parameters for the mainnet.

Furthermore, the team began working on Cardano stake distribution certification and continued redacting a CIP to diffuse Mithril signatures through the Cardano network.

Cardano’s Impressive Achievement

The Cardano ecosystem recorded outstanding growth, recording impressive milestones that set it apart as a thriving dApp network. According to current statistics, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in Cardano’s smart contracts and DeFi platforms has soared to $548.4 million. In addition, the number of active projects in the network increased by three counts to 1,368.

Moreover, native tokens minted so far have increased to over 10.2 million, regulated by 146,328 distinct token policies. Total transactions on the network stand at 94 million, as of July 19.

ADA, the native asset of the Cardano ecosystem has been on a gradual recovery journey since the start of the year. The coin recently entered a second phase of recovery amid a general market rally and ongoing ecosystem developments, as noted in our earlier post.

At press time, ADA has experienced a surge of 0.74% in the past day, with the price set at $0.4356. The trading volume increased by 57% to $385 million, with the market cap pegged at $15.6 billion.