Author: Marko Janev
Publication date: 06/06/2024
Cardano is supposed to deliver results according to the phases it is divided into. There are five phases that Cardano disclosed as the most important ones. What’s more interesting is that each phase addresses different problems and is named after famous poets from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Cardano roadmap explained
In its first phase named after Lord Byron, Ada cryptocurrency was introduced, and it ran on the innovative Ouroboros Proof of Stakeconsensus protocol based on academic research. During this time Cardano grew from a small group to a global community with Ada listed on over 30 exchanges and achieving a big market cap.
The second era named Shelley marks a period of growth and decentralization, in this era, the network will see more nodes run by the Cardano community which will enhance the security of the network and its robustness. System will promote honest participation and decentralization by aiming to deploy 1000 staking poolscompared to less than 10 mining pools in another blockchain.
The next phase is Goguen and it is significant because here are introduced concepts of the smart contracts and dApps and it is focused on building Plutus, a smart contract development language. This platform allows developers to build smart contracts on Cardano with ease making it more widely adopted by the community.
The Basho era of Cardano focuses on improving scalability and interoperability compared to previous eras that are more focused on decentralization and new functions. This phase is marked by the introduction of sidechains which increase network capacity and guarantee the main chain’s security by allowing the experimental features on sidechains.
Last era of this roadmap and the most significant one is called the Voltaire eraand that is the phase that Cardano is supposed to enter during 2024. It is not yet sure whether Cardano entered this era since it represents the governance era and that means that the network governance will completely be in the hands of its community which will ultimately fulfill the primal purpose of the emergence of cryptocurrencies and that is decentralization and democratization without any 3rd parties.
Significant events in 2024
Chang Forkmust be the most interesting event awaiting Cardano in 2024 it will be the result of many years of hard work and community participation. It is the first hard fork on its blockchain and it aims to introduce advanced scalability, enhanced transaction speeds, and better security protocols. The end goal is to make Cardano resilient against attacks and handle increased transaction volumes or in other words activity on a network.
It will represent a significant step towards “minimum viable on-chain governance” as defined in CIP-1964 (Cardano Improvement proposal). And it will mark the entrance into the Voltaire Erafrom the Basho era.
This update could improve the Cardano blockchain so much that it could help its wider adoption in other spheres other than cryptocurrencies it could even be present in healthcare, finance, supply chain management, etc. It was supposed to take place around Q2 in 2024 but it got delayed a little so we expect actually 2 upgrades one will be released somewhere between Q2 and Q3 and the other between Q3 and Q4 according to the Intersect MBO.
This first upgrade in Q2/Q3 will mark the bootstrap phase and deploy governance features to Cardano as described in their improvement proposal. The second upgrade or intra-era hard fork moves CIP1964 out of the bootstrap phase into full “minimum viable on-chain governance”. This means that Cardano will have a fully deployed governance design that is approved by the community.
Besides Chang Fork this year is also dedicated to massive community engagement through numerous workshops organized by Cardano Civics Committeeor CCC. Some of them have already taken place in Japan, France, and Austin, Texas, and are deemed to be successful because they were attended by a large number of people.
Next up we have Intersect which is a member-based organisation launched in 2023. and its purpose is to ensure continuity and future developments within Cardano ecosystem. It brings people together around the same vision and it makes it possible to build a more resilient, secure, and transparent ecosystem and puts members of that system in control which is the main goal of its Voltaire era.
This organization has quickly expanded since its inception it is made of more than 850 members and is open to accepting anyone eager to participate in helping Cardano’’s Ecosystem. This year will be crucial for the organization as Intersect will accelerate its activities, and accept new members which in turn will pose a solid foundation for Cardano’s off-chain governance by the community.
For the end of the year, as you can see on the picture above, we have two more significant events for Cardano, first of them is the so-called Constitutional Convention which is scheduled to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in Q4. This convention aims to gather all the governance representatives who are selected from the different workshops we have mentioned earlier. Every representative will be involved in drafting the first version of “Cardano Constitution” which will mark the biggest milestone in “Voltaire ere” because it will give a chance for a community to modify the foundational document of Cardano that will stand as an ultimate governing document for its network.
At the end of the year, the initial version of Cardano Constitutionwill be presented to the entire community and everybody will have time to review the document. After that community will decide if the constitution is valid and it should mark a turning point for Cardano because it would mean that the network will be governed in a decentralized way where the community will be in charge of Cardano’s blockchain, and a true decentralization will be achieved.
Conclusion
Cardano is often criticized for its slow development because of their meticulous approach, many crypto enthusiasts call it a dead chain. But with all of the information we gave in this article Cardano should fulfill its purpose by the end of the year and if all goes by plan and community is more involved into making changes maybe we will see more frequent changes in the ecosystem.
So basically achieving the end goal and involving community to govern the blockchain will first mark that the crypto project has achieved the goals it set which is rarely found in the crypto sphere and secondly if community starts making changes and engaging within ecosystem it could spark another wave of interest around the project. But ideally it would be good to fulfill those goals during this bull run cause it would mean more decentralized Cardano and bigger gains for its investors and who would not want that?
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