[News Overview] The Who, What & How of Cardano Vasil Hard Fork Upgrade

All eyes were on the Ethereum (ETH) Merge on 15 September ─ literally because there were multiple watch parties ─ but it is not the only upgrade on the blockchain. The next talk of the town, just a week after Ethereum’s successful and colossal transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, is the Cardano (ADA) Vasil hard fork upgrade. Scheduled for 22 September, the intent is supposed to level up its speed and scaling capacities massively, as well as reduce transaction costs.

Originally scheduled for 29 June, its second delay, the upgrade was delayed to the abovementioned date due to the multiple bugs identified during the testing process. One of the reasons given by Input Output Global technical manager Kevin Hammond was that “getting it right and not rushing” was the goal. According to Charles Hoskinson, though the upgrade will go live on 22 September, some of the upgrade effects would only be more visible until 27 September.

At the time of writing, Cardano is 8^th on CoinMarketCap’s list and is one of the earliest prominent blockchains to deploy PoS, before ETH’s transition.

If you are among those who have not kept up to date with the news or your eyes were only on the Ethereum Merge, then you might have more questions than answers when it comes to Cardano Vasil hard fork upgrade. Let me break it down.

WHAT is a Hard Fork?

As Cardano blockchain grows with time, hard fork events help to upgrade the network for users by carrying out new improvements to the existing blockchain going forth or through a divergence from the current blockchain. There have been a few hard fork events prior to the upcoming upgrade in two days’ time.

To side track a little, a hard fork is a radical change to a network’s protocol resulting in a permanent divergence from the previous version of the blockchain. This means that a fork is created on the blockchain where one path continues to follow its current rules whereas the second path adheres to new rules. A hard fork is backward incompatible, hence the old version no longer views the new one as valid.

To make it easier to understand, the operating system on our mobile devices are constantly being upgraded. All the applications will still work with the new version of the operating system after the upgrade but for the hard fork, it would mean a thorough change into a new operating system.

WHO is Vasil?

The Vasil hard fork upgrade is named in honour after the late Bulgarian mathematician Vasil Stoyanov Dabov, a prominent Cardano ambassador who sadly passed away not long ago. He was also a programmer, polymath, and conservationist who planted over 10,000 trees in his lifetime, and hosted Cardano’s 2^nd anniversary celebrations in Plovdiv his home city, in 2019.

Vasil was the Chief Blockchain Advisor at software R&D firm Quanterall before his passing in December 2021.

WHAT are the Upgrades in a Nutshell?

In a nutshell, the new capabilities include node and command-line interface (CLI) support for reference inputs and scripts, inline datums, and collateral outputs on 22 September, then a new Plutus cost model will become available for developers to utilise on 27 September. Essentially, the main changes will enable faster on-chain data sharing and throughput, along with culling down file size, transaction, and hardware costs.

“Vasil is one of the major updates for Cardano, designed to improve the network’s performance by increasing throughput, script efficiency, and reducing latency in block transmission. This update also affects Cardano’s smart contracts platform Plutus, enabling developers to create powerful and efficient dApps. Even though ADA is one of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies, the blockchain is still in the early stages of development. It is keen on climbing up the pecking order to compete with well-established ones like Ethereum in the long run,” expressed Rajagopal Menon, vice president of WazirX. He added that what sets Cardano apart from Ethereum is that although it started small, it is gradually implementing major updates while ensuring there is no compromise in security and quality.

Graph from IOHK: Input Output’s blog

How will the upgrade improve the Cardano network?

Several Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) and bug fixes will be introduced in the hard fork ─ CIP 31, CIP 32, and CIP33, are three of the more critical CIPs.

Apps built on Cardano are written in Haskell, a programming language. The code is thereafter converted into Plutus, the native smart contract language for Cardano. Every time a transaction occurs, the Plutus script needs to carry all the app logic along with it because it is not stored on the blockchain which leads to slower performance and increase in cost, so this is where the three CIPs improvements come in.

CIP 31 introduces reference input which enables users to look up outputs without spending (processing) them, meaning decentralised apps will be able to access transactional output without having to recreate it like before.

CIP 32 will introduce an on-chain data storage feature for the community and developers that is expected to improve Cardano’s decentralised architecture.

Lastly, CIP 33 will introduce reference scripts that act “in place” of the script you want to use, which will allow for lighter transactions, faster processing, and lower fees.

Tweeted by Charles Hoskinson, an American entrepreneur who is the co-founder of the Cardano blockchain platform and the blockchain engineering company Input Output Global, Inc. He was also the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform

Put on your party hat, set your timer, and countdown to Vasil Cardano hard fork upgrade!