The AlonzoWhite hard fork was deployed on Cardano’s testnet, marking a new milestone in the Smart Contract journey. Hoskinson introduced a novel stablecoin design.
Cardano deploys Alonzo White. Hoskinson reveals Stablecoin. Smart Contracts are getting closer to arriving on the Cardano Blockchain after the team reached a new project milestone. The technology solutions developer behind Cardano (ADA), Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), announced the deployment of the hard fork. It is known as Alonzo White on the Cardano testnet. The research team reported the milestone through a series of tweets this Thursday.
HARD FORK SUCCESSFUL: Delighted to report around 19.44 UTC today we successfully forked the #Alonzo testnet to the new #AlonzoWhite node. The new network is happily making blocks already. 1/5
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) July 14, 2021
The Alonzo White hard fork carefully follows the project roadmap and marks further progress toward the long-awaited Smart Contract functionality. The Cardano blockchain is amid a multi-phase upgrade known as ‘Alonzo’ that will bring smart contract functionality to that network. Each phase, dubbed Blue, White, and Purple, will include more users, functionality, and features.
Such a multi-phased upgrade falls under the Goguen phase of the roadmap, explicitly addressing the challenge of implementing smart contracts. The developers expect Alonzo’s full release will simplify the development of new decentralized applications (dApps). This includes decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and will be deployed on the mainnet by the end of August.
Growing Cardano Expectations
As released by IOHK, the new update also includes expanding the project team. Project Catalyst members and more Plutus partners will join the network. According to reports, several hundred people operate on the Alonzo White network. For its part, Project Catalyst has also funded several DeFi applications for the blockchain network.
“Over the past week, we have launched a new network and onboarded our new members to help us move closer to Smart Contracts.” the team tweeted.
The Cardano upgrade has generated a lot of buzz among the tech community this year. Many expect the potential and utility of such a blockchain to explode with the advent of Smart Contracts. The growth of Cardano’s native token, ADA, over the past few months indicates the optimistic sentiment that users have maintained around the project.
Over the past year, the price of ADA has registered an increase of close to 900%. In May, the cryptocurrency reached an all-time price high above $2, and while it has come down from that peak, ADA is still posting significant gains. At the time of writing, the ADA is trading near $1.2.
Amid a bear market, ADA has gained rapid popularity. The trading platform eToro reported that Cardano’s cryptocurrency overtook Bitcoin as the asset most held by users. Also, Grayscale, the crypto fund manager, decided to include the ADA token in its large-cap fund, making it the third-largest holding, just behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Charles Hoskinson unveils algorithmic stablecoin
In another significant Cardano announcement, IOHK CEO and co-founder Charles Hoskinson unveiled a new stablecoin project that could soon arrive in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem on Thursday.
Seen by the community as the face of Cardano, Hoskinson took to Twitter to share four screenshots of a paper describing “a formally verified cryptocurrency-backed, linked algorithmic stablecoin.”
Been Busy. pic.twitter.com/mmYGoBAsPO
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 15, 2021
According to the paper, the new Djed protocol acts as a “standalone bank” that guarantees linkage to the primary fiat currency by buying and selling the underlying assets (stablecoins).
The bank holds a volatile cryptocurrency in its reserve, which the system uses to buy stablecoins from users. The proceeds from those sales get stored in reserve. The bank, in turn, also trades “reserve coins” to capitalize itself and maintain a greater-than-one ratio.
In addition, the authors emphasize that this is a novel stable currency model where programmers engraved stability precisely using a mathematical approach. As indicated, the claims and their proofs are formally verified using bounded model checking and interactive theoretical proof.
“This is the first stablecoin protocol in which stability assertions are stated and proved precisely and mathematically,” the project’s paper promises.