Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork Goes Live on Testnet

Cardano (ADA) has completed a hard fork of its testnet in preparation for the planned Vasil upgrade. The new development offers increased scalability and enhanced network performance.

Cardano’s Vasil Upgrade Launches on Testnet

The Input-Output (IOHK) reported on Monday that the long-awaited Vasil hard fork had been conducted by the Cardano testnet. It further stated that this is a significant development toward the eventual deployment of the Vasil upgrade on the mainnet.

IOHK (rebranded to IOG) now encourages developers, exchanges, and stake pool operators to deploy their projects on the testnet. This will help identify any issues before Vasil is implemented on the mainnet and allow for timely corrections.

The Vasil hard fork is a prominent feature of Cardano’s Basho phase. The latter is the fourth in a sequence of five building eras for the network. The previous three concentrated on the foundation (Byron), decentralization (Shelley), and smart contracts (Goguen), while Basho is focused on scalability.

Vasil Upgrade to Boost Scalability

Vasil will introduce many scalability improvements when it is released on the mainnet. Enhanced “script performance and efficiency” and faster block generation speed are two examples. Furthermore, all users will benefit from reduced network fees. Vasil will also enable interoperability between Cardano and other blockchains.

For the time being, IOG states that the Vasil proposal for the Cardano mainnet will be released only when the community is “comfortable and ready.” However, the firm anticipates it will be completed within the next four weeks.

Originally, IOG had scheduled the Vasil mainnet hard fork for June 29. The event, however, was delayed so that the engineering team could address various minor bugs.

Cardano’s prior major advancement was the implementation of smart contract features. Along with it emerged a slew of decentralized applications (DApps), including DeFi protocols. Despite the ecosystem’s concerns with concurrency issues, it continues to attract a lot of developers and has a rising number of DApps.

Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) stands at $115.85 million, per data by DeFi TVL aggregator DeFi Llama. WingRiders, a decentralized exchange, contributes the most to this figure, with a TVL of $49.7 million.

Challenge Times for DeFi

Like the rest of the crypto industry, decentralized finance (DeFi) is struggling too. Since December, its locked-in value has dropped by 70%(according to DefiLlama data), and multiple platforms within the not-so-decentralized DeFi space have been threatened with collapse. Celsius’s decision to halt withdrawals is the latest and perhaps most climactic manifestation of this ongoing crisis.

While Celsius’ participation in the DeFi sub-sector nominally made it a ‘decentralized’ platform (at least in terms of blockchain use), its control over user funds reveals that it was overly centralized. Together with the demise of Terra(which had been the second biggest DeFi platform), this has prompted great doubts over whether or not DeFi has to become more fully decentralized and whether it’s even feasible.

Cardano (ADA) prices have been declining rapidly since the start of the year. Over the past three months, the price of ADA has plummeted by 61%. At the time of writing, it was trading at an average price of $0.467, according to data from CoinMarketCap.