Cardano is a decentralized cryptocurrency with a goal of improving on the features of bitcoin while adding its own unique set of technologies and innovations. Cardano is a decentralized cryptocurrency with a goal of improving on the features of cryptocurrency while adding its own unique set of technologies and innovations. On September 22, 2022, the Cardano (ADA) blockchain will undergo a hard fork that will make some significant changes. The long awaited and much anticipated Vasil hard fork of Cardano already here. But before we dive in into vasil hard fork, lets talk about the basic of Cardano.

The Basic of Cardano

if you’re unfamiliar with Cardano here’s what you need to know cardano was founded by ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in 2015. it was built by IOHK and Emurgo both of which are based in Singapore, but have offices and subsidiaries around the world. Cardano’s ongoing development is coordinated by the Cardano Foundation, a Switzerland’s NPO which is also the legal owner of the Cardano brand. Cardano raised nearly 80 million dollars across various ICO in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Publicly available information suggests the entities behind cardano have not raised any additional funding since that time the cardano mainnet went live in 2017 and though the project is still very much in development compared to its peers.

Cardano blockchain uses a novel proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called Ouroboros which allows it to process around 500 TPS, note that this TPS figure does not apply to smart contract transactions which can be as slow as just a few transactions per second depending on network demand. That said cardano’s smart contract tps should increase significantly after the vasil hard fork. Although the cardano blockchain currently isn’t all that fast, it is one of the most secure and decentralized blockchains, because it has roughly 3200 staking pools the secret source to cardano’s decentralization is its K Parameter which decreases it’s staking rewards when too much ADA is being staked in a single pool. This incentivizes stake pool operators to create additional staking pools which further decentralizes the cardano blockchain.

ADA is used for staking on cardano and to pay for transaction fees and to participate in community governance via Project Catalyst. Cardano native asset can be used to pay for transaction fees thanks to cardano’s Babel Fees Mechanism. Cardano’s staking rewards are currently around 4.6 per year according to the official cardano calculator there is no minimum stake no lockup or unlock period or any slashing risks associated with staking ADA, so it should come as no surprise then that around 70% of all ADA in circulation is being staked.

Now in contrast to most cryptocurrencies ADA had a fairly equitable initial distribution with only around 15 percent of its initial supply of roughly 26 billion being allocated to the three entities behind cardano. Much like Bitcoin, Cardano’s ADA has a maximum supply and in ADA’s case this supply is 45 billion again like BTC it’s going to take quite a bit of time for ADA to hit its maximum supply with some estimates suggesting it could take another 30 years. Cardano’s blockchain currently has 73 decentralized applications according to cardano crowd 12 of these are DeFi protocols which collectively hold around 90 million dollars in total value locks according to DefiLlama. Note that there are over 1000 projects building on cardano as of june this year cardano’s expanding ecosystem can be accessed using various browser extension wallets the most popular being the Nami Wallet which has seen over 200.000 downloads on chrome. Note that there are over 3.5 million unique cardano wallet addresses in total now.

Cardano’s Roadmap

Cardano developers divided the development plan into five phases. These phases are also known as Eras. These five eras, named after prominent scientists and creative historical figures, are called Byron, Shelley and Goguen and Basho, respectively. They are intended to improve the functionality of Cardano’s platform.

Byron

The Byron Phase, named after George Gordon Byron , an english poet. It is the first phase in Cardano’s development roadmap. The Cardano blockchain mainnet was launched in September 2017 after two years of development. Users can now buy and sell native ADA coins using the pioneering Ouroboros PoS protocol. Daedalus and Yoroi ADA wallets are two other notable features.

Shelley

This phase, named after a Novelist, Mary Shelley. It is the second in Cardano’s development roadmap. This phase is intended to provide a stable and safe transition towards a decentralized Cardano. It is supported by community-run network nodes who are incentivized for participating in the network’s decentralization goals. The Shelly Phase saw the Mary Upgrade, or Mary Fork, which allowed users to create their own Cardano tokens. The introduction of Cardano staking pools was also part of this phase.

Goguen

The Goguen Phase was named after Joseph Goguen, a computer scientist. It is the third of five phases on Cardano’s long-term roadmap. Goguen’s primary goal is to make it possible for both technical and non-technical people to create smart contracts and dApps. This was accomplished via the Alonzo hardfork or Alonzo Upgrade in September 2021. Marlowe, a programming language, was also released.

Basho

The Basho Phase was named after Matsuo Basho, a Japanese poet and haiku writer. It focuses on optimizing both scalability as well as interoperability. It includes the Vasil hardfork. This platform offers increased network capacity, greater throughput and lower transaction fees due to Cardano’s highly anticipated Vasil upgrade. The other major benchmark of Bashō is the implementation of Hydra, Cardano’s layer 2.

Voltaire

This phase, named after the French philosopher and writer Voltaire, will focus on integrating decentralized governance. Transaction fees will fund an open voting system and a treasury. Cardano will not be managed by IOG after the Voltaire Phase is completed. It will instead be fully managed by the Cardano community.

Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork

Vasil falls within the Basho era Cardano. This era is all about optimizing and improving the chain’s scale and interoperability. Basho is a key step to achieving the chain’s global adoption goals by enabling high transaction volumes. Vasil will optimize its block propagation efficiency through diffusion pipelining. Additionally, several Cardano Improvement Proposals, or CIPs, will be implemented that focus on data storage and access efficiency.

Charles Hoskinson, The founder of IOHK explained that this hard fork will bring some scaling improvements to the network that include several things, such as pipelining tests , improved logging, the release of four CIPs: CIP-31 (Reference Input), CIP-32 (Inline Datum), CIP-33 (Reference Script) and CIP-40 (Collateral Output), UTXO HD integration, and Hydra. These features will increase Cardano’s throughput and optimize the system to accommodate increased coverage in Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Smart Contract , and Decentralized Exchange (DEX) applications.

In addition, through his official Twitter account, Cardano developer Sooraj explained how the Cardano Vasil Hard Fork will impact overall network stability and connectivity. Sooraj further explains how Cardano’s CIP or important upgrades, which will evaluate the mechanism of how Plutus scripts are delivered to the blockchain. The CIP-33 mechanism included with the Vasil Hard Fork Upgrade will substantially lower those transaction costs by reducing their size and making them more compact and lightweight.

In addition, the update to the new CIP-31 will also allow dApps to access transactional output without the need to recreate it as before. Meanwhile, the CIP-32 update will allow users or developers to store data on-chain which will essentially encourage Cardano to move towards a “truly decentralised architecture”.

What does it means for KunciCoin

Cardano is the biggest proof-of-stake cryptocurrency and with latest ethereum update, The Merge , the trend is clear. Proof of Stake is one of the possible bright future for cryptocurrency. Proof-of-stake requires that a certain number of digital tokens be locked up in order to participate in the network. In this case, the tokens will be staked in return for rewards. However, it is not necessary that every stakeholder have a balance of tokens, just that the stake must exceed some minimum amount in order to qualify for reward. Proof-of-stake ensures security through the validation of blocks of transactions and is therefore considered more secure than the traditional proof-of-work ecosystem. KunciCoin with its vision on building the best cryptocurrency in the world also envision this dream. KunciCoin also offers proof-of-stake system in their ecosystem.

KunciCoin Staking has been released on April 27, 2022. The release of this program so that all levels of society can access, this features is increasingly anticipated and becomes one of the waits in its roadmap. The presence of this staking feature is to complete each next item in the roadmap that we have published. With the latest trend of crypto going to proof of stake ecosystem, KunciCoin also follows that trends to be in line with the future of blockchain.