We’re happy to report that today at 20:20 UTC the IOG team has successfully hard forked the Cardano Testnet. This is an important next step in the journey towards the Vasil upgrade on mainnet.
We’re now inviting SPOs, developers Building On Cardano and exchanges to commence their final testing and integration processes.
Vasil is a complex program of work. Projects will need to check backward compatibility and SPOs will need to make some scripting adjustments. SPOs are invited to join this week’s SPO call and/or follow the SPO TG for further details.
The community has requested a 4-week period following the testnet hard fork to allow for SPOs, developers, and exchanges to test and upgrade before we trigger the hard fork for the Cardano mainnet.
Image courtesy of Tim B Harrison [@IOHK_Tim]
The teams at Cardano Foundation and IOG will be working closely with exchanges and DApp / tool developers throughout this process. As soon as we are confident ecosystem partners are comfortable and ready, we shall submit an update proposal to upgrade the Cardano mainnet to Vasil.
The Vasil upgrade will bring significant performance and capability upgrades to Cardano.
Vasil improvements include higher throughput through diffusion pipelining to a better developer experience via much improved script performance & efficiency (plus lower costs).
The Vasil upgrade will also include Cardano cryptographic primitives improvements (enabling greater interoperability options for other blockchains), a tuned Plutus interpreter, and a new cost model, which are all part of Plutus V2 scripts.
NOTE: Since a new cost model is needed to enable Plutus V2, Plutus V2 capabilities will become available from the epoch following the Vasil hard fork. It is also important to note that Plutus V1 cannot use reference inputs, reference scripts, or inline datums. Additionally, the Testnet Cardano Explorer is not yet fully updated so you may temporarily not see records for epochs after the hard fork.
The Vasil upgrade is the most ambitious program of work we’ve undertaken. And the whole community is involved. Our prime concern is ensuring we manage this upgrade in a way that is safe and secure.
Thanks to all of you for your continued support. We’ll continue to bring you updates over the next few weeks as things progress.
-Cardano Foundation and IOG Teams
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