The Eras of Cardano Roadmap. Explained.
Established in 2015, the Cardano blockchain is addressing three challenges faced by other layer-1 blockchain networks. These are scalability, interoperability, and sustainability. In its mission, it is following a modular blockchain development approach demarcated into 5 phases, or as they like to call them, ‘eras’. Among many, the project will include Cardano DeFi Development, smart contract development, and a full range of other services.
The following article aims to educate you about the purpose, scope, and status of every era and the future of the overarching project.
The five eras known as Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire include development updates that enhance the overall functionalities of the Cardano network. After its recent upgrade of the Goguen era, the road is now heading towards Basho, the era of scalability. Furthermore, smart contract development will become available for developers.
The following article aims to educate you about the purpose, scope, and status of every era and the future of the overarching project.
Let us understand in detail.
1) Byron Era
In the Byron Era, Cardano shipped the first version of its mainnet. It was mostly about developing a sound foundation for the Cardano network. Thus, it delivered Daedalus, a desktop ADA wallet, as well as Yoroi, a light wallet designed for quick transactions and everyday use.
In this era, Cardano introduced Ouroboros proof-of-stake consensus protocol. It is the core mechanism of the Cardano network and defines the way nodes reach consensus.
Apart from building a strong technical foundation, Cardano built a community with ADA listed on over 30 exchanges.
2) Shelley Era
Transitioning to Shelly Era was all about the growth and development of the network. This transition was challenging because it had to be achieved without disrupting any services on the Cardano mainnet. The main aim of the Shelley Era was to transform Cardano into a truly decentralized network. This happened by allowing more community members to run Cardano nodes. With the majority of nodes run by the community, Cardano will become more decentralized, secure, and robust. As a result, this will compete with Ethereum’s highly successful DeFi development services.
To ensure more network participants would operate nodes, Cardano rolled out its incentivization and delegation scheme. This seems to be working well as presently ADA worth over $ 23.41 billion remains staked in different pools.
Source: https://cardanoscan.io/
Currently, over 3,000 stake pools are operating the Cardano network which has led to Cardano being 50–100 times more decentralized than most of the big blockchain networks. This has also enabled the execution of the Cardano network at a fraction of the power consumed by popular blockchains like Ethereum. Shelly Era basically made Cardano’s network more useful and rewarding thereby pushing the way for Cardano DeFi staking development.
During the Shelley Era, Cardano also rolled out two upgrades of Ouroboros that provide network security against adaptive attackers and also enhance the efficiency of the network.
3. The Goguen Era
While Shelley Era optimized the decentralization of the Cardano Network, Goguen Era has added smart contracts to Cardano. This means Cardano DeFi is now ready as the enterprises can undergo their dapp development services projects on the blockchain. developers can now build decentralized applications (DApps) on Cardano’s solid foundation.
Following the launch of smart contract ability, over 100 smart contracts stood deployed on Cardano within 24 hours of the hard fork.
In addition to the Alonzo Hardfork that enabled Cardano Smart contract development, Goguen Era is also creating Plutus, a smart contract development language. And this will enhance the development experience of Cardano smart contract developers. Some other improvements in the Goguen era are the addition of a multi-currency ledger. This has enabled the NFT development services in addition to DeFi development.
4. Basho Era
Basho remains focused on enhancing the scalability and interoperability of the Cardano Network. Some of the Basho Era developments have been taking place in parallel to Goguen Era. The core part of the Cardano scalability upgrade, Hydra remains designed to address throughput issues faced by the Cardano network as the network usage increases. It’s expected to support a throughput of 1 million TPS.
Additionally, Basho will introduce sidechains to Cardano. These side chains will be interoperable with the Cardano chain and will use the sharding mechanism to increase the capacity of the network.
In all, the Basho era will enhance the performance, resilience, and flexibility of the Cardano network.
5. Voltaire
The Voltaire era is all about transforming Cardano into a self-sustaining system. It will introduce governance with voting and a treasury system. As a result, the Cardano network participants will be able to use their voting rights to determine future development. Voltaire will enable the submission of Cardano improvement proposals (CIP) by network participants. The network participants can then use their stake to vote and steer the development. Cardano’s journey to full decentralization will be complete.
As a result, its management will transfer from IOHK to its Cardano community. By the end of this era, Cardano will be a full-fledged ecosystem offering DeFi lending & borrowing development, Yield Farming development, and other services.
What’s Next?
Ideally, Cardano is setting the benchmark for the DeFi markets. Despite the roaring run of Bitcoin and Ethereum, Cardano is expected to supersede both and lead DeFi development. While we are at it, Antier has already rolled out its signature Cardano DeFi services.
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