🥁 IOG SPO Announcements

📣 We’re delighted to report that today we have submitted an update proposal to hard fork the Cardano Testnet, and commence the countdown for the #Vasil mainnet upgrade.

With over 75% of testnet blocks being created by the new Vasil node (1.35.0) we now have a good chain density to proceed safely. ✅

Thanks to all the SPOs who continue to support the testnet, and their coordinated effort to ready the network for the Vasil HFC event. Once the changes have taken effect after the start of epoch 215 at 20:20 UTC on 3 July, the Cardano testnet will start to enjoy the new #Vasil enhancements and capabilities that we’ll soon see on mainnet. ❗️NOTE: cost model changes will take effect on 8 July – the epoch after – so kick off your regression testing first. ❗️

The Vasil upgrade – named in honor of long standing community member, the late Vasil St Dabov – brings 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). It is Cardano’s biggest and best upgrade to date.

It is also the most complex program of work we’ve undertaken. And the whole community is involved. As shared previously, our prime concern is ensuring we manage this upgrade in a way that is safe and secure.

The community has requested a minimum period of 4 weeks to allow SPOs, developers and exchanges the time they need to test and upgrade before hard forking the #Cardano mainnet. Once everyone is comfortable and ready, we can go through the same process to upgrade the mainnet to Vasil.

👉 Join us for #Cardano360 this Thursday, where we’ll introduce more of the IOG team plus some of the community collaborators #BuildingOnCardano and working so hard behind the scenes preparing for the Vasil upgrade. Subscribe for the latest: https://youtube.com/iohkio

Thanks to you all for the continued support. We couldn't do this without you. 🙏🏼

1.6K viewsRebecca Hopwood, 15:26

✅ We’re happy to report that today at 20:20 UTC the IOG team 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 #BuildingOnCardano 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.

💪 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.

2.1K views👉 Ben, edited 20:29