We are now counting down the final days to the much-awaited Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) event that will signal the launch of Cardano’s smart contract capabilities. Let’s find out how the crypto is faring in the last week before the launch.
Alonzo Hard Fork Launch Date Confirmed
In the latest news, the launch date for Cardano’s smart contract capability has been finalized for September 12th, 2021 Sunday. Previously, Cardano’s developer company Input Output HongKong (IOHK) had targeted the same date for the launch. However, speculations were rife that the target might not be met due to the team’s history of slow roll-outs. The latest update from IOHK puts these speculations to rest as the team confirmed the date for the HFC event for the much-awaited launch.
The team tweeted,
“LAUNCH CONFIRMED: Today, around 17:26 UTC we successfully submitted an update proposal to the #Cardano mainnet, to trigger a hard fork combinator event on Sunday.”
64% Of Cardano Pools Already ‘Alonzo-Ready’
In preparation for the upcoming September 12th update, 64% of Cardano pools have already been upgraded to the Alonzo 1.29.0 hard fork. This indicates that smart contracts can potentially be introduced to the network’s mainnet now.
IOHK tweeted out,
“Awesome effort as ever from the Cardano stake pool operator community over the weekend to get ready for Alonzo…64% of pools have now upgraded to 1.29.0 Alonzo node.”
According to a CryptoPotato report earlier this month, Team Cardano successfully implemented a smart contracts capability on the Alonzo testnet, allowing developers to test out the protocol ahead of the upcoming mainnet upgrade. Furthermore, the team is also expecting to roll out at least 80% of the pools before the scheduled deadline.
ADA Drops As Critics Slam Smart Contracts Launch
Multiple critics have targeted Cardano’s smart contract models, questioning whether they are on par with competing platforms. The criticism picked up steam when the network’s first dApp faced ‘concurrency’ issues, as it failed to support multiple users interacting with it simultaneously.
Steadfast Ethereum champion, Anthony Sassano criticized Cardano,
“Six years of ‘peer-reviewed’ research and a $90 billion-plus market cap later and the first dapp on Cardano can’t even do concurrent transaction processing (aka the very thing you need for DeFi).
The concurrency issues resulted in Minswap, the first Cardano dApp, prematurely shutting down its testnet. This resulted in a sharp 10% drop of the native token ADA, which had recently hit an all-time high of $3.09, based on the anticipation for the upcoming Alonzo hard fork. On Tuesday, after facing harsh criticism over its smart contract testnet errors, the price dropped to a low of $2.58.
According to CIO at Arcane Assets, Eric Wall,
“Cardano was not built for the current DeFi landscape. In its current state, it’s going to require tons of workarounds for developers to build certain types of common DeFi applications.”
Scaramucci Supports Cardano And Other Altcoins
American financier and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci has spoken out in support of Cardano and other altcoins like Ethereum and Algorand. In a CNBC interview, Scaramucci, who is also the founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, said that these altcoins would likely continue to grow because of their use-cases and applications.
He said,
“There’s a lot of great stuff happening in this space… As more digital applications happen, some of those altcoins, stuff like Algorand or Cardano, or things like Ethereum, will continue to rise because there’s actually great use cases for them.”
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
