On Friday, the Cardano blockchain marked its seventh anniversary, cementing its position as one of the most popular protocols in the cryptocurrency market. Currently, Cardano’s native token, ADA, is ranked eleventh among cryptocurrencies, boasting a market capitalization of around $14 billion.
Input Output Global (IOG), the Cardano development company, celebrated this milestone on social media, highlighting key achievements since its founding by its co-founder. Charles Hoskinsonwho played a key role in the creation of the Ethereum blockchain.
Cardano’s Architectural Evolution Over Seven Years
In a commemorative videoIOG shared some notable statistics that show Cardano’s growth and development. Blockchain has facilitated more than 95 million transactions, demonstrating its use and adoption throughout the years.
In addition, more than 74,000 Plutus documents have been implemented, which are essential for the successful implementation of smart contracts on the platform.
Cardano also saw significant community engagement, with 1.3 million builds wallets and publication of 226 research papers. In addition, about 1,373 projects have been launched on the blockchain, and they show public use.
The Catalyst funding program, which has received funding for 12 rounds, has played an important role in developing the Cardano ecosystem. The program has supported more than 1,800 funded ideas, encouraging development and further improvements within the protocol.
However, the last seven years have also seen significant changes in the design of Cardano. The transition from the Shelley era to the Alonzo rigid fork marked a significant change.
Towards Decentralized Decision Making
The Shelley era, which began in 2020, focused on decentralization and improving network security by introducing the development of Ouroboros. This development improved the performance of the stake pool as well The ADA posting, promoting the most valuable rewards to users.
The Alonzo hard fork, which went live in 2021, enabled smart contract functionality in Cardano, significantly increased the block size and improved the limits of the text memory unit. This development allowed developers to create decentralized applications (dApps) that leverage Cardano’s capabilities.
More improvements came with the development of Vasil and Chang, the latter being the first hard fork of the Voltaire era, the last era of the protocol. An upgrade to Vasil, released in 2022, introduced new features, including the Plutus script development reducing transaction costs and the implementation of pipelines to distribute blocks faster.
The latest Change the development introduced in two stages, introducing successive dominance in the network. The first phase, which implements the management features of CIP-1694, lays the foundation for voting actions and distributed governance.
The second phase will introduce additional administrative functions, including the participation of delegates and the withdrawal of the treasury, which further empowers the community.
Next Steps in the Voltaire Era
Looking ahead, the second part of Voltaire’s time it will replace the original genesis keys, which have been essential in managing the network since its inception, with continued support from stake pool operators (SPOs) and increased involvement of delegation representatives (DReps) and the Constitutional Committee (CC).
The next steps to achieving decentralized governance include ensuring that stake pool nodes meet the required performance thresholds and that suspended requests (DApps) is about to end.
The final revolution in Voltaire’s era would occur with the final use of The keys to Genesiswhich will cause a hard fork and strengthen Cardano’s status as an independent blockchain. However, other announcements of the next development and their corresponding dates remain undisclosed.
At the time of writing, the protocol’s native token, ADA, is trading at $0.403, up nearly 15% in the past week alone amid a broad market rally.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com