The Cardano network is reportedly planning to roll out an upgrade in September that will enable the users to run smart contracts on the network. With this move, the company aims to gain a competitive edge against the large rival network Ethereum.
On 12th September 2021, the developers of Cardano, Input Output HK, announced that the planned upgrade, which was called ‘Alonzo’ has now been rolled out successfully. On the same day, the announcement about the addition of ‘Plutus’ smart contract capabilities was also made. The founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, said in a recent interview that the upgrades and new additions are some of the most important changes made to the network to date.
The upgrade has been named after the American mathematician Alonzo Church, who is most well-known to be one of the founders of the field of computer science. The Alonzo upgrade will allow Cardano to implement smart contracts on the blockchain, which will, in turn, enable a resetting of the programmability and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. With this new upgrade, Cardano will now be able to give a competition to Ethereum which is a significantly larger blockchain protocol. Many believe that Cardano could possibly become the ‘Ethereum killer’.
The Alonzo upgrade would allow the Cardano network to be used for in-house non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized exchanges. Besides this, it will also be used for running oracle programs that will use external data to activate smart contracts. The success of the Cardano smart contract depends upon the number of decentralized applications integrated into the network and its adoption by developers.
