The Cardano Roadmap lays out five distinct eras of development, but what will the Cardano Basho upgrade bring?
Following the Alonzo hard fork in mid-September, Cardano took its next steps into the Goguen era, implementing smart contract functionality, for example. After the Goguen era, Cardano will move into Basho.
While there remain several upgrades coming in the Goguen era, here’s what to expect from Cardano Basho.
What Is Cardano Basho?
Cardano Basho will focus on scaling the Cardano network to improve its performance. It gets its name from Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, renowned for his development of haikus during the Edo period.
As the Cardano Roadmap states:
The Basho era of Cardano is an era of optimization, improving the scalability and interoperability of the network.
To implement this scaling, Basho will add sidechains to the Cardano blockchain, using these new chains to take the pressure off Cardano’s main chain. This is not too dissimilar to the upcoming Ethereum 2.0’s sharding upgrade.
These sidechains may also be used to test features, reducing the risk of experimenting on the main chain.
Basho will also give users the option to use an account model for transactions. Currently, Cardano only uses UTXO, but in the Basho era, users will be able to switch between models.
Of course, the Basho upgrade is still subject to change, so we’ll add any new features as they are announced.
Cardano Basho Release Date
Given the Goguen era is still in its early stages, Cardano Basho does not currently have an official release date, However, it is speculated that the Basho update will be live sometime in 2022.
However, we do know that work on Cardano scaling has already started, enabled by the Alonzo hard fork.
Hydra is IOHK’s layer-2 solution that will improve Cardano’s scaling by processing transactions off-chain. This should further reduce the burden on the main blockchain, while also improving the number of transactions per second.
According to a recent IOHK blog post, progress on Hydra over the next 6-12 months will "greatly depend on the results of our research and experimentation, plus feedback from the developer community."
IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson told his followers that the Cardano Summit 2021 will include Hydra in some form.
Presently, Cardano is preparing to deploy one of the most significant upgrades dubbed the Vasil hard fork upgrade which is scheduled to go live on September 22.
We’ll keep this page updated as news comes out about Basho development.
Read More: Does Cardano Support NFTs?
[Features Image by Michael Förtsch via Unsplash]