Cardano is set to continue changing over the next year, with the Cardano Roadmap laying out new capabilities and features for the network.
Cardano - and its ADA token - is another cryptocurrency to see a drastic increase in price during 2021. Much like with the Ethereum 2.0 release, Cardano is set to undergo more changes in 2022.
With Cardano now in its third phase following Byron and Shelley, when will the next update release?
Cardano Roadmap
After the full release of Cardano Goguen in late-2021, alongside the Cardano Alonzo mainnet hard fork, the next stage on the Cardano roadmap is the Basho upgrade.
The Cardano Basho era will hope to improve the scalability of the network, adding sidechains to ease pressure on the main chain. It is expected to go live at some point in 2022.
However, the most immediate upgrade on the roadmap is the Cardano Vasil hard fork, expected to reduce the cost of large transactions.
Following the Cardano Basho era, the final stage for the network is Voltaire. This governance phase will introduce a voting and treasury system that allows holders to have a more direct impact on the decentralised network, as Cardano moves away from IOHK's management.
Alongside this, the Cardano Hydra Layer-2 is set to improve the scalability and precision of the Cardano network by increasing the number of transactions per second.
Cardano Djed, the network's algorithmic stablecoin, is also slated to launch later this year.
Read More: What To Expect From The New Cardano Vasil Hard Fork Upgrade
Cardano Latest Updates
The Cardano website receives frequent updates relating to the latest developments on the network.
The latest update from 21 April gives a brief update on the Hydra L2, stating the Hydra team "added functionality to the Hydra node that enables it to start following the chain at a point in the past and recover from possible shutdowns or issues."
It also gives more information about the preparation for the Vasil hard fork, and states a "10% block size increase" is coming as the mainnet improves.
These updates also give some statistics on projects using Cardano, which expanded dramatically after the launch of Cardano Smart Contracts. 910 projects are building on Cardano, with over 5000 Cardano NFT projects also available.
Per the recent report shared by the Cardano team, the widely anticipated Vasil Hard Fork mainnet upgrade of Cardano has been delayed for a month. The team shared that they need to clear a few outstanding bugs to roll out a clear error-free update.
In addition to this, Cardano devs have already launched the Vasil hard fork upgrade on Network's testnet for developers to test and run their programs on the newly deployed program.