Despite being in a macro bear market, the development game has been going on in full spree in the crypto space. Just a day back, for instance, VeChain’s VIP-220 upgrade went live on the private testnet. Alongside, Ethereum also checked the box by deploying the Sepolia Beacon Chain on Monday.
Is Cardano a step behind?
Well, in terms of the development activity going on GitHub, Cardano has consistently been able to maintain a spot in the top 10 list. In fact, at the beginning of June, it was ahead in terms of development activity compared to the likes of other prominent networks like Ethereum.
Despite activity going on in full spree, the network’s much anticipated Vasil Hardfork has been delayed by a month to the last week of July. Per a recent blog post, the IOHK team highlighted that it has seven bugs to iron out and would need more time for testing. None of the bugs, however, have been ranked as ‘severe’.
“… we still have a few outstanding items that we need to run to confirm everything is working as expected. We have determined we’ll need a few more days for this. This puts us behind schedule on our previously communicated target date of June 29 for a mainnet hard fork.”
Since the beginning of this month, the development team has been successfully running an early build of the new node. At the moment, there are around 35 developers testing their DApps and aiding the team identify any issues. Alongside, 16 stake pool operators are also supporting them.
Since last September’s Alonzo hardfork, the Vasil hardfork is Cardano’s next most critical update. The said development intends to reduce the size of transactions, and boost the network’s transactional ability. Alongside, the transaction fee is also set to shrink.
Justifying the delay, the blog post noted,
“The work on Vasil has been the most complex program of development and integration to date, from several angles. It’s a challenging process that requires not only significant work from core teams but also close coordination across the ecosystem.“
Cardano’s Hoskinson opines on the delay
In a recent YouTube broadcast, the Cardano exec went on to state, that the delay is a “little frustrating.” He added that he “really” wanted to ensure that something major was executed on the development front in June. Hoskinson, however, assured that the delay would not slow down the ecosystem’s growth, and exclaimed that July—at the end of the day—ain’t that far.
“July is not too far off, you know, and all things considered, it’s kind of in an acceptable zone in my view.”