Public chain Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson posted on the community platform on the 9th, stating that a hard fork upgrade called Chang is expected to take place in June, which will also mark Cardano entering the final stage of its roadmap, “Voltaire.”
What is a hard fork?
Five stages of Cardano roadmap
ADA fell by 1.9% in the past 24 hours
The founder of the well-established public chain Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, announced last Sunday (9) on the community platform X that the Cardano Node may reach version 9.0 this month. This means that Cardano is ready to undergo the Chang hard fork upgrade, and is currently waiting for 70% of stake pool operators (SPO) to install the new nodes.
It is worth mentioning that after this hard fork, Cardano will enter the final stage of its roadmap, “Voltaire.”
This Cardano hard fork upgrade, also known as the “Chang fork upgrade,” is named in memory of Cardano’s early leader Phil Chang, who passed away in 2022.
A hard fork is a way to update blockchain technology, creating a new chain that is incompatible with the original blockchain. In simple terms, a hard fork is like a major upgrade for a blockchain system, causing the new system and the old system to no longer be able to communicate with each other.
For example, Bitcoin experienced a hard fork in 2017 due to scaling disputes, splitting into Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Ethereum completed “The Merge” upgrade in September 2022, transitioning Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) by merging the beacon chain and the mainnet through a hard fork.
According to official information, the Cardano roadmap consists of five major development stages, also known as “epochs,” all named after famous figures in the arts and sciences. They are “Byron,” “Shelley,” “Goguen,” “Basho,” and “Voltaire.”
The first three stages achieved the basics of blockchain, decentralization, and smart contracts, while the Basho era focused on expanding the blockchain. The final Voltaire era is intended to add governance, voting, and financial management functions to Cardano.
Hoskinson also stated that this hard fork will be the most important milestone in Cardano’s history:
Considering the recent downward trend in the cryptocurrency market, the positive news of the Chang hard fork upgrade does not seem to be reflected in the price of Cardano’s native token ADA, which was reported at $0.433 before the deadline, down by 1.9% in the past 24 hours, with a decrease of 5.8% in the past week. Whether the price of ADA will increase as the upgrade news develops further is worth our continued attention.