Cardano News

The January 31, 2025, development report highlights the successful implementation of the Plomin hard fork, marking the completion of the Conway ledger era. The ledger team made minor improvements, including removing dependencies and optimizing data structures. The Lace team released version 1.19.0, introducing a DApp explorer and performance enhancements. The Mithril team progressed on incremental certification of the Cardano database and prepared for the upcoming 'Pythagoras' era transition. The Leios team advanced both Haskell and Rust implementations to enhance performance and simulation fidelity.

On January 29, 2025, Cardano transitioned to full community governance with the Plomin hard fork, approved by stake pool operators and the interim constitutional committee. This historic event marks the first community-driven hard fork in blockchain history, stemming from CIP-1694 developed over two years with extensive community input. Ada holders can now propose and vote on governance actions directly or through delegated representatives (DReps). Post-Plomin, staking rewards continue as usual; however, withdrawing them requires delegation to a DRep or selecting a predefined option. This milestone signifies a new era of decentralized decision-making for Cardano.

A Roundtable Talk on January 30, 2025, celebrated the Plomin Hard Fork, a milestone marking the full realization of decentralized governance in Cardano's Voltaire era. Key stakeholders gathered to discuss the significance of this achievement and reflect on the network's journey from Byron to Voltaire. The session explored the new opportunities for community-driven innovation and ecosystem growth unlocked by the decentralized treasury and on-chain governance framework.

Cardano is transitioning into a community-governed blockchain, emphasizing scalability, usability, and interoperability. The roadmap focuses on advanced scaling solutions like Hydra state channels, layer 2 rollups, and the Ouroboros Leios and Peras protocols to support billions of users by 2030. Enhancements in usability aim to improve the developer experience and broaden decentralized application capabilities. Interoperability efforts include integrating partner chains and sidechains to foster a diverse ecosystem. Community involvement is crucial in shaping this future.

The January 24, 2025, development report highlights consensus team progress on security, documentation, and Peras workstream improvements. The UTXO-HD branch achieved successful local chain synchronization. The performance team benchmarked node v.10.1.4 and introduced a tracing Discord channel. Plutus added the Fix construct and CLI tool guides. Hydra completed custom ledger experiments and restored hydra-explorer. Mithril advanced incremental database certification. The Leios team benchmarked efficient VRF cryptography.

The Plomin hard fork is a key upgrade for Cardano, enabling full decentralized governance under the Voltaire era. It allows ada holders to delegate voting power to DReps for decisions on protocol updates, treasury withdrawals, and hard forks. SPOs must upgrade their nodes and achieve a 51% majority vote for activation. With 78% of nodes upgraded as of January 22, 2025, Plomin marks a milestone for community-driven control.

All node users and operators are urged to upgrade to version 10.1.4 to prepare for the Plomin hard fork, with 85% of blocks already using this version. The Interim Constitutional Committee is reviewing the governance action, requiring a two-thirds majority by January 25. Additionally, Delegated Representatives (DReps) have been introduced on the community forum, alongside discussions regarding the network's minimum pool cost.

This 12th installment of the Cardano Developer Office Hours is presented by Satya Ranjan, Senior Enterprise Architect at the Cardano Foundation. In this session, Satya discusses how the yaci-devkit simplifies building and testing on a local Cardano dev network, helping developers iterate faster and avoid public testnet limitations. The session highlights key features such as customizable block times, integrated tools, and Blockfrost-compatible APIs. A live demo shows easy setup using Docker and NPM distributions.

The January 17, 2025, development report focuses on final preparations for the Plomin hard fork, including bug fixes and code simplifications. Stake pool operators are urged to upgrade to node v.10.1.4. Lace v.1.18.2 improved crash recovery and fixed CIP-95 bugs. Mithril certified stake distribution on the mainnet and upgraded to node v.10.1.4. The Ouroboros Leios project progressed simulations to enhance network throughput. Voting for the Plomin hard fork continues.

NFT marketplaces are platforms where users can buy, sell, and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through auctions or fixed-price listings. They operate as either centralized platforms, managing transactions off-chain, or decentralized platforms, leveraging smart contracts for secure peer-to-peer exchanges. Each model has unique benefits, balancing ease of use, security, and transparency.