Cardano hard fork ‘ever closer’ as upgraded SPOs account for 42% of blocks

IOHK wants to see at least 75% of new blocks coming from upgraded nodes, along with two other "critical indicators" before implementing the Vasil hard fork. Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain company behind the Cardano network says the much anticipated Vasil hard fork is “ever closer” after revealing the state of three critical indicators that will trigger the mainnet update. 

In a Twitter thread posted on Aug. 25, IOHK shared its latest “rollout status” of the Vasil upgrade to its 265,800 followers, with updates on “three critical mass indicators” which will determine when the mainnet update will go ahead.

This includes having 75% of mainnet blocks produced by nodes running 1.35.3, around 25 exchanges upgraded (representing 80% of liquidity) as well as the top ten key mainnet Dapps also having upgraded. On Thursday, the blockchain company noted that Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) running the latest node 1.35.3 now account for 42% of mainnet block production in the current epoch, which is now more than halfway to the 75% required.

IOHK also noted that one of the world’s largest exchanges, Binance, has reportedly upgraded their Cardano nodes to the latest version. The firm has been targeting roughly 25 exchanges to upgrade their nodes, as it would account for approximately 80% of its native token's total liquidity. Regarding its mainnet decentralized applications (DApps), IOHK confirmed that they’ll continue to stay close to many of the DApp teams on Cardano, with four out of 10 already confirming they are actively testing against node 1.35.3 on the pre-production testnet.

IOHK also shared that no new bugs have been identified, leaving nine minor bugs still to be dealt with — none of which will cause an unintended hard fork. The long-awaited Vasil upgrade is aimed at reducing transaction size and allowing for more network activity while lowering costs.

After a roadmap was released by IOHK on May 19 which planned for a hard fork on Jun. 29, the Vasil upgrade has been plagued by delays while developers ensure the network transition proceeds smoothly. Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano, recently responded to criticism about the upgrade being rushed. He suggested that they could delay the launch for months to retest the code which has already been tested and running, but the DApp developers would not see this as worthwhile given they have waited so long already.