In brief:
- Smart contracts will be added to the Cardano mainnet with the Alonzo Upgrade
- Alonzo will be activated on Cardano in ‘about four months from now’
- Smart contracts will allow Cardano developers to create DApps for industries such as DeFi
The Cardano (ADA) network will soon have smart contract capability. The team at IOHK made the announcement earlier today stating that smart contracts will be activated during the next network upgrade of Alonzo. The update should be activated in ‘about four months from now’ as explained below.
Alonzo, our next protocol upgrade, will build on these capabilities. Implemented using our hard fork combinator technology, Alonzo will add support for smart contracts – digital agreements – to Cardano about four months from now. It will open up opportunities for businesses and developers, by allowing the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) for decentralized finance (DeFi).
The incoming Cardano upgrade is named after Alonzo Church (1903 – 95), a US mathematician and logician who played a major role in the foundation of theoretical computer science. The team at Cardano was inspired to name the upgrade after Church due to his contribution to Lambda calculus alongside Alan Turing. Furthermore, the smart contract language – Plutus Core – is a variation of Lambda calculus.
The Potential of Smart Contracts on Cardano (ADA)
Once launched on the Cardano mainnet, smart contracts will allow developers to create DApps for various blockchain industries such as Decentralized finance, decentralized crypto exchanges, gaming, collectibles such as NFTs, crowdfunding, auctions, just to name a few.
Cardano will therefore have a chance at finally demonstrating smart contract capabilities in a time where other blockchains such as Ethereum, Tron, Binance Smart Chain and Zilliqa are already several months and years ahead in this regard.
Timeline to Alonzo on Cardano (ADA)
According to the Cardano roadmap below, the Alonzo code will be frozen for four weeks before release. In the months of March and April, the Input/Output team will be combining the Alonzo rules with the Cardano node and ledger code.
From mid-April to early May, the team will continue working on Plutus development in preparation for a private testnet launch. During this phase, testing will be carried out for NFTs, marketplaces, and other potential DApps that will run on Cardano.
Quality assurance will be carried out in May and June followed by the aforementioned four-week freeze before the final launch. The freeze will provide adequate time for wallets and exchanges to upgrade and prepare for the Alonzo update that is estimated to occur in late summer. A concrete date will be provided with time.