Cardano News

The Interim Constitution was released on June 21, 2024, serving as a temporary document until the Final Constitution is ratified by ada holders by early 2025. Drafting of the final constitution will involve global workshops and a Constitutional Convention. The Interim Constitutional Committee election ended on June 24, 2024, with results expected on June 26 after an audit. The Aiken team reports surpassing 1 million Mainnet transactions with Aiken smart contracts, contributing to 25% of all smart contract traffic. MinSwap completed its final audit on their new Aiken-based implementation, anticipating increased activity. A new full-time engineer, Riley, joins the team, with new libraries and features like property-based testing and backpassing being showcased in projects like Merkle-Patricia Forestry and Fortuna.

The Mithril project in June saw the release of distribution 2423.0, including critical updates like removing the deprecated snapshot command and improving transaction certification performance. Work on Cardano integration progressed, focusing on decentralizing signature diffusion. The Hydra project made significant strides with incremental decommits, updating the protocol's specification, and fixing a critical bug in the decommit feature. They also made breaking changes to the hydra-node API and enhanced the system's security and efficiency, with a planned release in the near future.

Lloyd Duhon breaks down the Cardano Blockchain Interim Constitution, covering its preamble, core principles, community members’ rights and responsibilities, and the transition plan to the Final Constitution. Discover how this document paves the way for a fully decentralized, community-governed blockchain. Essential insights for Cardano enthusiasts, blockchain developers, and those curious about crypto governance.

This week, the ledger team implemented CIP-0069, enhancing PlutusV3 functionality by making spending datums optional and enforcing single arguments for scripts. They also fixed script execution and delegation bugs. The Lace team prepares for v.1.13 release. The Plutus team released version 1.30.0.0, featuring CIP-0122 and ledger API refactoring. The Mithril team improved transaction certification and throughput. Voltaire & SanchoNet updates include member-experience improvements and upcoming votes. Catalyst town hall 167 marked the end of community moderation for Fund12, with voting starting June 27. The education team prepares for next month’s Cardano Developer course.

The roundtable discussion features Pi Lanningham and Arnaud Bailly exploring the intricacies of Ouroboros Leios, a blockchain-based technology aimed at enhancing decentralized systems. They delve into Leios's architecture, its potential applications in the tech industry, and the innovative solutions it offers for scalability and security. The conversation also covers the implications of Ouroboros Leios for developers and businesses, highlighting its unique approach to consensus and transaction processing. This insightful dialogue provides a comprehensive understanding of how Leios could revolutionize blockchain technology and its real-world applications.

The ledger team enhanced the CDDL specification and improved safety by restricting certain protocol parameter types, introduced tools for controlling test case distribution, worked on UTXO predicate failure tests, enabled retrying of flaky tests in nightly CI, and made further improvements. The Lace team released v1.12, adding a fiat on-ramp with Banxa and enabling multi-delegation for supported hardware wallets. The Plutus team released version 1.29.0.0 of the Plutus libraries, which includes CIP-69 and CIP-117 implementations. The Mithril team improved the throughput of the prover route, transitioned to a chain point-based beacon for faster transaction signing, and prepared a threat modeling explainer for the documentation website. The ledger team continued testing the Conway era and fixed several bugs related to DRep expiry and committee voting thresholds. Intersect updates included interim constitutional committee elections and joining Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. In Catalyst, town hall 165 shared updates, including the end of the community review period for LV0s and LV1s, and the start of LV2 moderation on June 13. The alternative voting mechanism achieved milestone 1 and was presented during town hall 165. The education team continued working on Mastering Cardano, supporting the DRep Pioneer Program, and preparing for the next Cardano Developer course.

Today, June 10, 2024, is the final day to register for the Interim Constitutional Committee, which will uphold the interim Constitution during the Chang upgrade. The committee includes representatives from IOG, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Intersect, and three community seats. Charles Hoskinson confirmed Cardano Node v9’s release this month, preceding the Chang Hard Fork. The “Spotlight on Stake Pools” series features Dmytro Stashenko of STAT stake pool. Other Cardano news includes updates from Vietnam Blockchain Week, MAV growth, and the Crypto Valley Conference.

The ledger team enhanced the CDDL specification and improved safety by restricting certain protocol parameter types, introduced tools for controlling test case distribution, worked on UTXO predicate failure tests, enabled retrying of flaky tests in nightly CI, and made further improvements. The Lace team released v1.12, adding a fiat on-ramp with Banxa and enabling multi-delegation for supported hardware wallets. The Plutus team released version 1.29.0.0 of the Plutus libraries, which includes CIP-69 and CIP-117 implementations. The Mithril team improved the throughput of the prover route, transitioned to a chain point-based beacon for faster transaction signing, and prepared a threat modeling explainer for the documentation website. The ledger team continued testing the Conway era and fixed several bugs related to DRep expiry and committee voting thresholds. Intersect updates included interim constitutional committee elections and joining Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. In Catalyst, town hall 165 shared updates, including the end of the community review period for LV0s and LV1s, and the start of LV2 moderation on June 13. The alternative voting mechanism achieved milestone 1 and was presented during town hall 165. The education team continued working on Mastering Cardano, supporting the DRep Pioneer Program, and preparing for the next Cardano Developer course.

The consensus team advanced the UTXO-HD project using simple diffs, improving mempool benchmarks. They released quickcheck-state-machine library v0.10.0 and rebased UTXO-HD on node v8.11. Technical working groups under Intersect were established, with Plutus and consensus meetings set for early June. Updates on UTXO-HD and Ouroboros Peras were provided. The Hydra team released node v0.17.0, featuring new commit transaction mechanisms and networking upgrades. The Mithril team released a protocol insights dashboard, updated the explorer page, and improved transaction certification. SanchoNet invites community testing for on-chain governance as per CIP-1694, with updated documentation. Project Catalyst hosted town hall 164, with the community review stage ongoing and Fund12 voting registration open. The education team is preparing lectures for the Cardano Developer Course, supporting the DRep Pioneer program, and writing content for Mastering Cardano.

In May, the Mithril project released distribution 2418.1, which included critical updates like changes to the certificate chain structure and memory optimizations. Significant progress was made in Cardano transaction certification, achieving a 100x improvement in throughput and reducing storage requirements. The Hydra project released version 0.17.0 with breaking changes to the /commit endpoint, new HTTP endpoints, and focused on incremental decommits. Testing and optimization efforts continued, and several Hydra-related Catalyst proposals were discussed, exploring diverse use cases and alternative scaling approaches.