Cardano research and developer firm Input Output HK announced on April 25 that the mainnet block size will be increased by 10% or 8KB, with the change taking effect at 20:20 UTC on the same day.
The developer team explained what this update is and what it means for the broader ecosystem in a series of subsequent tweets. To put it simply, the present block size is 80KB, and the upgrade will expand it by 8KB to 88KB.
Blocks are transaction batches that are confirmed and recorded on a blockchain, and increasing their size allows for the inclusion of more transactions in each block, hence improving network capacity and decreasing transaction delays.
What does this mean for Cardano?
As part of the broader 2022 scaling plans for Cardano, this increase will significantly improve the network’s throughput and performance of decentralised applications (DApps) built on top of it, the team noted.
Following the update’s deployment, the team intends to monitor network performance for at least five days (one epoch) to determine the next increase:
“Cardano has seen phenomenal growth in recent months, with performance improvements to match. (…) With a huge recent rise in transaction volume – and significant further girth expected – we’ll be continuing to very carefully monitor and steadily optimize the Cardano network as we grow.”
According to a report released in March, the Cardano team had planned to introduce the Vasil hardfork for June, with the goal of growing the protocol and significantly increasing transaction throughput, and thus volume and liquidity.
In addition, the network recently launched the Cardano ERC-20 converter, which added support for ERC-20 token migration to its platform and increased “the variety of use cases for application developers and businesses.”
Other recent successes for the blockchain include exceeding 2,000 smart contracts for the first time, adding nearly 100,000 wallets in a month, and recording 400 new projects built on it in a month.
Meanwhile, the network’s native cryptocurrency, ADA, has been trading in the red recently, with the price falling 2.91% in the last 24 hours and 3.81% in the last week, to $0.8656 at press time, according to CoinMarketCap data.
In early April, the crypto community predicted that Cardano would be worth $1.35 by the end of the month. It remains to be seen whether the recent development will cause the price to rise and reach the estimated average.
