Ethereum rival and investor darling Cardano successfully launched smart contracts after completing its Alonzo hard fork. After years of waiting, this finally brought much-demanded utility to the network, which is gunning to knock Ethereum off its throne as DApp market leader.
Good things come to those who wait
On September 13, Cardano announced the completion of its Alonzo hard fork, putting an end to its year-long quest to implement smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain. IOHK announced the upgrade was successfully completed at epoch 290, allowing smart contracts on the platform for the first time. However, the foundation struck a fairly neutral tone in its message, knowing that the real challenges still lie ahead:
“This is where the mission truly begins as we – the whole community – start delivering on the vision we have all been working towards for so long. Building a decentralized system that extends economic identity and opportunity to everyone, everywhere.”
Following its peer-review approach and very cautious implementation of updates to the network, Alonzo enables smart contracts for Cardano using Plutus scripts, a “purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform using the functional programming language Haskell.”
Ethereum supporters are less than impressed
Unsurprisingly, rival platforms and communities were not too impressed by the eventual arrival of smart contracts on Cardano. Dominic Williams, founder of Internet Computer, another blockchain, didn’t mince his words when reacting to the news: “It amazes me that this chain has been in the market for 2 years, and is only just adding support for smart contracts, and people are happy with this progress.”
Anthony Sassano, an outspoken Ethereum maxi, knowingly or unknowingly created FUD before the hard fork completion when he criticized Cardano for not being able to have DApps with more than one transaction per block. Cardano later dismissed this claim.
However, the team urged its supporters to maintain sensible expectations for the upgrade and cautioned them not to expect a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready DApps available immediately after the upgrade. While Cardano aims to replace or at least rival Ethereum’s DApp dominance, it’s hard to see how the network can make up the year-long deficit in actual developer experience.
ADA buying the rumour and selling the news
The price of its native token ADA was a classic case of “buy the rumour, sell the news.” While ADA surged to an all-time high of above $3 in the runup to the upgrade, it has since retraced and followed the wider market correction pattern. At the time of writing, ADA is trading around $2.10, well short of its all-time high recorded this month. Despite that, Cardano is still trading ahead of rival layer-one blockchains like Solana and Polkadot that are already boasting respectable DApp ecosystems. This indicates that investors still are giving it the benefit of the doubt and betting on a fast ramp-up in developer activity that could breathe life into the Cardano ecosystem.
