On Friday, the Cardano token’s price jumped over the $2 mark nearing the asset’s all-time high that happened some three months ago. Cardano’s price spike came directly from a video announcement by Nigel Hemsley of Cardano, where he mentioned that the Cardano network would be upgraded on September 12, 2021. The much anticipated “Alonzo Purple” upgrade is intended to improve the Cardano project with fully functional, more advanced, and smart contract solutions.
Alonzo upgrade slated for September 12
Nigel Hemsley put forward Cardano’s intentions to upgrade the network in the nearest future, as he revealed the plans and everything involved with launching the upgrade on September 12. Taking to their Twitter page, Input Output (IOHK) also confirmed that the upgrade will happen on the same date mentioned in the announcement video. The “Alonzo” upgrade is named after the computer scientist and mathematician Alonzo Church. Alonzo’s use has been slowly and gradually upgraded using colored-coded stages, with the final stage being purple. Hence, the “Alonzo Purple” tag.
IOHK said it has all begun and that they’re targeting September 12, 2021, for the ‘Alonzo’ upgrade, which will undoubtedly bring smart contracts to Cardano through a hard fork combinator (HFK) event. They further mentioned how this will usher in a new era of smart contracts, decentralized finance, and many more for Cardano (ADA).
Smart contracts and decentralized finance are definitely the biggest features that would come from Alonzo, but that’s not all. It will also bolster other concepts like tokenisation and non-fungible token ideas. Also, it has been said that it will now be possible to leverage Ethereum’s ERC20 tokens on the Cardano chain.
For so long now, Cardano has been in critics books with some skeptics even betting on whether or not, Cardano network will support smart contracts by October 1, 2021. The Poly Market bet also used to show that odds were against the project being actualised. Now however, 87% odds say Cardano will succeed with just 13% saying it won’t.
ADA Gains Over 16% right after announcement
As at the time of writing this report, ADA’s largest trading pair is with tether (USDT) as the stablecoin captures 57% of cardano trades on Friday. Bitcoin (BTC) commands around 11.4% of ADA swaps, followed by USD (8.48%), BUSD (5.27%), KRW (4.86%), and EUR (3.91%). Ethereum (ETH) has around 3.48% of the swaps traded with ADA today as well.
