The highly anticipated smart contract upgrade for Cardano has finally been deployed, though the price of its native ADA token has dumped today.
InputOutputHK, the company behind Cardano, posted an update in the early hours of Sept 13 reporting that the Alonzo upgrade has been successfully deployed.
The stated “The Alonzo upgrade is an epochal moment in the birth of a new ecosystem,” in a blog post celebrating the event on Sept 12.
The upgrade introduces smart contract capabilities through the Plutus language on the Cardano blockchain. IOHK stated that this is just the beginning of what it has been trying to achieve.
“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.”
Cardano playing catch-up
While it is a mighty achievement for the network, it is still largely operating in the shadows of Ethereum which is the industry standard for smart contracts and dApps despite the high cost of using it.
Cardano is angling to become a powerhouse in decentralized finance with the technology upgrade. “By allowing Plutus scripts to be written and executed on-chain, we’ll have the backbone for a new decentralized application platform, enabling numerous dApp and decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases,” it stated.
It added that 150 projects are developing concepts on Cardano’s Project Catalyst innovation program, and around 800 projects have applied for $4 million worth of funding.
There was a caveat though as Cardano warned about early issues and malfunctioning dApps that are still largely experimental. “Inevitably too, we can expect bad actors looking to take advantage via hacks, exploits, and the likes,” it added.
Last month Weiss Crypto made some scathing comments over Cardano’s regulatory compliance, something it alleged could result in the network becoming more centralized.
ADA tanks 12%
The buildup to the launch has given ADA a massive boost, propelling the token to third place in the market capitalization charts with an all-time high of just over $3 earlier this month.
Now that Alonzo is live, the FOMO has waned and ADA has taken a massive hit over the past day or so. At the time of writing, ADA had tanked 12% from Sunday’s high of $2.77 to $2.44 according to CoinGecko.
Holders of the token were already expressing disdain at the price action but a pullback after such a large bull run is to be expected. ADA is currently down 21% from its all-time high which is much better than most other high cap crypto assets.