Cardano Updates: Conway, Smart Contracts, Scaling, Catalysts, and More

Input Output Global (IOG), the development and research arm of the Cardano network, recently published a new blog post highlighting important developments that took place in the ecosystem this week.

Conway Era Upgrade
According to the report, the development team responsible for performance and tracing carefully examined the benchmarks from the Conway era. This led to the integration of delegate representations (DReps), tracking DRep data, and enhanced error reporting mechanisms within tx-generator.

Additionally, the tracing and performance teams have expanded the functionality of node metrics, such as adding block generator and build information. The team also completed a benchmark analysis focused on UTXO scaling scenarios.

IOG noted that the Ledger team has been actively engaged in development activities over the past two weeks, mainly focusing on the Conway era. Some of the key functions implemented during the Conway era included implementing the bootstrap phase and transitioning governance actions.

Additionally, the team introduced additional functionality for testing and made significant improvements to the continuous integration (CI) setup.

Smart Contracts, Scaling, Catalyst, and Education Updates
Notably, Cardano’s smart contract functionality also received an update this week. In particular, the Plutus team improved the efficiency of UPCL programs by enhancing the implementation of fixed-point operators.

The Hydra team also got into action this week. According to the report, the team identified and refactored the differences in the network protocol versions and integrated the relevant changes into the /commit endpoint. It also makes some minor workflow fixes to the protocol.

The report provides an update on the progress of Cardano’s Catalyst Fund 12, noting that the project is currently underway. Interested participants from all over the world have been submitting their proposals to ensure they submit before the deadline on May 13 at 11am (UTC).

Finally, this week the Education team also prepared content for the launch of the DRep Pioneer program. So far, the team has released Lesson 19 of Haskell Bootcamp. The team in charge of the education unit is also preparing content for mastering Cardano.

Cardano Latest Metrics
Meanwhile, IOG also provided updates on the latest metrics for Cardano. The number of projects launched on the Cardano network has grown to 170. It is worth mentioning that this number was around 157 in January. This means that in less than four months, 13 new projects have joined the Cardano network.

Additionally, the number of projects built on Cardano increased by 2.95% during the same time frame, from 1,319 to 1,358. Likewise, Cardano’s native token has gained 5.5% since January. During this time, the number of Cardano’s native tokens increased from 9.45 million to 9.95 million.

The total number of transactions processed by Cardano also saw a significant increase, from 83.4 million to 90.3 million.

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