Cardano Prepares For Latest Plutus Smart Contracts Upgrade

Cardano prepares for the latest Plutus upgrade that will usher in smart contract capabilities as we are reading more in our latest ADA news.

Cardano released more details on Plutus which is the native programming language that will be used to write smart contracts after the new major upgrade Alonzo. In a blog post, IOHK commented that Cardano prepares for the latest Plutus smart contract upgrade and said that the smart contracts consist of parts that run on-chain and parts that run on the user’s machine off-chain.

It also added that both parts are actually written in the Haskell programming language but then are compiled by Plutus which provides the framework for smart contracts on Cardano. Just like Bitcoin, Cardano uses the UTXO model where the inputs are unspent outputs from past transactions. The network expanded upon this to employ the extended UTXO model which offers plenty of advantages over other accounting models.

Without dabbling into technicalities the EUTXO model essentially allows the validity of transactions to be checked off-chain before the transactions that are sent to the blockchain. This is a contrast to the ETH Layer 1 which processes transactions all on-chain which the transaction execution costs could be determined off-chain before transmissions that is another unique feature.

Iutus Core will be eventually used to define the parameters of the transactions and compile the code developed for smart contracts. The Plutus Application Framework will provide easier access to services and the applications that are running on the network with full web browser interoperability:

 “Applications written on top of the PAF automatically provide an HTTP and WebSocket interface that can be used to interact with the application from the web browser.”

Cardano launched the native tokens during the Mary upgrade to allow users to create uniquely defined tokens that can carry out transactions with them. Plutus will expand on the current token capabilities and will improve minting policies that will be beneficial for the NFTs that can need some time locks. Plutus is a part of the Alonzo Upgrade which is the major stage for the Cardano roadmap which introduces smart contracts with an ability to build dapps. In an earlier blog post, the team hinted at a timeline:

 “May and June will be a time for quality assurance and testing with users, which will be followed by a feature freeze lasting for four weeks. This will provide crypto exchanges and wallets with the time to upgrade and prepare for the Alonzo protocol update. We expect the Alonzo upgrade (hard fork) to happen in late summer.”