Cardano’s Testnet And Vasil Hard Fork – What Is Going On?

Cardano’s testnet and Vasil hard fork have been under scrutiny these past couple of days because of yet another Vasil hard fork postponement and a bug in the network’s testnet that was described as “catastrophically broken” by a top Cardano developer.

Cardano’s Testnet And Vasil Hard Fork – What Is Going On?

Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson has continued to deny accusations that the Cardano testnet is “catastrophically damaged,” meaning that the long-delayed Vasil hard fork must be implemented.

Hoskinson expressed his dissatisfaction with some of the videos alleging Cardano’s testnet has a “catastrophic” flaw in a Sunday Twitter discussion, which derives from a Friday thread by Cardano ecosystem developer Adam Dean.

According to the developer, the testnet is “catastrophically damaged” due to an unknown issue in Cardano’s Node v 1.35.2 that generates incompatible forks — which had slipped under the radar of earlier testing.

Cardano launched its revised client software, Cardano Node v1.35.3, on two distinct testnets in response to the flaw.

However, because the majority of operators switched to v1.35.2 to mimic the Vasil hard fork, Dean stated that v1.35.3 is likewise “incompatible and unable of synchronizing” with the original testnet, and the two testnets are “without a block history.”

Hoskinson Speaks

Hoskinson, on the other hand, has stated that the code issue discovered on that node version was fixed in the 1.35.3 release, revealing his dissatisfaction that more testing will result in further hard fork delays:

“We of course could as a community delay the launch of Vasil for a few months to retest code that’s already been tested a dozen times and is already running. Is that worth it to all the DApp developers who have been waiting for this update for almost a year now?”

During an Ask-Me-Anything session on Friday, Hoskinson also mentioned a “unfair narrative” circulating around Cardano and its testnet concerns, which he described as very corrosive and detrimental.

“You can’t conflate a failed testnet with the mainnet because testnets are constructed and destroyed all the time in this industry. That’s their point. […] They are in no way, in any way harm Cardano itself.”

Hoskinson highlighted on Sunday that the realities of anything this huge and intricate is that one can quickly become imprisoned by the things that aren’t operating well and forget the ones that are.

He also stated that the Vasil hard fork will result in a new governance approach and more inclusive frameworks, which will result in better usable code and faster advancements.

The Vasil hard fork has already been postponed many times this year, the most recent being at the end of July owing to testnet difficulties. During the AMA, Hoskinson stated that he believes the Vasil hard fork would ship immediately.

Cardano’s ADA is trading at $0.45 on Monday, down 18.5% in the previous week.