Cardano to Host Two Developer Events Ahead of Vasil Hard Fork

According to Tim Harrison, vice president of community and ecosystem at IOHK, Cardano will be hosting two developer events at the end of May and mid-June. The two developer events are expected to take place in Barcelona, Spain, and Austin, Texas, respectively.

We’re hosting two #Cardano developer events between end of May and mid June, in Barcelona (focus on audit and certification) and Austin, Tx (focus on Plutus plus some Marlowe) respectively. If you are #buildingonCardano and want to get involved, @benohanlon is your man ?

— Tim Harrison (@timbharrison) May 5, 2022

The end of May event will focus on auditing and certification, while the Austin event in mid-June will focus on Plutus, the Cardano-based smart contract platform, and Marlowe, a language designed for developing and executing financial contracts on Cardano.

Cardano and its smart contracts platform, Plutus, are set to undergo significant enhancements to June’s hard fork. The Cardano Vasil hard fork event is slated to occur on June 29.

As shared by IOHK, certain Cardano improvement proposals (CIPs) are coming with June’s hard fork. The upcoming Vasil update is set to introduce four different CIPs, which are CIP-31 (Reference Inputs), CIP-32 (Inline Datums), CIP-33 (Reference Scripts ) and CIP-40 (Collateral Outputs).

CIPs coming with June’s HF:

CIPs (Cardano Improvement Proposals) present new features to the #Cardano network that are key to bettering our blockchain

The upcoming HF introduces:
CIP-31: Reference Inputs
CIP-32: Inline Datums
CIP-33: Reference Scripts
CIP-40: Collateral Outputs pic.twitter.com/bx8vOKDF3H

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) May 2, 2022

IOHK went on to explain further. Reference inputs allow multiple DApps to be able to read from the same datum at the same time, improving concurrency. Inline datums allow data to be stored on-chain rather than just a hash of it, as Cardano currently does. This makes it easier for developers to interact with the script because they do not have to include the data.

Reference scripts aim to help reduce transaction costs. Currently, new scripts need to be included in each transaction. With reference scripts, scripts can be interacted with through a reference, pushing it onto the chain. Interaction with a smart contract thus becomes minimal.

Collateral outputs aim to improve the transaction validation experience. Currently, if a transaction fails validation, the collateral set aside for such scenarios is lost. With collateral outputs, only enough collateral is included to complete the transaction.

The Cardano network has reached several milestones in recent months. According to recent updates, 925 projects are being built on Cardano. Cardano native tokens have also reached 4.5 million, while the number of wallets holding the ADA token recently surpassed the 3.6 million count.