Cardano Weekly Report: Updates to the Plutus Interpreter, Fixes For Hardware Wallet Support, and More

Key takeaways

• Cardano’s weekly development report has revealed the latest improvements being made to the network infrastructure
• A new upgrade to Cardano nodes, fixes for hardware wallet support, and Mithril beta being launched on mainnet are among the week’s milestones
• The Plutus programming language continues to evolve as it approaches v.3 release date

Cardano has released its weekly development report to dive deeper into the improvements that have been made to the network in the past seven days. Among the key improvements were a new update to Cardano nodes in version 8.1.2, optimized hardware wallet functionality, and the Mithril beta protocol going live on the Cardano mainnet.

Node upgrade v.8.1.2 

The latest upgrade to Cardano nodes took place this week, which brought improvements to the Plutus interpreter. Plutus is the programming language used for Cardano smart contracts and the recent node update is expected to optimize communications between the consensus layer and the application layer of the Cardano network.

Refining the codebase for Cardano hardware wallets and improving Trezor support

The Cardano hardware wallet codebase has been refactored to improve its readability at its most complex points. The team has also simplified wallet interactions with dApps in the ecosystem by introducing a semi-automatic collateral system.

The Cardano team has also continued to improve native ecosystem support for Trezor hardware wallets.

Plutus and Marconi sidechain development

Error reports for Plutus smart contracts have been improved for Marconi, which is a Cardano upgrade that unlocks custom sidechains. The team also improved Plutus smart contracts’ compatibility with Ethereum by adding more functions ahead of the version 3 release.

Mithril beta live on mainnet

The beta protocol for Mithril, which is a lite version of the Cardano blockchain that retains the network’s full security features, has now been launched on the Cardano mainnet.

Mithril uses a stake-based signature scheme that makes data synchronization faster and more efficient. The team is monitoring Mithril beta’s performance and has started to work on a stress test tool for the protocol.
 

Is Cardano a good investment?

Cardano (ADA) is a third-generation blockchain technology that was developed by a team of experts in cryptography and computer science. It was the first blockchain to be developed using peer-reviewed academic research, and one of the earliest examples of a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism being used to solve the Byzantine General’s problem.

Cardano can support the development of custom dApps using a purpose-built programming language known as Plutus. The network’s PoS protocol enables it to validate transactions with reduced energy expenditure when compared with proof-of-work blockchains, while also enabling greater scalability via higher transaction throughput and faster transaction speeds.

Check out the Cardano price prediction for 2040 and 2050 to find out whether Cardano is likely to be a good long-term investment.

ADA price prediction

The current price of ADA is $0.3079 after falling over 18% from its monthly high in July. Over the coming 30-day period, the CoinCodex price prediction algorithm forecasts a 4.98% increase for ADA, taking the price to $0.3212 by the beginning of September.