Charles Hoskinson to Cardano SPOs: Let’s get Vasil done

Cardano (ADA/USD) founder Charles Hoskinson has lamented the state of affairs around the crucial Vasil hard fork as seen over the past few days.

After numerous headlines across the crypto industry on the upgrade being ‘catastrophically broken”, a frustrated Hoskinson looked to dispel the claims, noting that Cardano’s testnet wasn’t broken and that Vasil was ‘ready to ship’.

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Hoskinson: Cardano’s testnet not  ‘catastrophically broken?’

Last Friday, a developer in the Cardano ecosystem (also a former SPO) , Adam Dean, highlighted that there was a bug issue with the Cardano testnet. In his Twitter thread,  he termed the testnet as “catastrophically broken,” and in a version previously seen as “tested and ready.”

He was referencing the Cardano Node v 1.35.2, which he notes had a bug identified only because “operators rushed to upgrade on mainnet… to simulate a Vasil HFC event there.” As a result, 1.35.3 that was being tested was “incompatible and incapable of syncing” with the main chain and leading to incompatible forks.

Hoskinson, noting his frustration at what had happened via a Twitter thread and livestream session, said that the developer’s comments and the videos that highlighted the bug issues had spun into something totally different and which wasn’t particularly helpful to the Cardano ecosystem. Particularly, with interviews and videos coming out after a call involving more than 300 SPOs had settled on the way forward.

In his view, there was a “very subtle” and strange bug with an implementation in the v 1.35.3. However, that doesn’t mean the testnet was “catastrophically broken.” In fact, 1.35.3 has been “tested for months” and the said coding issue removed.

It’s bizarre and alarmist seeing these videos floating around that things are being rushed with 1.35.3. The code in question has been thoroughly tested for months by everyone including SPOs. The code that was an issue on the testnet has been removed.”

‘A post mortem’ will help fix issues

Hoskinson says that the community can elect to delay the Vasil upgrade “to retest code that’s already been tested a dozen times and is already running.” If that’s the path, then the hard fork would be off for another few months, adding to the more than a year dApps developers have waited for the update.

But Vasil comes with a lot that’s beneficial to the Cardano ecosystem, including new governance processes, more useful code, and faster development, he added. And on the controversy surrounding the bug and the push for a retest – versus going forth with a launch – he noted:

Local events like these are teachable moments that give us a chance to change and grow. Let’s get Vasil done together and then let’s move on to higher ground and fix some of the original sins of the project so Cardano can also grow to its next level.”

To that end, he believes “an extensive post mortem,” including via multiple improvement proposals, should bring different factions together for the good of Cardano.