On September 22nd, 2022, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) announced the successful implementation of the Vasil hard fork over the Cardano network. IOHK is the parent company of the Cardano blockchain network founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood.
Last year, in September, a potential Ethereum rival blockchain network went through the Alonzo hard fork. The fork made Cardano blockchain smart contracts compatible, making it stand along with other prominent players within the blockchain space.
With Alonzo’s upgrade, the network got the capabilities of the smart contract which later demanded scalability, security, and speed. To resolve these issues, Cardano developers brought the notion of another hard fork—the Vasil upgrade. The upgrade successfully took place recently.
Vasil Upgrade to Enhance Cardano ecosystem
The Vasil upgrade is focused primarily on enhancing the transaction speed over the platform, improving scalability to facilitate easier development of decentralized applications, making the network more secure, etc. Overall the motive was to increase the usability of Cardano.
Following the Vasil hard fork, three important Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs)—CIP-31, CIP-32 and CIP-33—will be subjected to launch. All these CIPs will introduce specific features to the network: CIP-31 will introduce seamless creation of input and output, CIP-32 will work to improve decentralization and CIP-33 will make the transaction fees relatively lighter. Additionally, CIP-40 will also be there to improve block transmission.
Apart from these major updates, the hard fork will also improve the smart contract programming language of Cardano—Plutus. Some initiative toward security will also be taken by forming an easier interface with the UTXO model of Cardano.
The hard fork is fundamentally an upgrade when the blockchain network either fixes some issues or adds several features. The fork makes the network into two separate entities—one to continuously focus on existing features and the new one to act as the upgraded version with added specifications.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/28/key-highlights-of-specifications-following-vasil-hard-fork-on-cardano/