This is How Cardano Switches to Decentralization Securely, Team Explains

On March 31, Cardano will become a fully decentralized platform, this means that over 1,800 community pools will be responsible for block production. 

Since the release of the Shelley update in July 2020, Cardano was slightly criticized by the DeFi community for issuing their own blocks while its SPO (stake pool operator) was being developed, instead of leaving the production to the community. Now the protocol is ready to become a fully decentralized platform.

Cardano’s Launch for Decentralisation 

The team behind the protocol explained per a blog post how Cardano is switching to full decentralization securely. According to the document, Ouroboros, Cardano’s proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol is organized with 120 hour periods (5 days).

These periods are called “epochs” and they update the stake distribution and the leadership of cryptographic nonces. By now, its proof of correctness has proven promising results by showing a steady state. Every five days an unpredictable leadership nonce is selected to ensure unpredictability.

The Ouroboros protocol provides an identified bitstring on the blockchain to subsequent leadership nonces through an “entropy addition mechanism.” Every epoch, voters will be required to have a digitally signed vote from genesis delegators to participate in the process.

The platform will put this mechanism into test in an event called the Public Assertion of Randomness Event. It consists of a joint exercise where stake pool operators, validators, and the entire community will test the mechanism to establish the unique 256-bit random transition, turning Cardano into an official decentralised protocol. 

“The epoch beginning on Monday, April 5 at 21:44:51 UTC (epoch 258) will invoke the entropy addition mechanism: in particular, the previous block hash appearing in the first block on or after Wednesday, April 7 at 15:44:51 UTC (slot 151200 of epoch 258) will determine the transition nonce; this will take place roughly 42 hours after the epoch has begun and thus leave six hours for the genesis delegates to cast their votes.”

Cardano Smart Contracts Will Come Short After

Only two days left to fully provide a network in the hands of its community. Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder, recently revealed the timeline for the deployment of Plutus, a platform that will host the smart contracts of Cardano.

As reported by CryptoPotato, the deployment of smart contracts on the protocol will start somewhere between the end of April and the beginning of May. Developers will be able to create their smart contracts on the Alonzo testnet.