For every severed head, Hydra, the sea monster from Greek mythology, grew two new ones. The naming of what is probably the most extensive scaling package at Cardano was not chosen by chance: the layer 2 solution Hydra upgrades the network for future throughput requirements. A first version has now been implemented in the mainnet. This completes an important milestone in the “Basho” scaling phase.
Expand the neck of the bottle
Talks about a “major milestone”. Cardano developer Sebastian Nagel – the long-heralded Hydra scaling pack has poked its first head out on the mainnet. “Better scalability” will accelerate the “adoption” of the network, according to Nagel: “It’s not finished yet, but a very good starting point”.
As a collection of multiple Layer 2 protocols, Hydra is deployed to offload the Cardano mainnet. Similar to the Bitcoin Lightning network, transactions in payment channels – the hydra heads – can be processed parallel to the mainnet. The throughput is increased, transactions are processed faster and cheaper. This should make Cardano more adaptable, for example for decentralized applications (dApps) or staking pools. According to software developer Matthias Benkort Cardano can achieve a throughput of 1,000 transactions per second using Hydra.
Cardano approaches “Voltaire”
The Cardano developers have so far left open when the work on Hydra will be completed. It is one of the last, but also most extensive construction sites of the current scaling phase “Basho”. In the provisionally last development phase “Voltaire”, control over Cardano will then be transferred to the users. This transition is supported by three pillars of governance that allow network participants to help steer Cardano development.
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