EMURGO – a global blockchain technology company providing custom-built solutions to solve the most complex problems of enterprises and governments, and a founding entity of the Cardano protocol – is proud to work with our Cardano ecosystem partners in welcoming the Mary hard fork as a step towards smart contracts with Goguen.
Mary, a hard fork scheduled to transition the Cardano blockchain protocol from the Shelley decentralization era closer to the Goguen smart contract era, was successfully deployed on February 3, 2021 as a Testnet. The much-awaited update brings native assets to the Cardano test network and allows developers the ability to create custom tokens or migrate existing projects to Cardano. Mary is expected to fully launch on the Cardano Mainnet shortly.
Native Assets Coming to Cardano
The Mary hard fork is a significant update that opens a world of possibilities to developers and businesses looking to build on or migrate to Cardano. By allowing for the creation of tokens on the Cardano blockchain, Cardano’s decentralized blockchain will be transformed into a multi-asset blockchain. This will unleash the full promise of Cardano for a wide range of services and solutions such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), stablecoins, and others, and paves the way for a burgeoning decentralized crypto economy.
What Makes Cardano-based Tokens Different?
User-defined tokens in Cardano are native to the Cardano protocol. Native tokens are not treated any differently to ADA by the Cardano network. Effectively, project tokens launched on Cardano do not need smart contracts built on top of its blockchain to be issued. The logic behind the way these are created and exchanged is already part of the blockchain. This design reduces the possibility of human error.
Cardano’s native tokens and user-defined tokens share almost all of ADA’s properties without the need to create custom logic on top of its blockchain. Additionally, ADA and tokens on Cardano will be fully exchangeable from Day 1, greatly simplifying decentralized exchanges (DEX) and DeFi applications.
Simplicity is the main advantage of native tokens. Their introduction brings a meaningful improvement to the Cardano blockchain ecosystem. DeFi and DApp developers can now use tools designed to work in tandem from the ground up.
What Does This Mean for Cardano ADA?
Right now, the DeFi and DApp ecosystems are being held back by high transaction fees and unsecured smart contracts. As we discussed, native tokens address the second problem by having their core logic be part of the ledger itself. Cardano was designed to be of low cost, and that will not change with tokens launched on the network.
The Mary hard fork and the Goguen era’s upcoming full deployment will bring more third-party developers to Cardano, helping to increase its overall network effects. This migration to the network will generate increased self-sustaining demand for Cardano’s ADA.
ADA will be fully tradable with native tokens from the start, unlocking the power and huge interest worldwide in DeFi applications. In Cardano, transactions between native tokens do not generate high fees, making DeFi applications even more affordable.
The Mary hard fork is another monumental step towards the full maturation of Cardano’s blockchain network from inception to full decentralization to staking to native assets thus far.
This will be the first step to onboarding more exciting and useful projects, companies and enterprises, helping to develop a flourishing Cardano ecosystem with decentralized services and solutions.
As always, please stay up to date with the latest developments at EMURGO and the Cardano ecosystem by following us on Twitter @emurgo_io and feel free to contact us at info@dev.emurgo.io about how we can assist you with building your services on Cardano.
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