Hard fork on mainnet: Cardano implements OBFT

Source: Immersion Imagery - Shutterstock

• The Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance (OBFT) hard fork will be activated as scheduled tomorrow, February 20 on the Cardano Byron mainnet.
• The hard fork is the first step in moving the Proof of Stake protocol from the Byron phase to the Shelley phase.

Cardano’s OBFT hard fork, which was announced a few weeks ago for February 20, will take place as planned on February 20, as Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) announced in a video via Twitter. Ouroboros BFT (Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance) hard fork is the first step in moving Cardano‘s Proof of Stake protocol, also known as “Ouroboros”, from the Byron phase to the Shelley phase. For this purpose the hard fork will upgrade the Byron mainnet from Ouroboros Classic to Ouroboros BFT.

The protocol upgrade is an important step towards the Shelley era in the Mainnet, as it will build a bridge between Ouroboros Classic, which is currently used in the Byron mainnet, and Ouroboros Genesis, which will underlie the Shelley era.

As Tim Harrison of IOHK noted in the video, the upgrade has been successfully tested on the Byron test network, which means it is now time for the IOHK development team to deploy it on the Byron mainnet. This will take place on February 20th, at epoch 176. ADA owners do not have to do anything due to the hard fork, as Harrison describes:

There’s no reason to be concerned, because the update will happen behind the scenes, and there’ll be no change to the coin, or exchange account, your wallet, et cetera. […]

So while technically this update can be referred to as a hard fork, this is a planned and managed protocol update, and we’ve been working closely with our exchange partners over the past few months to prepare for this and make things go smoothly.

Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK, had already stated in an AMA a few days ago that the update proposal was released to the network five days before the planned activation. According to the design of the network, it takes this fixed time until the update is accepted in the network. With the OBFT hard fork, all nodes are requested to switch to the new Cardano client.

The Haskell implementation is the result of 18 months of development and consists of two main components: the Cardano Node and the Cardano Explorer backend as well as a new Web API. The new technologies are designed to ensure that Cardano’s architecture is scalable, agile and interoperable. Among other things, the code base was changed from a monolithic to a modular node.

As part of the continuing improvements to Cardano, on the 20th of February, we'll be updating Ouroboros on the Byron mainnet to Ouroboros BFT. ADA holders don't need to do anything as part of this process. Find out more about this update here: https://t.co/PHxC1hdxYL

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) February 19, 2020

IOHK releases Daedalus wallet v2.1.0 for the SIT

Also today IOHK released a new update of the Daedalus wallet for the Shelley Incentivized Testnet (SIT). According to the announcement, IOHK has worked on network and backend integrations and added new features to the user interface, as well as adding recovery capability for hardware wallets and the Yoroi wallet.

Fresh out now, a new #Daedalus wallet for the #Shelley Incentivized Testnet. We've worked on network & backend integrations + added fresh UI features & hardware/Yoroi wallet restoration. Oh, and some 'experimental' features too. Give it a test drive… https://t.co/yl0e7XXS8f pic.twitter.com/BYAvSZSwtx

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) February 18, 2020

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