Cardano is 7 years old, a major anniversary through which IOG has used to uncover some of the key milestones achieved to date
Input Output Global (IOG), the research and development team behind Cardano (ADA), is celebrating the seventh anniversary of the Layer-1 blockchain. The firm shared this update on its official X account.
Key Highlights of the Blockchain
Accompanying the post is a short video highlighting key milestones achieved by Cardano since its birth seven years ago. The celebratory post has received exciting comments from members of the Cardano community and blockchain space in general.
Launched in 2017, Cardano is a Layer-1 smart contract blockchain project that relies on its dedicated Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Since its inception, Cardano has processed 95.6 million transactions, indicating rapid usage expansion.
Happy birthday, Cardano.🎉
7 years. Millions of transactions. Over a thousand projects. One unstoppable community.🌍🫶 pic.twitter.com/xsMsOvjCnu
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 27, 2024
The project has a robust staking ecosystem with 1.33 million delegated wallets and 74,700 Plutus Scripts, Cardano’s native smart contract language. Other notable achievements noted by IOG include the publication of 226 research papers and 1,373 projects expanding on the blockchain.
Additionally, Cardano has backed 12 rounds of Catalyst funding, supporting over 1,800 funded ideas. The network’s developer community has built hundreds of Decentralized Applications (dApps) that leverage the blockchain’s capabilities and onboard thousands of users.
Cardano Upgrades Through Hard Forks
Cardano’s seven-year journey is also marked by consistent updates to improve the network. Frequent scaling solutions such as Hydra and Mythril enable the blockchain to exceed its limitations.
Furthermore, Cardano has undergone multiple hard forks over its seven-year history, some of which were highlighted in IOG’s post. A hard fork is a major change to a blockchain that makes the older versions invalid. It is often planned and coordinated, bringing new features or fixes to problems in the chain.
Cardano launched the Shelley hard fork on July 29, 2020. This hard fork introduced staking and decentralization features, transitioning the network from a Byron federated model. Moving on, Cardano launched the Mary Hardfork, which brought native token functionality to the network on March 1, 2021.
Cardano introduced the most recent Chang hard fork upgrade on September 1, 2024. The upgrade is the blockchain’s first step in transitioning to the Voltaire era. As a result, community members can now vote on key developments on the blockchain.
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