Cardano Introduces Proof-of-Stake With 'Shelley' Hard Fork

It's alive! Cardano has successfully hard forked to its major upgrade, Shelley, which introduced proof-of-stake to the network.

By Sebastian Sinclair

Jul 30, 2020 at 8:14 a.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:38 a.m. UTC

Screen Shot 2020-03-29 at 9.09.42 AM — Mary Shelley wrote the Gothic novel "Frankenstein." Boris Karloff starred in the 1931 movie version. (Wikimedia Commons)

Sebastian Sinclair

It's alive! Cardano's blockchain has undergone a momentous transformation.

Announced Wednesday, the open-source smart-contract platform designed to challenge Ethereum's lead position hard forked from the centralized Byron network into the decentralized Shelley network.
The team behind Cardano's transformation is blockchain research and development startup IOHK.
IOHK's CEO Charles Hoskinson said Cardano has been carefully developed over five years and "hundreds" of assets are expected to be running on the blockchain in a year's time.
According to a press release, Shelley will increase "security and robustness," while enabling more blockchain use cases.
The upgrade will utilize the Ouroboros consensus algorithm – a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol leveraging cryptography, combinatorics and mathematical game theory.
By implementing Shelley on Cardano's mainnet, staking pools will now be able to register on the chain visible to token holders, enabling them to delegate to pools immediately once registered.
The PoS delegation process lets users holding Cardano's native ADA token commit their tokens to a pool for a share of rewards, which the company said will incentivize the network to run "accurately."
Cardano will reach consensus equilibrium once 1,000 stake pools have been established, 485 of which are currently live.
IOHK said Shelley represents a "first step" in a series of enhancements to the network over the coming months with expectations that its Project Catalyst will launch by year's end.
Catalyst will introduce a governance model enabling the Cardano community to cast votes on the direction of the blockchain, including software updates, technical improvements and the long-term future of the network.

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