The Input Output HK team today detailed how the implementation of the latest Cardano hard fork, Alonzo, will make for an advanced network for businesses and developers alongside a new added support for smart contracts.
Explaining further about the upgrade, software engineering lead at IOHK, Michael Peyton Jones wrote in a new blog post that the hard fork has been named after Alonzo Church (1903-1995), a US-based mathematician and logician who worked on the foundations of theoretical computer science.
According to Peyton Jones, the network will utilize the hard fork “combinator technology,” to implement Alonzo in the network. Additionally, the engineer revealed that the upgrade will add support for “smart contracts and digital agreements to Cardano” in four months’ time within this year. He further wrote:
It will open up opportunities for businesses and developers, by allowing the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) for decentralized finance (DeFi).
In March this year, the network implemented the Mary upgrade, which allowed for the creation of unique tokens for transactions on the Cardano blockchain. However, alongside the introduction of “transaction metadata,” native token creation, among other features, the Cardano ecosystem aims to primarily establish a foundation for smart contract support.
Additionally, in order to address “business needs,” Alonzo will allow developers to work with “collectibles, crowdfunding, or auctions.”
Earlier, CEO of IOHK Charles Hoskinson had said that Cardano was planning to give importance to the NFT marketplace. At the time, he revealed that the upgrade would not only bring smart contracts to the Cardano network but the team would focus on NFTs as well.
The Cardano team has reportedly negotiated with top NFT-focused platforms, with Hoskinson predicting that in the future, these projects that are typically based on the Ethereum network will move to the Cardano ecosystem.
