Later today, we'll deploy Plutus smart contract capabilities onto the Cardano mainnet via a hard fork combinator (HFC) protocol upgrade event.

The Alonzo upgrade will bring highly anticipated capabilities to Cardano through the integration of Plutus scripts onto the blockchain. These will allow the implementation of smart contracts on Cardano, enabling a host of new use cases…

Cardano is a UTXO-based blockchain, which utilizes a different programming paradigm for decentralized applications (DApps) from other account-based blockchains like Ethereum. The specific flavor Cardano uses is the Extended Unspent Transaction Output (EUTXO) model introduced by the Alonzo upgrade. EUTXO offers greater security allowing for smart contract execution cost…

In our previous blog post, we discussed the deterministic nature of transaction and script validation on the Alonzo ledger, which provides assurance that the outcome of on-chain transaction application and script validation can be accurately predicted locally, before the transaction is ever submitted.

Relying on the guarantees provided by the deterministic design of the Alonzo…

As the Alonzo hard fork brings core Plutus smart contract capability to Cardano, the ledger evolves to meet the growing need for the deployment of decentralized solutions. Cardano ledger design focuses on high assurance, security, and proven formal verification. In alignment with this strategy, it is also important to ensure that transaction processing is deterministic, meaning…

The Cardano network continues to grow exponentially, thanks to the efforts of the stake pool operators (SPOs) who secure and maintain it.

During 2021, we have been delegating a proportion of our corporate ada holdings to help bootstrap our SPOs. In the first two rounds of delegation, IOG’s strategy has focused on supporting geographically distributed pools, mission-driven…