Cardano Step Closer to Smart Contracts with Release of Alonzo Blue 2.0
Cardano developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) recently announced that the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has reached an important milestone which is the beginning of Cardano’s smart contract era.
IOHK tweeted to its 130,800 followers that it has successfully released the Alonzo Blue 2.0 to the testnet.
LET'S GO: We are happy to share that we have just released a brand new version of the #Cardano node, version, #AlonzoBlue 2.0 to the testnet.
The release comes with key updates that would serve as building blocks of Cardano’s smart contract development, the company says.
“It is still early code… This release brings with it the important CLI (command line interface) upgrade, providing the foundations to build all varieties of smart contract applications further down the line.
Smart transactions enable a user to associate transaction meta-data on-chain and store executable contract data. This opens up the smart contracts era on Cardano for our first SPOs (stake pool operators) and Pioneers to start sending and testing simple smart transactions to the ledger via the node.
Alonzo Blue SPOs now have 24 hours to update their nodes before running their first test scripts tomorrow.”
Alonzo Blue is the first of three development stages building towards the launch of Cardano’s smart contract abilities. The second stage is Alonzo White, and the third is Alonzo Purple. IOHK has previously laid out a 90-day roadmap that outlines the progression of Cardano’s much-awaited functionality.
“It’s a 30-60-90-day plan. What this actually means is that you start off with Blue. It’s a little smaller, more tight-knit. We start off with the basic functionality, bring a few pioneers, few SPOs on and we start rolling then and there. We move on to [Alonzo] White where we now cast a little bit wider net and we bring in more partners and now you start running more performance benchmarks and things of that nature. The White rolls into Purple which is now fully public. We’re talking about every pioneer. We’re talking about most SPOs, if not all SPOs. We’re talking about exchanges.
At this stage, we’re really ready to go… Once you get to the Purple stage, we are pretty much close to the hardfork combinator event within that 30-60-90-day window from start to Blue, ending with Purple.”
