Cardano, the layer-1 blockchain launched in 2017 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, activated its highly anticipated “Plomin” upgrade on Wednesday, ushering in the ecosystem’s long-awaited move towards a decentralized governance system.
With the Plomin upgrade now live, ADA token holders will be able to shape Cardano’s future, including voting on treasury measures and hard forks.
Plomin comes just four months after Cardano implemented the “Chang” hard fork, which put in place many of the mechanisms that were set into motion on Wednesday. (Hard forks are major updates made to a chain that render older versions of that blockchain as obsolete).
The most significant change introduced by Plomin is the full implementation of Delegate Representatives (dReps), who will now vote on governance issues on behalf of ADA token holders. Previously, governance changes and the responsibility for triggering chain upgrades rested solely with Cardano’s three founding entities: the Cardano Foundation, Input Output Global (IOHK), and Emurgo. Moving forward, the keys they held and those responsibilities will be entrusted to newly established Cardano governance groups.
In the lead-up to the Plomin activation, Stake Pool Operators were required to upgrade their nodes and approve the upgrade with a 51% consensus vote. As of this week, approximately 85% of nodes had updated to the new version, allowing the network to proceed with the planned changes.
Looking ahead, the Cardano community is eager to address a series of new initiatives. “In short, we want to make Cardano faster, we want to add some privacy-preserving features, and we want to enhance utilities for developers,” stated Giorgio Zinetti, CTO of the Cardano Foundation, in a recent interview with CoinDesk. “So the development will be determined by community feedback and needs.”
Read more about the previous hard fork: Cardano’s Chang Hard Fork Goes Live, Introducing On-Chain Governance
