The developers behind Cardano (ADA) have recently released a testnet that’ll allow the cryptocurrency’s users to start testing the mechanisms that’ll allow them to stake the cryptocurrency in the upcoming Shelley upgrade.
The move is another step in Cardano’s path towards the long-awaited upgrade, which will see it get rid of cryptocurrency miners, and instead rely on a proof-of-stake (PoS)-based system. It’ll also implement a new consensus protocol called Ouroboros BFT, which will help fend off potential 51% attacks.
According to a website built for the launch of Shelley’s testnet, the initial phase of the release is set to allow users to experiment with staking. The website reads:
The Cardano Shelley testnet provides a way for ada users and developers in our community to experiment with staking and help build up a collection of stake pools on Cardano.
The cryptocurrency’s community, through the Shelley testnet, is able to set up staking pools and test some of the features that’ll be live then the upgrade is finally released. It’s expected to be live later this year, although no specific date has been set.
The staking testnet is, however, being rolled out in a multi-phase process. The Shelley upgrade is set to help decentralize the Cardano network and put it in the community’s hands through a “planned protocol upgrade whereby all parties of the current federated system have agreed to the change.”
The website adds:
Once a certain threshold of stake pools is reached, and as more nodes are being run by the Cardano community, staking will be smoothly rolled out to the mainnet. At this point, we expect Cardano to be 50-100 times more decentralized than other large blockchain networks.
Ada’s Price Rises on Coinbase Listing Rumors
The price of ADA, the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano network, has seen its price rise by over 6% in the last 24-hour period, partly thanks to the Shelley testnet rollout, and partly thanks to growing rumors the cryptocurrency is soon going to be listed on Coinbase.
As CryptoGlobe covered, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange has late last year revealed it was considering adding several digital assets, including EOS, Ada, XRP, and NEO. Some of the cryptoasset it considered, including EOS, 0x (ZRX), Stellar (XLM), and Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) have already been listed.
This has seen some speculate the exchange will list ADA once it believes it’s ready – and the Shelley upgrade may do the trick. This as Shelley will be one of Cardano’s first working products.
