This article talks about what we can expect to see in Cardano’s upcoming February 2022 software release.

According to a blog post (published on February 28) by Input Output (also known as “IOHK” or “IOG”), the blockchain technology firm responsible for Cardano’s research and development, there will be three major code drops, the first of which is expected this month (the other two are expected around June and October).

Here are the enhancements that IOG says are coming in the next hard fork combinator (HFC) event:

  • “Ability to create transactions conforming to the Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL) using native tools CLI that ship with the node, rather than requiring third-party tools.“
  • “Multi-signature of transactions in incremental stages.“
  • “New CLI tool for SPOs to check the leadership schedule.“
  • “CLI tool for local mempool inspection.“
  • “CLI tool to estimate script cost.“

IOG went on to say that throughout this year there will be various scaling-focused enhancements, such as “pipelining, new Plutus CIPs, UTXO on-disk storage and Hydra.” These features — “in combination with parameter adjustments” — should “enhance Cardano’s throughput and optimize the system to accommodate an increasing range of decentralized finance (DeFi) apps, smart contracts, and DEXs.” 

As for EMURGO, which is the commercial arm of Cardano, on February 25, it published a blog post that announced “an investment in Fourier Labs, a Cardano interoperability solutions provider, through its investment subsidiary EMURGO Ventures, which is “one of EMURGO’s main investment subsidiaries managing its $100 million Cardano ecosystem investment vehicle launched last quarter.”

EMURGO went on to say that this investment would “enable Fourier Labs to raise strategic capital to build Fourier Protocol, which is an interoperable, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible solution on Cardano to accelerate the migration of EVM-based projects into the Cardano ecosystem and further boost adoption of Cardano’s Plutus-based applications that lack an interoperable scaling solution.”

This will enable “both Cardano’s Plutus-based smart contracts and EVM Solidity-based smart contracts to be fully deployed on Cardano, thereby strengthening decentralized application (dApp) and user adoption of the Cardano ecosystem through Cardano’s inherent lower transaction fees, higher scalability, and security.”

EMURGO Ventures CEO Ken Kodama had this to say:

“Fourier Labs has a strong team with a value-driven proposal for driving dApp and user adoption of Cardano’s green, third-generation blockchain by making it simpler for established projects to migrate to Cardano and new ones to start building on Cardano. EMURGO Ventures firmly supports the potential capabilities of Fourier Labs to deliver valuable utility to the Cardano ecosystem through their innovative solutions.“

And Fourier Project Lead Tan Zhao stated:

“The Fourier team is thrilled to partner with EMURGO Ventures and Cardano Foundation to implement a Haskell-programmed, high performance, native EVM on Plutus of Cardano, the first industry solution to process account-based transactions on an Extended Unspent Transaction Output (eUTXO) ledger. This state-of-the-art innovation would help scale the Cardano network and ecosystem by providing a developer friendly software environment and sleek dApp user experience.“

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