Cardano Increases Block Size To Enhance Dapp Performance

Cardano developers have locked in a proposal to raise the network’s block size by 8kb, from 80kb to 88kb, in an effort to boost throughput and decentralized application (Dapps) performance.

On Monday, the 25th of April at UTC 20:20:00, the upgrade will go into effect.

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) said in a thread that the upgrade was part of a series of planned network optimizations they’re making to continue scaling Cardano throughout this year.

“Once deployed, we shall monitor network performance and behavior closely over at least one epoch (5 days) to determine the next increment. Cardano has seen phenomenal growth in recent months, with performance improvements to match…

With a huge recent rise in transaction volume – and significant further growth expected – we’ll be continuing to very carefully monitor and steadily optimize the Cardano network as we grow.”

For reference, the current block limit on Bitcoin is 1 MB, or 1024 KB, but Bitcoin’s blocks take ten minutes to form whereas Cardano generates blocks every two seconds.

While ADA, Cardano’s native token, has been fairly uneventful for the last year or so, struggling alongside the broader crypto industry, its ecosystem has started to blossom.

Cardano’s blockchain now hosts hundreds of different Dapps, including decentralized exchanges (DEXs), wallets, metaverses, social platforms, games, NFT services, payment systems, and more.

Branding Cardano as the chain that plays the long game with extensive studies and academic research, founder Charles Hoskinson has been outspoken on his goals. While some crypto investors have criticized Cardano’s relatively low adoption rate compared to other smart contract platforms, a new narrative could be emerging if things continue to go smoothly.

“Remember when I predicted thousands of assets and DApps on Cardano? Well I was wrong, there are now millions of native assets issued and DApps are now in the hundreds,” Hoskinson said last month.

According to Morgan Schofield, head of ecosystem growth at IOHK, as of late March there were over 4 million NFTs and over 50,000 distinct minting policies.

ADA is trading at $0.88, 71% away from its all-time highs.