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It would seem that a number of digital interests are waiting for the arrival of Cardano Smart Contracts including those in the eSport gaming arena. This article appeared gFinitySports and was written By Oliver Barsby.
Cardano developers IOHK recently announced its Layer-2 scaling solution, Hydra, but when is its release date?
Following the Cardano Alonzo hard fork, scaling is fast becoming vital to the Cardano network as it seeks to implement aspects of DeFi such as smart contracts.
This is where the Hydra L2 solution comes in.
IOHK has not set an official release date – or release period for Cardano Hydra L2. However, that doesn’t mean we’re completely in the dark.
As stated in the initial Hydra announcement, IOHK Software Engineering Lead Sebastian Nagel said:
In the short term, we will keep developing the hydra-node and the Hydra Head protocol until it becomes a solid and stable foundation for the community (and us!) to build real-world applications.
In the medium term, say 6-12 months, progress will greatly depend on the results of our research and experimentation, plus feedback from the developer community.
With “6-12 months” being the medium term for Hydra, it may not be until late-2022, or even 2023, until we see the deployment of Cardano Hydra. This may put Hydra’s launch as closer to the Cardano Basho era, which seeks to improve Cardano scaling.
Cardano’s development approach in the past has adopted a rigorous, peer-reviewed methodology. With the same methods used for Hydra, it could still be a while before the L2 integrates with Cardano’s Layer-1.
However, we’ll likely see more of Hydra pretty soon.
IOHK confirmed it will talk more about Hydra at the Cardano Summit 2021, set to begin on September 25. Here, IOHK will discuss Hydra’s “progress to date, and goals for the future”, meaning we may get some updates to the Cardano Roadmap that include Hydra dates
OHK says it will have a developer preview for a hydra-node available ahead of the Cardano Summit. Here, it will allowing a small number of users to make transactions via a Hydra Head. This proof-of-concept, and any other future updates or prototypes, will be available to view via the GitHub repository.
Of course, all the information we have on Hydra is subject to change. We’ll keep this page updated as any news comes out.
What Is Cardano Hydra?
As a Layer-2 system, Hydra will seek to scale the wider Cardano blockchain by reducing latency and increasing the throughput, or transactions per second (TPS).
IOHK states Hydra can reach confirmation times of under one second, compared to the Cardano mainnet latency of 20 seconds.
As the Cardano network continues to grow, with more smart contracts and DApps launching on the blockchain, Hydra will hope to ensure transaction costs remain low.
