Since the introduction of smart contracts, Cardano has made significant changes to its Blockchain. This increased usage meant that the network needed to be able to scale to meet this demand. There have been many improvements made to the network since September’s launch. The most recent is an increase in block size.
Cardano Blocks Increased
Cardano recently announced they are increasing the block size to 12.5% in order to accommodate the expected increase in traffic. With the 8KB increase, total block size is now 72KB. This will enable more transactions to fit in one block. This will result in more transactions being processed per second. It also allows for greater data throughput. Users have greater capacities.
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Remember that Cardano was only able to average 10,000 transactions per day a year back. A year later, Cardano’s average daily transaction rate was 10,000. This has increased to over 200,000, and it is still climbing. Although a 12.5% increase in the block size might not appear significant by an average margin, it is necessary to account for increased usage.
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A second factor driving the block size increase is anticipation of DApps being launched soon on the blockchain. Cardano has already been able to create smart contracts, so it’s only a matter time before developers start deploying their apps. The network has been able to increase block sizes due to the anticipated growth in traffic.
Plutus script Memory Receives a Boost
Not only did block size get a boost, but so was other aspects. Cardano also increased Plutus Script memory units per transaction. The Plutus script transaction memory units have increased by 12.5% to 11.25 million.
John Woods from Cardano Architecture explained the reasons for this update in his blog. This will assist developers as they deploy and test their DApps via Cardano.
“An increase in Plutus memory limits means that they can develop more sophisticated Plutus scripts, or that existing scripts will be able to process more data items, increase concurrency, or otherwise expand their capabilities.”
Woods points out that this is just one of a number of improvements that will be made to improve the real-world abilities of Plutus scripts.
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Transactions that affect block size or Plutus memory units will take time to implement. Cardano has adopted a ‘slow and steady’ mechanism going forward with the changes. Although it may appear that this is too slow for some people, the 12.5% increase indicates that the developer has not been rushing in making changes that would negatively affect the network.
“It’s not just about creating more complex scripts. It’s also about putting more data through,” the blog post read.
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