The 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap on CoinMarketCap - Cardano has officially completed the Shelley hard fork, starting a new era for a $ 3.6 billion blockchain project.
The Shelley hard fork took place at 9:44 p.m. July 29 (UTC time) without involving a chain split or token exchange, meaning the ADA cryptocurrency will remain the same.
As such Cardano has completed its most anticipated hard fork ever, officially upgrading from the Byron network to Shelley, marking a new beginning for Cardano.
Upgrading to Shelley will have a significant impact on ADA price because of the staking system in the network.
Cardano uses a Proof of Stake (POS) consensus algorithm, which means there are no miners. Users are those who run nodes that maintain the network by staking the ADA. In return, they will benefit from Cardano's reward system and receive ADA.
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The more someone staking, the higher the probability that they will be selected to confirm the next block on the blockchain, the more they will receive a reward of ADA.
Switching to Shelley will help users earn more ADA.
In a recent conversation, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson said the upgrade to Shelley is a positive leap and a premise for future Cardano projects.
“The next era will introduce smart contracts, Cardano will become better than Bitcoin. Next time there will be many new cash flows running on Cardano, thousands of DApps, and countless interesting projects will take place on the platform. Next year will be a year of change and strong growth for Cardano ”
Since the development team confirmed it will upgrade to Shelley for Cardano, the ADA price has seen positive growth over the past few years.