Cardano prepares for Voltaire era with node 9.0 launch

Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson has indicated that Cardano Node’s 9.0 release is likely to take place in June. This launch prepares Cardano for the Chang hard fork which will mark the beginning of the Voltaire Age.

“It looks like June will be the month that Cardano Node will reach 9.0. This means that Cardano is Chang fork ready and waiting for 70 percent of the SPOs to install the new node. Then, a hard fork can occur pushing Cardano into the Age of Voltaire,” Hoskinson noted in a recent post on X.

The Chang hard fork is expected to be one of the most significant milestones in Cardano’s roadmap as it will move the blockchain to a new era of decentralized governance.

“Cardano will be a decentralized civilization spanning the entire world with millions of residents. We’ll have the most advanced blockchain governance system, annual budgets, a treasury, and the wisdom of our entire community to guide us,” Hoskinson expressed his confidence.

The Voltaire Age will introduce a governance system that allows the community to participate in decision-making processes.

Cardano gears toward the Voltaire era – Source: Cardano Roadmap

The first part of this era will implement governance features as per CIP 1694, setting the stage for decentralized voting. The second part will advance these features, enabling proxy participation and treasury withdrawals, thereby granting the community the ability to propose and fund projects within the Cardano ecosystem.

In the lead-up to the Chang hard fork, Cardano launched node version 8.9.2, which resolves a critical issue in the peer-sharing networking feature, thereby strengthening the platform’s peer-to-peer networking capabilities.

Cardano’s native token, ADA, could benefit from the upcoming major upgrade. At press time, ADA is trading at $0.441 and is ranked among the top ten crypto assets by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko’s data .