Cardano Enters Chang Hard Fork Era With Node 9.1.0 Upgrade

Cardano has finally inched closer to the Chang Hard Fork upgrade era with the introduction of Node 9.1.0.

The Cardano Chang Hard Fork

On X, Intersect, a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem, announced tge launch of Node 9.1.0. It described the upgrade as the final version to bring on-chain decision-making to Cardano. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also lent his voice to the announcement, reiterating that it marks the end of the line. In other words, Node 9.1.0 is that final phase that ushers in the Chang Hard Fork upgrade.

This is it. End of the line, node 9.1 is Voltaire. Happy upgrading SPOs. Welcome to Chang https://t.co/Z3Fy3uHXER

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 25, 2024

On GitHub, Intersect noted that Cardano Node 9.1.0 includes features necessary to cross the much-anticipated Chang upgrade. There is not so much difference between Node 9.0.0 and the latest Node 9.1.0. The main distinction between both systems is the existence of a Conway genesis file. For context, the Node 9.1.0 requires this file at startup while it is optional for the previous version. The Conway genesis file is crucial to crossing the Chang Hard Fork upgrade.

Cardano began to talk about its transformative journey with the Chang Hard Fork upgrade a few months back. Together with Plutus V3, Chang upgrade is geared towards advancing Cardano’s infrastructure and capabilities and initially scheduled for launch in the first half of 2024. By the beginning of June, Hoskinson said the much-awaited Chang Hard Fork upgrade is expected to be finalized in the same month. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

ADA Price and Future PoS Competition

The price of ADA stands to benefit immensely from this upgrade moving forward. Usually, such milestones upgrades have ripple effect on tojen price and this is expected to happen with ADA.

A core example is the Alonzo hard fork of 2021 which spurred a remarkable 130% surge in ADA’s price from $1.35 to $3.10 in just a month. Once again, this impressive performance underscores the potential impact of major network upgrades on Cardano’s market value.

At the time of this writing, ADA has a market price of $0.3845 after losing 6.88% of its previous level.  The expectation is that the crypto breach the upper boundary of the wedge pattern and head to a rally.