Cardano informs in the latest status update about the first tests of the fully decentralized Shelley network. According to the report, it was a test of CLI tools so that it was possible to create blocks of genesis and run nodes in Praos. The team has already operating nodes and creating blocks for several hours in three regions of the world, but no transactions have yet been submitted for this test.
Cardano also states:
“Elsewhere, the team added new annotated decoders in the Shelley ledger for blocks, block headers, and transactions. They also added stake pool relays and made the active slot coefficient a global constant rather than a protocol parameter.”
“The team also added the cryptographic algorithms used in the implementation to the specification this week, as well as fixing the last of the issues with heap exhaustion in the property tests. Finally, one of the transition rules was reworked slightly due to problems during integration, and the associated pull request is currently going through the CI tests.”
Cardano considers the success of this test to be an important milestone, which confirms the implementation of the general ledger and the consensual implementation of the team.
- “The Shelley era encompasses the critical early steps in Cardano’s journey to optimize decentralization – and like any first steps, these will be gradual but significant. During the Byron era the network was federated, but as the Shelley era progresses more and more nodes will shift towards being run by the Cardano community. Once the majority of nodes are run by network participants, Cardano will be more decentralized and enjoy greater security and robustness as a result.”
- “Thanks to Shelley , Cardano expects to be 50 to 100 times more decentralized than other large blockchain networks, with the incentives scheme designed to reach equilibrium around 1,000 stake pools. Current prominent blockchain networks are often controlled by less than 10 mining pools, exposing them to serious risk of compromise by malicious behavior – something which Cardano avoids with a system inherently designed to encourage greater decentralization.”
