Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK, addressed the development status of Cardano in an Easter video update, saying that the ongoing Byron reboot has been successful and bug-free. Apart from that, he revealed that huge progress is being made in terms of governance and that both the community and the Cardano team have been working on spreading the word about Cardano and educating people about the research that has been done so far.

Rolling out Byron has been successful

Cardano has seen major developments take place in the past few months, culminating with the release of the Byron code reboot. Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK, shared the most recent updates regarding Cardno in an Easter video, saying that everything has been going according to plan.

The currently ongoing Byron reboot has been successful, fixing some of the network, window, and syncing issues users have been reporting. An update to the Daedalus mainnet, which is set to absorb some of the Flight adaptations of the Cardano Node 1.10, will most likely happen during this week, Hoskinson said.

While this will be a substantial upgrade, more users will directly benefit from the improvement made to the Windows codebase. Two more consensus nodes have been replaced in the past week, which means that two of the seven core consensus nodes are running the rebooted Byron code.

This allows IOHK to test this infrastructure on Shelley, as the network stack for the Byron reboot will be used with the upcoming mainnet. The Wallet backend has also seen some of its features get de-risked for use with the Incentivized Testne (ITN)t—as the user experience for the Shelley mainnet will be similar to the ITN, the Wallet is ready to go.

Hoskinson explained that now that the Byron reboot is underway, there should be a running Shelley node released internally “fairly soon.”

Switching to a public testnet

According to Hoskinson, the next testnet that is set to be released on the network will be connecting the wallet backend to the Cardano node. This, he explained in the video, will allow users to enter keywords into client software so that mainnet wallets and testnet earnings can get consolidated together. Doing this through a testnet will enable IOHK to solve any issues that may arise with accounting, but won’t be possible when the mainnet launches. After Shelley, the Haskell testnet will be run “for a bit” to bring the pieces together—its end will finally bring about the beginning of the Shelley era.

The only concrete date given in the update has been the audit from Root9B. The company, which conducted a vulnerability audit of the network, should publish the results of the report by Apr. 17, Hoskinson said, adding that they planned on releasing the audit to the public immediately after.

However, while extremely valuable, the audit currently in remediation at Root9B is a static audit. To examine the design, protocol, and software in-depth, a dynamic audit needs to be performed. The Cardano Foundation, a non-profit organization tasked with running and promoting the Cardano network, is currently negotiating with Root9B to perform this audit.

IOHK’s internal audit team has discovered numerous issues through their own research but has managed to resolve most of them. The Byron reboot, surprisingly enough, has been relatively bug-free, Hoskinson noted.

IOHK makes major strides in governance, education, and marketing

The biggest developments, however, have to do with governance. While full decentralization and community-led governance won’t happen until the Voltaire era of Cardano, serious discussions are being led about its aspects.

Hoskinson seemed content about all the work that is currently being done when it comes to addressing governance, saying very productive meetings have been held in the past weeks. Cardano improvement proposals, enhancement proposals, funding streams, and Voltaire have all been discussed in-depth.

These discussions aren’t in vain—Hoskinson said that they will help practically implementing the Voltaire protocols.

When it comes to other future eras of Cardano, Hoskinson said that smart contracts on the networks have gotten to a point where third party developers can use them to build applications. “This will be crucial to launching the Goguen Era,” he explained.

But, before the Shelley and then Goguen eras come, heavy efforts need to be made to educate the world about Cardano. This has been a long-standing plan both at the Cardano Foundation and IOHK, but it was the Cardano community that has realized the most steps. Hoskinson said that a Wikipedia entry on Cardano has been in the making and should be uploaded soon. At IOHK, content around Cardano’s proof-of-stake protocol Ouroboros is being created “aggressively.”

“The time has come to explain the papers that we have already written. It is important that people know we have solved most of the major problems with proof-of-stake,” he said.

There is a great deal of content that still needs to be produced, but efforts on their production will be done alongside an extensive marketing plan. This plan, which is being developed at McCann Dublin, is currently in the phase of answering the unique selling proposition question of Cardano. While there is a lot that needs to be asked and analyzed, Hoskinson said that there was one question that kept coming back—” Why do we do research?”

Once all of these questions are answered, the company will create a two-dimensional plan. The first dimension will articulate what IOHK, the Cardano Foundation, and Emurgo have accomplished so far. The second dimension will focus on opening the network to a wide audience.

Several efforts have already been made to make Cardano more accessible—the first generation of libraries for Adrestia, the tooling and client interfaces around Cardano, will be available at the end of the month. This, Hoskinson explained, will make it easier for exchanges to list ADA and for users to access information regarding the network and its features.