Cardano, the blockchain project created by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, has recently attracted much attention in the cryptocurrency market as the project is gearing up for the addition of smart contract capability. This much-awaited upgrade is called the Alonzo hard fork and this has been a major boost to the Cardano ecosystem and its native token ADA.

The implementation of smart contracts is going to turn Cardano from just being a cryptocurrency to a complete dApp and DeFi platform, which could place it as a rival to Ethereum and other smart contract platforms.

The Alonzo upgrade is named after American mathematician Alonzo Church and is the result of the efforts of the Cardano team for the past several years. While some other blockchain projects have launched their products with the help of unproven technology, Cardano has chosen a more thoughtful approach to its development, based on academic research.

This has given Cardano a reputation for being reliable and secure due to its emphasis on academic approach and adherence to the rules which has however been criticized for making the platform slow in development as compared to other platforms. The introduction of smart contracts is likely to put Cardano into another level of growth and popularity.

It will enable developers to write and deploy smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain that can execute themselves and that can be quite sophisticated, thus enabling many different use cases in areas such as finance, supply chain, and identity. The Cardano team has been very much involved with the developer community, offering tools and materials that would help in the development of dApps on the platform.

The build-up to the Alonzo upgrade has also seen ADA, the native currency of Cardano, rise in value significantly. Investors and speculators have been purchasing ADA with the aim of selling it at a higher price once there is a surge in the demand for the token with the integration of smart contracts.

This price surge has put Cardano in the list of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and cementing its place among other blockchain projects. However, the use of smart contracts on the Cardano platform is not without its problems and possible pitfalls.

The platform will have to demonstrate its capacity to manage the enhanced level of complexity and the higher level of transactions associated with the support of a number of dApps and DeFi protocols. Also, Cardano will compete with such giants as Ethereum, which have well-developed communities of developers and a large number of applications and users.

With the cryptocurrency community looking forward to the complete adoption of smart contracts on Cardano, the focus is on the platform’s performance and its capacity to lure developers and users into the ecosystem. The outcome of this launch will not only affect Cardano but also the whole blockchain industry which is still in its early stage.