Cardano Hydra Release Date: When Does Cardano's Layer-2 Solution Launch?

Cardano developers IOHK recently announced its Layer-2 scaling solution, Hydra, but when is its release date?

Following the Cardano Alonzo hard fork, scaling is fast becoming vital to the Cardano network as it seeks to implement aspects of DeFi such as smart contracts.

This is where the Hydra L2 solution comes in.

Cardano Hydra Release Date

IOHK has not set an official release date – or release period for Cardano Hydra L2. However, that doesn’t mean we’re completely in the dark.

As stated in the initial Hydra announcement, IOHK Software Engineering Lead Sebastian Nagel said:

In the short term, we will keep developing the hydra-node and the Hydra Head protocol until it becomes a solid and stable foundation for the community (and us!) to build real-world applications.

In the medium term, say 6-12 months, progress will greatly depend on the results of our research and experimentation, plus feedback from the developer community.

With “6-12 months” being the medium term for Hydra, it may not be until late-2022, or even 2023, until we see the deployment of Cardano Hydra. This may put Hydra’s launch closer to the Cardano Basho era, which seeks to improve Cardano scaling. Recently hydra has shared its roadmap on Github for better community interaction and feedback

Cardano’s development approach in the past has adopted a rigorous, peer-reviewed methodology. With the same methods used for Hydra, it could still be a while before the L2 integrates with Cardano’s Layer-1.

However, we’ll likely see more of Hydra pretty soon.

IOHK confirmed it will talk more about Hydra at the Cardano Summit 2021, set to begin on September 25. Here, IOHK will discuss Hydra’s “progress to date, and goals for the future”, meaning we may get some updates to the Cardano Roadmap that include Hydra dates.

IOHK says it will have a developer preview for a hydra-node available ahead of the Cardano Summit. Here, it will allow a small number of users to make transactions via a Hydra Head. This proof-of-concept, and any other future updates or prototypes, will be available to view via the GitHub repository.

The latest IOHK blog states how Cardano staking pools are considered as a"bedrock for the blockchain," and have grown in great numbers since last year.
Per the recent blog post, the staking pools on cardano have now reached a new milestone of 3000.

Moreover, Cardano Developer Sebastian Nagel has announced the release of first version of hydra which can connect to the Cardano testnet.

Recently, the Vasil hard fork upgrade has also been delayed for a few weeks. In light of the recent Vasil hard fork delay, the founder of Cardano Charles Hoskinson has made a few comments

Hoskinson added how the Vasil hard fork is under its final testing phase and the fact that he does not expect the delays to extend further ahead.

"The good news is that the set of things that could go wrong have gotten so small, and now we’re kind of in the final stages of testing in that respect. So unless anything new is discovered, I don’t anticipate that we’ll have any further delays.

What Is Cardano Hydra?

As a Layer-2 system, Hydra will seek to scale the wider Cardano blockchain by reducing latency and increasing the throughput, or transactions per second (TPS).

IOHK states Hydra can reach confirmation times of under one second, compared to the Cardano mainnet latency of 20 seconds.

As the Cardano network continues to grow, with more smart contracts and DApps launching on the blockchain, Hydra will hope to ensure transaction costs remain low.

Read More: Does Cardano Support NFTs?

[Featured Image by Executium via Unsplash]