- Binance exchange has announced that it will be supporting the Cardano upgrade to smart contract functionality and Alonzo hard fork.
- Deposits and withdrawal of ADA will be suspended while the two events take place.
The largest crypto exchange worldwide by daily traded volume, Binance, is set to support the Cardano (ADA) network upgrade to smart contracts along with the Alonzo hard fork. This is according to an announcement made on the Binance official website. Both the upgrade and the hard fork are scheduled to take place on Sept. 12. On that day, the events will commence during epoch 290 or at around 21.44 UTC. Withdrawals and deposits of ADA will be suspended from 21.14 UTC the same day, the announcement read.
Notably, ADA trading will not be affected while the network upgrade and hard fork are going on. The event will also not result in the creation of new tokens, Binance noted. ADA users are implored to leave sufficient time for fully processing deposits before the aforementioned cut-off time.
Additionally, the exchange stated that it will handle all technical requirements for users holding ADA in Binance accounts. Thereafter, Binance will reopen ADA deposits and withdrawals once the upgraded network is deemed stable. A notification will be sent once everything is ready.
Cardano Network upgrade
Since mid-year, the third-generation blockchain project has been rolling out parts of the Alonzo series of upgrades. The overall result of these was to bring smart contract functionality and capability to the Cardano network. They would also mark the end of the Goguen era of enabling the building of decentralized applications (DApps) on the blockchain.
First, IOHK blockchain operators rolled out Alonzo Blue which offered smart contracts to a limited number of technical insiders. With it, came the huge anticipation for the development and growth of the network. Alonzo White and Alonzo Purple followed. Other than DeFi capabilities, the upgrades bring the potential for ERC-20 tokens to be issued by the Cardano blockchain. There is also a newfound NFT angle with smart contracts.
Nevertheless, previous delays in implementation have hurt investor confidence in Cardano. A while ago, the majority of the crypto community even bet against Cardano launching smart contracts as scheduled. These sentiments seem to have faded away, as ADA is now ranked 3rd cryptocurrency by market cap. Cardano has even been called the Ethereum killer as it strives to acquire similar capabilities to those of the Ethereum network.
More on ADA
On top of that, Cardano partnered with Coinfirm for analytics relevant to anti-money laundering. Weiss Crypto said the action would make the network a censorship-prone zone and go against the whole point of decentralization. Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson, was nonetheless confident that the move was necessary to further mass adoption.
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On Sept. 7, ADA suffered an industry-wide price dip, dropping as low as $2.40, according to our data. The coin is now attempting to regain its footing and was trading at $2.60 at writing time, 8.0 percent up in the day.
