Cardano pushes latest Shelley development, over 5 billion ADA staked

Last week, Coin Rivet reported that the launch of the Shelley incentivised testnet was imminent, with approved users waiting to take part in the first steps of the protocol’s push for decentralisation.

The protocol has now launched live staking for early users. The release of the testnet marks the first time ADA holders can generate passive rewards from staking their token holdings.

Millions of ADA tokens have been staked so far, with the average pool staking almost 500,000 ADA each. At the time of writing, the Cardano Beta 7.0 participant pools have almost 70 million ADA staked, according to PoolTool.

The development company behind Cardano, IOHK, shared on Twitter that over 240 pools had already registered on the testnet and were actively getting ready to participate in staking.

To reach adequate decentralisation of the Cardano protocol, IOHK is aiming for a total of 1,000 pools on the network. To say that almost a quarter of this number has been reached before the completion of the testnet phase shows promise for the future of the protocol.

The latest developments have been focused on ‘Jormungandr’, which refers to the Shelley self-node testnet – the crucial first implementation of the wider Shelley decentralisation phase.

In a recent Periscope live stream, CEO of IOHK Charles Hoskinson discussed the issues that the IOHK and Cardano development teams faced whilst launching Jormungandr:

“It’s been a very long road, a heck of a lot of work getting all the pieces to talk to each other… more than fifty releases for Jormungandr in a very short period of time which has been very stressful… but we got through it. The stake pool dashboard is ready, the explorer looks good, and all the other pieces of infrastructure look amazing.”

The release of staking comes just over two years after the Cardano protocol’s initial release, in which time the protocol has faced a number of development deadline delays.

IOHK has attributed these delays to the complex nature and academic rigour of the protocol, which proponents of Cardano now believe will set it apart from other protocols.

Last week, the Cardano Foundation revealed that it would be working with internationally renowned Irish firm McCann Dublin to rebrand the protocol during 2020.

Hoskinson shared that the next releases for Cardano would come in the new year.