IOHK the body in charge of technical developments on the Cardano blockchain, has announced the launch of the next phase of the highly anticipated Shelley Mainnet. The announcement was revealed in the form of a video podcast where a member of the IOHK development team highlighted the progress so far ahead of the launch of the mainnet.
According to the video, the next phase would begin on June 9th with the enabling of public stake pools to stake on the Shelley testnet. Cardano had initially announced in May that the blockchain platform would be handpicking a selected number of stakepool owners to stake on its Shelley testnet.
The process according to Cardano saw about 60 stakepools selected and was successful with the stakepools helping to fix key issues within the Shelley testnet. The new phase would enable public stakepool owners the access to stake on the Shelley mainnet ahead of the August release date.
This increased number of stakepools would help the blockchain discover new bugs and areas to improve before the eventually release of the mainnet. Cardano enjoined potential stakepool owners to register on their testnet website to join the quest towards creating a truly decentralized blockchain ecosystem.
Cardano on track for Mainnet Launch
Cardano appears to be on the right track towards eventually launching its mainnet. The blockchain had suffered several delays in 2019 with some critics claiming that the project had lost its way with its promise to provide a decentralized ecosystem for smart contracts deployment.
However, its revised roadmap released towards the end of 2019 has seen Cardano move to a more realistic approach. The Shelley Incentivized testnet launched earlier in 2020 has continued to grow with a userbase of over 20,000 stakers.
The testnet also has over 1,200 registered pools with over $12, million staked on the testnet network. Cardano would be hopeful that this next phase of its mainnet launch would record as much success as its incentivized testnet launch.
