Chang upgrade

View details on Chang upgrade #1 and Chang upgrade #2 in the dedicated space


The Chang upgrade is the culmination of many years of hard work, including all the community participation that has taken place through community workshops and testing on SanchoNet. This moment represents a significant step towards minimum viable on-chain governance as defined in CIP-1694. As stake pools upgrade their nodes to support the new protocol, Cardano will have moved into the Voltaire Era, creating a self-sustaining blockchain and trailblazing the way forward for the industry.

The first of two upgrades (Chang Upgrade #1) will deploy a set of governance features to Cardano and enter the technical bootstrapping phase as described in CIP-1694.

The second upgrade (Chang Upgrade #2) moves CIP-1694 out of technical bootstrapping phase and unlocks the full features of CIP-1694 on-chain governance including full DRep participation and all types of governance action.

The upgrade honors Phil Chang, who sadly passed away in 2022. Phil was a pioneer in Cardano governance at IOG, and his thinking contributed significantly to Voltaire's conceptualization. As part of Voltaire, the Chang upgrade transitions the ledger into the Conway era, establishing decentralized decision-making foundations by implementing CIP-1694 on-chain governance mechanisms.

The Chang#1 upgrade will follow a similar path to that of the Vasil upgrade. The final decision to hard fork will be made – in consultation with members of the SPO, DApp and community – against 3 key criteria:

  • No critical issues outstanding on node (including ledger, CLI, consensus, etc.)

  • Benchmarking and performance-cost analysis is acceptable

  • Community (including exchanges and DApp projects) has been properly informed and has had sufficient time to prepare for the hard fork combinator event

Further details and attestations of community readiness for major upgrades such as hard forks can be found in our dedicated Cardano Upgrades space.

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