A number of releases and improvements have been made to Cardano, the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market value, to improve interoperability, scalability, and performance since the start of 2024. Examples include the recent releases of Cardano Node and Hydra, Marlowe, and Lace.
Version 0.15.0 of Hydra, the first release of 2024, has been made available. The goal of the Cardano layer-2 protocol Hydra is to increase the platform’s overall efficiency and transaction throughput.
https://x.com/marlowe_io/status/1748014701747790220?s=20
In a same spirit, the Marlowe team has declared the completion of many milestones and the release of Marlowe 0.3.0. Marlowe declared the launch of their redesigned website on January 11.
Marlowe is a collection of tools and a domain-specific language (DSL) for writing and implementing smart contracts. With Marlowe, developers can create, test, and implement smart contracts in a straightforward, safe, and user-friendly manner.
Since its May 2023 mainnet introduction, Marlowe has seen a number of upgrades and improvements.
When the Marlowe Runner was launched in late 2023, smart contracts could be implemented directly from a browser, negating the need for a backend or unique frontend. This was a major advancement for the smart contract usefulness of Cardano.
The most recent development update from IOG states that Cardano has released node v.8.7.3, which fixes a small problem in the Ouroboros network.
In other news, version 1.8 was just published by the Lace team. It addresses a problem, enhances the speed of stake pool payouts on a graph, and enables synchronisation with other multi-address wallets.
