• Cardano makes history by launching Vasil hard fork, which is expected to bring improvements to make the blockchain more scalable and cheaper.
• Crypto analysts believe the upgrade could act as a bullish catalyst for ADA, but the overarching macroeconomic landscape muddles the token’s near-term outlook.

After multiple delays, Vasil is finally here. On Thursday, Cardano’s much-anticipated Vasil hard fork — intended to enhance smart contract capabilities, increase the network’s throughput and bring down costs — went live without a hitch.

The most pertinent question in the crypto space is, what’s next for ADA with that gargantuan technological feat now in the bag? 

Cardano kicks off Vasil

On Thursday, September 22, the Cardano blockchain initiated the Vasil hard fork, named in honor of the late Bulgarian Cardano advocate and mathematician, Vasil Dabov. 

Vasil is a major upgrade that intends to be a significant effort to scale and expand the peer-reviewed proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. It also promises to improve the “concurrency” problem, therefore enriching the developer experience for Web3 engineers building decentralized applications on the Cardano chain. 

Vasil will also introduce a second version of Plutus — Cardano’s smart contract programming language. The features for the Plutus v2 will come one epoch after today’s fork, anticipated to happen on September 27.  Plutus was introduced in the previous Alonzo update, which happened last September.

The Vasil hard fork was initially scheduled for a June release on the mainnet but as the target date encroached, Cardano developer Input Output Global (IOG) rescheduled the launch twice to iron out pending bugs and allow time for further tests.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, however, had assured the ADA community that the team did not expect more delays. In a September 18 live stream, Hoskinson stated:

We don’t anticipate there will be any issues but there is no going back now. No amount of testing or anything can save us because the rocket is in the air. Either it explodes in air or it reaches orbit, and obviously it’s going to reach orbit.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Vasil will occur over a period of five days, with the first round of upgrades happening today and the second slated for September 27.

Tantalizing ADA moonshot ahead? 

Pay no attention to the recent sluggish price action. Crypto strategists are positive Cardano’s native token ADA is primed to rebound strongly after the Vasil upgrade.

In his latest YouTube video, analyst Michaël van de Poppe noted that ADA is unlikely to see a colossal pullback as all signs indicate the cryptocurrency is poised to defend critical areas of support. The region between $0.32 and $0.40 are key price points for the next bullish cycle.

That said, Van de Poppe believes “massive opportunities” for ADA lie ahead:

“This means that we basically have no momentum and hype going towards the Vasil hard fork, as no clear run upwards has been taking place prior. This brings massive opportunities if the Vasil hard fork is going to take place in a positive manner, which is quite similar to the Ethereum merge. In that case, a run towards $1.00 isn’t unexpected around this event.”

ADA took a hit on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would raise interest rates by 75 basis points to curb sky-high inflation, and it still looked sluggish in the hours leading to the Vasil hard fork.

It remains to be seen if the current macroeconomic weakness that has put downward pressure on risk-on assets over recent months will continue to negatively affect the cryptocurrency market moving forward.