Cardano Activates 'Plomin' Upgrade, Ushering in Decentralized Governance System

With the Plomin upgrade now live, ADA token holders will be able to shape Cardano's future, including voting on treasury measures and hard forks.

Layer-1 blockchain Cardano, launched in 2017 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, activated its much-anticipated “Plomin” upgrade on Wednesday, ushering in the ecosystem's long-awaited shift towards a decentralized governance system.

The Plomin upgrade, now live, will allow ADA token holders to influence Cardano's future, including voting on treasury measures and hard forks.

Plomin follows four months after Cardano integrated the “Chang” hard fork, which established many of the mechanisms that took effect on Wednesday. (A hard fork is a major update to a chain that renders older versions of the blockchain obsolete.)

The key change coming to Cardano with Plomin is the full implementation of Delegate Representatives (dReps), who will vote on governance issues on behalf of ADA token holders. Previously, Cardano's three founding entities – the Cardano Foundation, Input Output Global (IOHK) and Emurgo – were responsible for governance changes and triggering chain upgrades. Moving forward, the keys they held and those responsibilities are delegated to new Cardano governance groups.

Ahead of Plomin, Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) needed to upgrade their nodes and approve the upgrade with a 51% vote. As of this week, about 85% of nodes were running the new version, allowing the network to proceed with the changes.

As for what’s next with Cardano, the community is already tackling a series of new issues to implement. “In short, we want to make Cardano faster, we want to add some privacy preserving features and we want to add more utility for developers,” said Giorgio Zinetti, CTO of the Cardano Foundation, in an interview with CoinDesk. “So the development will be what the community wants.”