Cardano (ADA) reached a major milestone in its roadmap on Sep. xiii as its blockchain launched Plutus-powered smart contracts as a part of the Alonzo hard fork.

The Alonzo hard fork has been highly anticipated in the Cardano customs as well every bit the cryptocurrency sphere at large.

The smart contract functionality is meant to allow Cardano to become a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications (DApps) and even mint nonfungible tokens (NFTs). This milestone has been hailed equally the point in the development of the network where the "mission truly begins."

Still, the news of the execution of this milestone didn't prevent the network'southward native token, Cardano (ADA), from falling into the wider slump that has gripped the crypto marketplace since Bitcoin (BTC) flashed crashed below $43,000 on Sep. vii. In the backwash of the Alonzo hard fork on Sep. 10, ADA dropped 10% to hit an intraday low of $two.3 while BTC and Ether (ETH) only savage 4% and 6.97%, respectively.

Marie Tatibouet, the chief marketing officer of crypto exchange Gate.io, told Cointelegraph:

"This changes everything for Cardano! For the longest time, Cardano was known as the smart contract platform without the smart contracts, but at present the critics will take to modify that narrative. With the advent of actual contracts, Cardano's utility and usability goes through the roof."

Cardano developer activity amongst the highest

According to a written report by Outlier Ventures titled, "Blockchain Development Trends Q2 2022/21," Cardano is one of the virtually actively developed blockchains out at that place, with the highest average monthly commits per month on Github code repositories at 701 commits per month (CPM).

The average CPM for all protocols considered in the study is 107 CPM. These "commits" essentially represent whatever additions or amendments made to the network's source code on Github.

In terms of these commits, Ethereum comes in second with 447 CPM, IOTA stands 3rd with 394 CPM with Filecoin and Flow rounding upwards the top v with 368 CPM and 306 CPM, respectively. This shows that Cardano is 555% more active than Ethereum and 317% than the average of all the blockchain networks connected.

In terms of the total number of developers building a particular blockchain network, Ethereum is still ranked at the tiptop with 168 monthly active developers (MAD). Cardano follows closely in 2nd identify with 165 MAD, showing a higher twelvemonth-over-twelvemonth increase of 31.eight%. The network already has the functionality that allows the creation of NFTs. Co-ordinate to information provided by Cardano to Cointelegraph, there have been 780,436 NFTs minted on the network.

Such an agile developer community is a testament to how fast the network is developing and adapting to the irresolute needs of the ecosystem. Cardano has a high developer count with the highest evolution activities amidst like blockchain protocols thus improving the security and transparency of the network. The Alonzo hard fork bringing in the smart contract functionality volition only push these trends to greater heights.

Cardano DApps are notwithstanding on the distant horizon

Even though the Alonzo upgrade, a function of the Goguen phase of Cardano's roadmap, allows developers to deploy Plutus-powered smart contracts on the network, the network hasn't quite reached that phase.

Despite the conventionalities in the market that over 2,000 smart contracts have been deployed on the network, co-ordinate to data from Vercel app, a 3rd-party information provider that uses data from adapools.org, there are just 26 Plutus-powered smart contracts that have been deployed at the time of writing.

In that location is likewise a market-broad perception that these smart contracts are in timelock. But, a spokesperson from Cardano clarified to Cointelegraph that the network has had timelock scripts since the Allegra era of the project's roadmap. These time-locked scripts are used for activities similar aiding NFT minting by making NFTs run unique for-instance and multisig schemes. Smart contracts highly differ from these scripts and cannot be placed "in timelock."

Hunain Nasser, senior analyst at OKEx Insights — the inquiry team at cryptocurrency commutation OKEx — told Cointelegraph:

"Timelocks are used to protect users from changes made to contracts later on they are created. Not all ii,300 or so scripts seen on the Cardano network are bodily apps, nearly of them are minting policies for tokens and NFTs on the Cardano network, and they are time locked to preclude changes."

Notwithstanding, timelocks can be used once DApps are created and widely used. They can likewise exist used to provide users alerts once any changes to a smart contract are triggered. This feature prevents the implementation of these changes instantly, giving users time to review them and act on them if necessary before they get implemented.

It remains to exist seen how fast existent utility could come to the Cardano network in terms of DApps and other decentralized finance features. But information technology also could be a instance of managing expectations. Johnny Lyu, CEO of crypto exchange KuCoin, told Cointelegraph that fifty-fifty though the Alonzo upgrade is a landmark event for Cardano, 1 shouldn't await lightning-fast achievements in a short period of time.

"Users need to be patient, and developers need to move on and do a lot of work to preclude mistakes that can pb to hacks and loss of funds on smart contracts."

An instance of smart contracts being fast-tracked into a network can be witnessed in the case of the Binance Smart Chain, the most recent one being the $12.7 million BTC hack from the pNetwork.

Related: DeFi hacks on Binance Smart Chain ascent as TVL and volumes increase

"At the same time, I believe that subsequently launch, it will take more than two years for DApps to be deployed and operate at full scale on Cardano, as it was with the Ethereum network, " Lyu said, adding "I recall anybody is gear up to offset now and offer some new products and applications to users, but it is necessary to make sure that they are rubber."

Since Cardano is a blockchain project that has always focused on the fundamentals, one might presume that they will allow funds to catamenia through smart contracts but once they are accounted prophylactic and secure. The Founder of 5 Binaries, Marek Mahut, who ran the get-go smart contract on Cardano said that "Safe and scalability are major features for any programmer. Cardano'south bookkeeping technology, eUTXO, provides a novel approach, which makes writing secure smart contracts easier."

The Cardano Foundation held the Cardano Summit 2022 on Sept. 25–26. IOHK, the blockchain research and evolution visitor that backs Cardano'southward infrastructure, discussed the planned upgrades and improvements to the smart contract functionality at this summit. Information technology remains to be seen when the deployment of bodily DApps can be done on the network, but information technology's not an instantaneous process.