PANews reported on January 20 that Cardano developer Tim Harrison published an article introducing the upcoming blockchain update, which is designed to improve its interoperability and support the development of decentralized cross-chain applications. The update should directly impact the cryptographic primitives used on Cardano and facilitate the creation of cross-chain projects by introducing support for a common digital signature standard in the Plutus smart contract platform. According to the community vote, the mainnet upgrade is tentatively scheduled for February 14, 2023 at 21:44:51 UTC. Based on this, IOG plans to update the pre-production test environment on February 11, 2023 at 00:00:00 UTC.
As of today, nearly 5,500 smart contracts have been created on Cardano on Plutus, a 57% increase since early December.
