Cardano’s Hydra: L2 scalability solution launch timing, details after successful SundaeSwap demo lifts ADA
Hydra, Cardano’s own Layer 2 solution, is making progress after the SundaeSwap decentralised exchange (DEX) successfully launched a demo on the network.
Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, bullishly tweeted: “Hail Hydra! So glad to see this demo. Hydra is coming to cardano one [decenrtalised application] DApp at a time.”
Yet, Cardano’s community and developers could still be waiting up to a year before the Layer 2 solution launches.
Despite a slight rise, the price of cardano (ADA) has not seen much positive price action following the Hydra announcement.
ADA to USD
Hydra details
While Cardano is gearing up to launch Hydra, its purpose and methods are similar to Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, like Arbitrum or Optimism. Hydra’s goal is to bring faster transactions, higher throughputs and lower fees.
The Layer 2 network will be redirecting blockchain traffic to achieve this. An official blog post explained:
Hydra is set to become a “family of protocols”. The first protocol goes under the title Hydra Head and are off-chain mini ledgers that are shared by a small community of developers. Users can then build specialised and complex protocols on top of them.
Hydra’s roadmap
The blog post and development documentation make it clear that Hydra is a long-term project, which Cardano developers are hoping will drive growth.
As outlined by software engineer Sebastian Nagel, the short-term goal is to continue developing the Hydra Head protocol. It is currently building “a solid and stable foundation for the community to build real-world applications”.
The blog post, which was published in September, said it would be six to 12 months before Hydra launched. But this depends on research, experimentation and community feedback.
ADA price movements
ADA saw a slight price rise after SundaeSwap announced it had launched a demo on Hydra. It closed 13 October at $0.377 and bounced to a high of $0.388 the following day.
But the cardano cryptocurrency has continued into a bearish trend that it has faced since the crypto crash in May. Even its major Vasil upgrade in September struggled to lift ADA.
Some community members are hopeful and speculated that Hydra could drive “non-speculative demand for ADA”.
Hydra could be the killer platform to shoot #Cardano off scale from the standard #crypto industry. Businesses using Hydra could generate non-speculative demand for #ADA, which will drive up price and bring thus users swarming to get in cheaper. https://t.co/XsM6IFTjlI
— Cardano Hieronymus (@CardanoHumpback) October 15, 2022
Nagel said: “We want this ecosystem to serve the needs of individual consumers, enterprises, professionals, and the growing list of DApps and their developers.”
But this demand for ADA has not been realised in the short-term. At the time of writing on 19 October, cardano had sunk to $0.35, down 17% in the past month.
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