Announcement - 13th December 2019 - OBFT hard fork on the Byron testnet

Cardano Byron phase completion

The Byron era is ending soon and to make the transition to Ouroboros BFT and decentralization there are two planned hard forks on the Byron testnet.

The first planned hard fork on the testnet will be implemented in the coming days while the second hard fork for the Shelley release will be advertised closer to the time. 

What is Ouroboros BFT?

Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) is a class of simple consensus algorithms, and Ouroboros BFT is a BFT algorithm that belongs to the Ouroboros family. The Ouroboros family also contains Ouroboros Classic (used in the Cardano Byron era) and Ouroboros Genesis (used in the Cardano Shelley era). 

The primary purpose of the hard fork to Ouroboros BFT is to provide a simple migration pathway from Ouroboros Classic to Ouroboros Genesis.

Action required

On Monday the 16th December, we will switch the testnet from the original consensus protocol Ouroboros Classic (Byron Era) to Ouroboros BFT via a protocol update in the first of the two planned hard forks on the testnet. 

We strongly urge and recommend all exchanges using the Cardano settlement layer (SL) to upgrade to cardano-sl 3.0.3 or higher in order to maintain compliance and avoid any outage on Byron testnet.

No action required for users already upgraded to cardano-sl 3.0.3. .All users are encouraged to experiment with the testnet during and after the hard fork. If you have any questions or concerns, please, reach out via the usual support channels.