On April 20, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson layer-2 scalability solution tweeted a link to the Hydra website. Hydra, dubbed the “ultimate layer-2 scalability solution” by Input-Output (IO), will improve the underlying performance of the chain to facilitate growth and adoption through higher capacity.
Check out the Hydra Website: https://t.co/FXHwEtuoAK #HailHydra
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 20, 2022
According to Hoskinson, the debut of Hydra would introduce a new dimension to Cardano, akin to the Lightning Network for Bitcoin – but better. The link takes people to the Hydra website, which contains instructions for installing nodes, a quick start guide, and demo content about the latest Cardona Hydra scaling solution.
Cardano Hydra vs Bitcoin Lightning Network
Hoskinson described Hydra to Lex Fridman last year as a co-designed layer-2 scaling solution. Hydra is co-developed in the sense that specific arrangements are in place to support it, as opposed to the Lightning Network, which was not created in collaboration with Bitcoin. The advantages of co-design include the ease with which users may enter and exit the system while retaining security features.
Add to it the sophistication that comes with different heads, as well as a “more expressive accounting model,” and it becomes possible to do more, including creating protections against lost funds. Hoskinson remarked:
“So instead of always being aligned and always being available, what happens if they [the head and tail protocols] die for a bit and then they come back? And you can create all kinds of guarantees that your funds won’t be lost or locked forever or things like that. There’s a failure recovery mode for this type of stuff.”
What exactly is Hydra?
Haskell Dev Matthias Benkort tweeted in December 2021 that Hydra is getting closer to testnet. Hydra, a Layer-2 blockchain solution which attempt to scale the larger Cardano blockchain by lowering latency and improving throughput, or transactions per second (TPS).
Steady progresses on the #Hydra proof-of-concept with another pre-release: end-to-end #Cardano node integration (on a private cluster), it's something 👌https://t.co/TiO0lTqeXP
Next steps, we'll focus on on-chain validations and closing the gap towards testnet!
— KtorZ (@_KtorZ_) December 14, 2021
Fast forward to the present, and it looks like a final version will be released shortly. Hydra arrival means a scalable solution designed to increase throughput, eliminate latency, incur minimal to no expenses, and drastically reduce storage requirements.
This will be accomplished through the use of a mechanism known as isomorphic scaling, which works by processing transactions off the main chain while keeping the main chain as a safe settlement layer.
Cardano functionality such as native assets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Plutus scripting is all available through isomorphic state channels, or heads. As a result, users gain the benefits and security of the layer-1 blockchain while operating within a “sharded head,” of which there will be many. He stated:
“These are state channels that are capable of expediently reusing the exact state representation of the underlying ledger and, hence, inherit the ledger’s scripting system as is.”
In principle, when more heads are added to the network, it will get quicker.
Read more:
- Ravendex issues apology to Cardano community for abusive remarks
- IOHK offers technical update on “Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork”
