Cardano Increases Block Size By 12.5%, What This Means

Cardano has been making important changes to its blockchain since the launch of smart contracts capability. This had brought with it an increased usage and thus needed to be more scalable to accommodate this increase. Since the launch in September, there have been a number of improvements to the network and the latest is the increase in the block size.

Cardano, in a recent blog post, announced that they were increasing block size by 12.5% to make room for the increased traffic that is expected on the network. The 8KB increase will see the total block size now at 72KB and will allow more transactions to be fitted in a single block. This will allow more transactions to be processed per second, greater data throughput, in turn providing greater capacity for its users.

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Keep in mind that a year ago, Cardano only averaged 10,000 transactions per day. Now, a year later, this number has risen significantly to more than 200,000 and climbing. A 12.5% increase in block size may not seem large by the average margin but is important to accommodate for this increased usage.

Another factor that warrants the increase in block size is the anticipation of DApps that are expected to launch on the blockchain soon. Since Cardano already has smart contracts capability, it is only a matter of time until developers begin deploying their apps. This anticipated rise in traffic has made increasing block size important for the network.

Block size was not the only thing that got a boost. Cardano also increased Plutus script memory units by transaction. In another 12.5% expansion, the Plutus script memory units per transaction is now 11.25 million.

In the blog post, John Woods, Director of Cardano Architecture, explained that this change was brought about due to growing demand from developers. It will help developers in their journey as they test and deploy their DApps on Cardano.

“An increase in Plutus memory limits means that they can develop more sophisticated Plutus scripts, or that existing scripts will be able to process more data items, increase concurrency, or otherwise expand their capabilities.”

Woods notes that this is only a first in a series of changes that will take place to expand the real-world capabilities of Plutus scripts.

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The changes in block size and Plutus script memory units by transactions will be implemented slowly. Cardano has adopted a ‘slow and steady’ mechanism going forward with the changes. Although this may look to be moving too slow for some, a 12.5% increase shows that the developer is not rushing to make changes that would adversely affect the network.

“It’s not just about creating more complex scripts. It’s also about putting more data through,” the blog post read.