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Cardano Scaling Node Hydra Head Goes Live on Blockchain's Mainnet

The tool, the first in a planned suite of products, aims to speed up transaction times on Cardano.

By Shaurya Malwa
Updated May 12, 2023, 1:42 p.m. Published May 12, 2023, 7:52 a.m. 1 min read
(Julian Hochgesang/Unsplash)
(Julian Hochgesang/Unsplash)

Hydra Head, a scaling tool to make transactions on the Cardano blockchain even faster, is now active on the mainnet, the developers tweeted Thursday.

The tool is the first in a planned suite of products. Each Hydra Head works as an off-chain “mini ledger” shared between a small group of participants, helping speed up transactions while lowering fees significantly.

Developers can use Hydra Heads to add specialized, complex decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols on top of Cardano, according to the technical documentatoin.

The node’s release is the latest of several DeFi-focused upgrades on Cardano this year. January saw the launch of Cardano-based decentralized stablecoin djed, and in February, Cardano developer IOG proposed a way of improving cross-chain transactions.

Cardano's native ada (ADA) token is little changed in the past 24 hours, outperforming the broader crypto market which fell 3.3%, according to CoinGecko data.

CardanoTechDeFiOn-chain Data

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