Cardano Block Size Increased by 11 Percent to Accommodate More Transactions

Input-Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the development company behind popular public blockchain platform Cardano, has proposed to increase the network’s block size by 11 percent in a bid to reduce congestion on the network as newly-built dApps or decentralised apps continue to increase loads on the blockchain. The overall load on the blockchain had spiked to about 93 percent over a week ago, which spurred concerns amongst users regarding possible congestion of the network. The increase in block size will result in the blockchain being able to accommodate more transactions.

Blocks on a blockchain are batches of confirmed transactions recorded on the blockchain. A larger block size means more transactions can be included within it so the network can accommodate more transactions. When implemented, Cardano’s capacity will increase from the current 72KB to 80KB — an additional block size of 8KB. IOHK also proposed to raise Cardano’s “Plutus script memory by units per transaction” from 12.5 million to 14 million. In case you’re wondering, these script memory units refer to the data that can be included in a single transaction.

IOHK claimed that these updates will jointly provide additional resources for Cardano’s smart contract platform to improve the decentralized application (dApp) user experience while increasing overall network capacity.

“This adjustment forms part of a planned series of network optimisations. Cardano will continue to be steadily optimised in a series of measured steps this year, carefully & methodically scaling Cardano for future growth as demand increases,” the developer said over a series of tweets announcing the two significant changes.

IOHK also warns that there could be a significant increase in the blockchain load with more projects launched, and also “around highly-anticipated new DApp launches, and large NFT drops.” Thus, Cardano will continue to undergo a series of enhancements, per the blockchain infrastructure research and engineering company.

Later this year, the company also plans to release a roadmap for the ‘Basho’ scaling phase of Cardano — a major update that will improve the network’s overall capacity.