• The upcoming upgrade to Cardano will bring secure cross-chain DApps development and greater interoperability to the blockchain.
• The Cardano developers have done successful integration testing already with the mainnet upgrade to happen by February 14, 2023.

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In the next month of February 2022, the Cardano blockchain network is scheduled for a major upgrade that will incorporate some built-in functions to Cardano’s smart contracts programming language Plutus.

These new built-in functions at Plutus will also support ECDSA and Schnorr cryptographic signatures thereby making it easier for developers to build cross-chain applications. Different blockchain platforms implement different cryptographic signature methods.

Blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum use the ECDSA cryptographic systems. On the other hand, Schnorr signatures, which serve as an alternative to ECDSA are used by blockchain networks such as Polkadot.

However, the Cardano blockchain uses the Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) with elliptic curve Curve25519 as its base curve (Ed25519). Although it is fast, secure, and small in size, it is not compatible with ECDSA and Schnorr.

The upcoming upgrade to Cardano will bring secure cross-chain DApps development and greater interoperability to the blockchain. This, in turn, will make it easy for Cardano developers to work with other blockchain networks.

If not for this upgrade, Cardano developers might need to spend extra time, funds, and effort in implementing the ECDSA and Schnorr over the SECP elliptic curves in the smart contracts programming language Plutus. However, it would increase potential security risks while using an unrealistic amount of reserves.

Thus it was essential to provide ECDSA and Schnorr operations as built-in functions within Cardano’s primary signature algorithm Ed25519.

Getting Ready for the Upgrade

The initial preparations for the upgrade are already underway for some time within the Cardano ecosystem and developers have seen some positive results already with the integration testing. In the latest announcement, Tim Harrison of  IOHK writes:

Preparations have been underway for some time across the entire Cardano ecosystem. The core engineering teams at IOG and the Cardano Foundation, SPOs, DApp developers, and exchanges have performed intensive integration testing in the preview test environment since November 2022, with positive results. This technology is now close to being deployed on the Cardano mainnet.

The upcoming upgrade won’t be as complex as the Vasil upgrade that took place last year in September 2022, and won’t be having any major impact on existing DApps. However, by working with the Cardano stakeholders, the teams are ensuring the readiness that may need to prepare for the new capability.

Exchanges have been notified of the upgrade already so that they have enough time to upgrade their systems as per the requirements. The announcement adds:

IOG has also polled the DApp/tool development community – very few projects will be impacted by the change and we have factored in the needs of those that do need to update their code accordingly.

The proposed mainnet upgrade shall tentatively happen around February 14, 2023.

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• Cardano is working to bring cryptographic primitives like ECDSA and Schnorr signatures to its smart contracts platform Plutus.
• This will help for faster DApp development on Cardano with greater security and efficiency.

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The Cardano development team is taking every step in expanding the platform’s ecosystem. In the latest development, they have introduced cryptographic primitives for enabling secure, cross-chain DApps development.

Every blockchain network majorly relies on cryptography to bring trust and security to its participants. The cryptographic primitives introduced by Cardano will serve as building blocks for DApp developers to conduct secure transactions that contain sensitive data. They also help in developing custom encryption and decryption algorithms while validating them by using digital signatures.

Over the last decade, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is the most widely used primitive for developing secure applications and cryptographic protocols. SECP, or SECP256k1 in particular, is the name of the elliptic curve. Popular blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum use this curve to implement public key cryptography.

Schnorr signatures and the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) are examples of SECP. Along with the elliptic curve25519, Cardano uses the Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) as its native signature algorithm.

This is because ECDSA and Schnorr aren’t native to the Cardano blockchain. As a result, Plutus DApp developers working with other blockchains have to put in more effort, time, and funds to implement the SECP Elliptic curves in Plutus. This considerably increases security risks. Besides, since ECDSA and Schnorr aren’t built-in functions for Cardano, such operations are also more time-consuming and expensive.

Introducing ECDSA and Schnorr to Plutus

In order to solve this issue, Cardano’s parent group Input Output Global (IOG) will be introducing built-in functions for ECDSA and Schnorr to Cardano’s native smart contracts platform, Plutus. This will allow DApp developers to effectively build cross-chain applications.

These built-in functions will now become native to the Cardano blockchain and will also provide the highest level of security. Also, the Plutus developer will be able to expand the choice of multi-signature or threshold signature design to use. Schnorr-based designs are quite popular in the DApp industry and so it is essential to bring them to the Cardano blockchain. The official announcement from Cardano reads:

After the new cryptographic primitives implementation, Plutus will be able to easily verify transactions from other blockchains using ECDSA and Schnorr standards. For example, Plutus will be able to natively verify signatures generated in EVM sidechains, which will improve the developer experience in terms of process simplicity, cost, and advanced security.

The cryptographic primitives will considerably improve the process of secure cross-chain DApp development on the Cardano network. The faster development of the DApp ecosystem on Cardano will also lead to greater usability of its native crypto ADA.

As of press time, ADA is trading at $0.41 with a market cap of $13.8 billion. We believe that over a period of time, these developments if done right, will certainly help the ADA price reach new highs.