The Cardano<\/a> community welcomed the Goguen era a little while back and as per the founder of the project, Charles Hoskinson, everything remains on schedule. The IOHK CEO in his latest video noted that work on Alonzo\u2019s update is \u201cgoing smooth,\u201d and the community will receive an update about it soon. With Alonzo looming, it is a crucial time for the community, especially since the same is expected to bring smart contract capabilities to the Cardano ecosystem.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, according to some, recent updates have further strengthened the arguments of those who see it as an alternative to Ethereum. This was the expectation highlighted by the Foundation recently, with Hoskinson recently outlining<\/a> the progress of Alonzo by commenting,<\/p>\n \u201cApplication backend integration is on schedule, the wallet backend integration is on schedule\u2026.. Now, we\u2019re in the white era and right now we are mass onboarding people and pushing out the new node version 1.2.8, that coming soon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n