Cardano: Celebrating Nine Years with Remarkable Milestones

Cardano commemorates the ninth anniversary of its genesis block, which was created on September 23, 2017. The mainnet went live shortly thereafter on September 29, 2017, marking the beginning of ADA’s journey on a public blockchain. Celebratory messages flood the community as Cardano Foundation and stake infrastructure provider Everstake spotlight the network’s major achievements over the years.

What Are the Network’s Key Statistics?

Over the past nine years, Cardano has seen the activation of 2,890 stake pools and the generation of 13.978 million blocks, accumulating a total of 123.982 million transactions. Additionally, Cardano has implemented an on-chain constitution approved through 36,322 votes for 158 governance actions. The Cardano Foundation continues to actively support the ecosystem’s development and uphold its standards.

“Cardano Foundation emphasizes that since producing the first block, thousands of stake pools, over a hundred million transactions, and on-chain governance have become vital components of the network,” according to the Cardano Foundation.

The creation of the genesis block was one of the two pivotal events in Cardano’s history, alongside the launch of the mainnet on September 29, 2017. This transition marked Cardano’s shift from an experimental phase to an operational public blockchain.

A Journey Shaped by Upgrades?

Indeed, Cardano has undergone 11 significant upgrades since the first block, including Byron, Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Vasil, Valentine, and more. While the Byron phase introduced in 2017 had a centralized nature, the Shelley upgrade in July 2020 shifted block production to community-operated stake pools.

Smart contract functionality was introduced with the Alonzo upgrade on September 12, 2021. Preceding this, Allegra facilitated token locking, and Mary supported native assets. Vasil, in September 2022, and Valentine, in February 2023, further enhanced application performance. On-chain governance was advanced by the Chang upgrade in 2024 and the Plomin hard fork in 2025.

The van Rossem hard fork, activated on July 18, 2026, became the first to achieve 100% approval through on-chain voting. This highlights Cardano’s focus on governance as well as technical upgrades.

What’s Next in the Scaling Roadmap?

Everstake notes that Cardano is continuing its scaling roadmap. Known for enabling users to stake assets without custodianship, Everstake remarks that Hydra serves as Cardano’s Layer 2 scaling solution, while Leios and Peras aim to improve Layer 1 performance. Once Leios achieves its goals, transaction capacity is expected to increase between tenfold and sixty-five-fold. Peras focuses on reducing finality time for blocks.

“Everstake conveys that Cardano’s evolution is driven not only by historical upgrades but also by forthcoming scaling objectives, supporting the network’s roadmap,” it states.

Upcoming steps in Cardano’s development include the initial Dijkstra phase, anticipated for Q4 2026, introducing the Dijkstra accounting era and Linear Leios structure. The open-source Rust node, Amaru, is set to start mainnet block production by November 2026, with Peras planned for Q2 2027 deployment.