As shared by Rick McCracken DIGI, a Cardano community member and also a stake pool operator, the network sync for Vasil node candidate 1.35.3 across the more than 400 reporting nodes is at 99.77%, which demonstrates a very high-performance network. Rick states that this metric had always been in the range of 97 to 99%.
Vasil functionality is reliant on a strong majority of block-producing nodes running the latest 1.35.3 version. To trigger the upgrade, IOG has set a target of 75% of mainnet blocks being created by the final Vasil node candidate. Currently, this metric has been met with more than 87% of the block percentage.
The Vasil upgrade hopes to bring significant improvements using the hard fork combinator (HFC) approach and enhance the network's performance by increasing throughput, script efficiency and reducing latency in block transmission.
The upgrade, which is also expected to enhance smart contracts, is part of the Basho phase of the Cardano roadmap that concentrates on scaling and network and ledger optimization. Vasil HFC will introduce eagerly awaited features like diffusion pipelining and improvements to Plutus, Cardano's core smart contracts language.
Presently, multiple stakeholders, including SPOs, exchanges and dApp projects, are upgrading their nodes and testing their code and other Cardano components ahead of the Vasil upgrade scheduled for this month.
Cardano sets new milestones ahead of Vasil
As reported by U.Today, the Cardano network has set a new milestone with more than six million native assets minted on the network. According to pool.pm data, the number of native assets issued on the Cardano blockchain is presently 6,020,615, with 61,055 distinct minting policies.
In 2020, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, predicted that the ecosystem would grow as there would be "hundreds of assets, thousands of dApps, tons of interesting projects, and lots of unique and utility." This prediction seems to be currently playing out.