Cardano Marks 9th Anniversary with Over 123M Transactions Processed

Cardano is celebrating its ninth anniversary since the minting of its Genesis block on September 23, 2017. The mainnet launched six days later, introducing ADA and marking the beginning of Cardano's journey as a public blockchain.

The crypto community is recognizing this milestone with birthday wishes on X, including from non-custodial staking infrastructure provider Everstake and the Cardano Foundation.

Since its genesis block launch, Cardano has processed over 123 million transactions and activated 11 major upgrades. These upgrades include Byron, Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Lobster, Vasil, Valentine, Chang, Plomin, and van Rossem.

The biggest upgrades were the Shelley upgrade in July 2020, which replaced federated block production with community stake pools, and the introduction of smart contract functionality via the Alonzo upgrade on September 12, 2021. Application performance was improved with Vasil in September 2022 and Valentine in February 2023.

Cardano's developments over the past nine years are highlighted by Everstake as a continuation of its scaling roadmap. The network is set to power this roadmap through the introduction of Hydra, Cardano's Layer 2 scaling solution, as well as Leios and Peras for further performance enhancements.