Cardano Launches Valentine Upgrade for SECP Cryptographic Primitives

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• Cardano developers have launched a Valentine upgrade for its Standards for Efficient Cryptography (SECP) primitives on the network’s mainnet.
• This upgrade allows developers to use a broader range of native multi-signature designs to build secure and cost-effective decentralized applications (DApps).
• The upgrade took place on February 14 at 21:44 UTC, with absolute slot height 84844800 and estimated block height 8403208.

Cardano Launches Valentine Upgrade

Input Output Global (IOG), the organization behind the Cardano blockchain, has launched a valentine upgrade for its Standards for Efficient Cryptography (SECP) primitives on the network’s mainnet. With this update, developers can now create cross-chain decentralized applications that are secure, cost-effective, and give access to a broader range of services.

Valentine Upgrade Live on Mainnet

The upgrade went live on February 14 at 21:44 UTC, at the beginning of epoch 394 around absolute slot height 84844800 and estimated block height 8403208. This variance in cryptographic algorithms and signature schemes across blockchains led to this upgrade.

ECDSA & Schnorr Signatures

The two most popular signature schemes Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and Schnorr are used in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polkadot blockchains respectively. On the other hand, Cardano utilizes Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) with elliptic curve Curve25519 as its base curve (aka Ed25519).

Plutus Primitives Now Available

The Valentine Upgrade also brings Plutus primitives which will enable developers to write secure smart contracts that run on top of Cardano’s blockchain platform. With this new feature, users can now create multi-asset transactions that support various protocols such as Decred or Polkadot’s Substrate framework.

Conclusion

Cardano’s Valentine Upgrade is now live and it provides developers with an array of features which are essential for constructing secure DApps across multiple chains. This will also allow users to access a wide range of services that were previously not available using standard multisignature designs.