With Today’s Hard Fork Cardano has become a Multi-Asset Blockchain

The Cardano blockchain, which uses the ADA token, will become a multi-asset chain with its hard fork today.

Named “Mary,” the hard fork will allow users to create new tokens that run on Cardano natively, just like ADA.

In a video update previewing the hard fork, Charles Hoskinson, founder of IOHK, the company behind Cardano, called the move “historic.”

You can watch the video here.

The company recently sent out the following message to subscribers.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!: Did you notice anything? No? Good!😏
We can confirm that the Cardano ‘Mary’ protocol update was successfully applied to the Cardano mainnet tonight at 21:44:51 UTC via a managed hard fork combinator event. ✅

Welcome to the beginning of an exciting new multi-asset era on Cardano $ada! 🔥

A key milestone in its ongoing rollout, this update introduces core Goguen features of native token functionality & multi-asset support. An important building block & the foundations for exciting new use cases for Cardano.
$Ada holders can today download a new Daedalus Flight release (yellow logo) – or use the latest Yoroi Wallet to check out the new features. After final acceptance testing within our Flight program, a fresh Daedalus (the regular mainnet – green logo) will come soon next, with full Cardano token registry integrations. 😎

To find out more on what to expect over the next week or two and in the native token age, here’s a rundown from our blog. So let’s welcome Mary and multi-assets and let’s go!🚀
Blog: iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/02/18/building-native-tokens-on-cardano-for-pleasure-and-profit/

Last but not least, a new video from David!
David explains what you need to know about the beginning of an exciting multi-asset future…

In addition, on their Youtube channel, Charles Hoskinson, founder of IOHK, posts the following:

Native multi-assets have arrived, but how do they work and why are they a big deal? Let me explain.

The first thing I want to do is explain how Ethereum tokens work. Because as of now, it is the most used platform for issuing crypto tokens. The way Ethereum tokens are issued is like this. You’ve got the Ethereum blockchain, then through a custom coded smart contract, you can issue a non-native token. This token won’t have all the advantages of Ethereum and you have to pay for smart contract execution every time you move your token.

This is why people complain about Ethereum fees being so high. It’s not very efficient and it leaves the door open for human error when coding smart contracts. Now with Cardano, when tokens are issued on the blockchain, they don’t require smart contracts, which means one, no custom code, which has its own cost. Because if you can’t code yourself, you’ll need to hire someone to do that. But also no smart contract fees to talk to the blockchain.

In addition to lower cost, tokens issued on Cardano will receive the full benefits of the Cardano blockchain, such as the same level of safety and security as ADA itself and eventually a governance system as it rolls out. So let’s take a quick look at how native tokens look inside the Daedalus wallet. This is your Daedalus wallet right here with ADA inside it with only ADA inside this wallet, it will look like this with a space below where native tokens will appear.

Once you’ve received native tokens, they will appear right here. Each token will have some data on it along with more information, as you click on the fingerprint. Quick note: ADA does not have a fingerprint, so if you ever see ADA show up with a fingerprint it’s fake. When it comes to sending and receiving any wallet address can be used to send and receive both ADA and native tokens. That keeps things simple and you can never mess it up.

And when it comes to making transactions, you can send multiple tokens in a single transaction, saving you on multiple transaction fees if you have to move multiple tokens to the same address.

As of today, March 1st, native tokens are live on the Cardano mainnet, but you won’t see them in your Daedalus wallet just yet. Daedalus Flight was just released today, and that is the testing ground where we will continue to monitor things and make sure that everything is working correctly. And then in the following weeks, an updated Daedalus wallet for the mainnet will be released.

Okay. So that’s pretty cool. But what about forging tokens? How do I make tokens? How does that work? As of today, fungible and non-fungible tokens can be forged using the CLI interface. This does require some technical knowledge, so if that’s not you – you’ll have to wait. But that’s only temporary because in the coming weeks, a user-friendly interface will become available that will make creating fungible tokens more accessible to the average, Joe.

This interface will only be for fungible tokens at launch. Well, NFTs can still be created through the CLI with support for NFTs coming later on. Today is a big day in Cardano history. It’s the biggest milestone since the launch of Shelley back in July, 2020, and the next stop will be full integration of Plutus core, which brings smart contracts online making 2021 most definitely the year of Cardano.

You can try out the first native tokens implementation by downloading Daedalus Flight, only from our OFFICIAL site: https://daedaluswallet.io/en/flight/​

Exciting stuff!