Cardano has successfully launched the Alonzo hard fork, which marks a major milestone for the popular proof-of-stake blockchain. 

As reported by U.Today, the hard fork was originally supposed to be launched in late August, but its debut was delayed since some centralized exchanges needed more time to prepare. 

The hard fork has transitioned Cardano to Voltaire, the era of decentralized governance. 

Notably, the major upgrade was named after Phil Inje Chang, the late product manager at Input Output who was responsible for Voltaire's development. 

The hard fork has activated Plutus v3 with such capabilities as advanced cryptographic primitives, improved performance, better smart contract efficiency, and governance integration. "This is a very significant event as not only is community governance activated, but scalability and interoperability get a gigantic boost from the Plutus v3 deployment," Cardano advocate Rick McCracken explained in a social media post.   

During his recent livestream, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said that the community is now "in the driver's seat." "Together, as an ecosystem, we gonna have to figure out the future," he added. 

"Now, they have to judge Cardano based upon the merits of the community that can take a flag to Mount Everest, they have to judge it on the merits of a community that has more PhDs in it than any other one combined. They have to judge it on the merits of a community that has no face and, unlike Bitcoin, has the mandate and the ability to upgrade itself on a regular basis," Hoskinson stressed. 

Despite the excitement surrounding the upgrade, the ADA price is down 3.1% over the past 24 hours. The token remains in 12th place by market cap.