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Cardano recently activated the Chang 1 upgrade, officially entering a new era of decentralized governance. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson shared his thoughts and enthusiasm as the network progresses toward a more decentralized and community-driven governance model.

The Chang upgrade is the implementation of CIP-1694, which marks a significant shift toward a more decentralized and community-driven governance model and propels Cardano into the Voltaire phase. This CIP proposes and details the process of transitioning Cardano governance from the founding entities Input Output Global (IOG), the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo to the Cardano community.

As part of this shift, the last IOG centralized Shelley relays on the DNS name are now facing a shutdown.

An X user and Cardano community member Samuel Leathers drew attention to this in an X post: "The end of an era. The last IOG centralized shelley relays on the DNS name are being shutdown today. @IOHK Charles. we can check off P2P being completed now. Next step is to get rid of the bootstrap peers with Genesis."

The tweet drew the attention of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who commented on the imminent exit of bootstrap peers in the coming months after the Genesis upgrade, which requires no hard fork.

"Bootstrap peers are taking the long walk in a few months as we roll out Genesis. No hard fork required for Genesis," Hoskinson wrote.

Ouroboros Genesis design update

Ouroboros Genesis is a set of improvements to the already robust Ouroboros protocol that include countermeasures to safeguard network nodes when they are new or return after an absence. Genesis will permit retiring the bootstrap peers, thereby decentralizing the infrastructure for syncing nodes.

Ouroboros is the consensus protocol that powers the Cardano blockchain. Given Cardano's ongoing development and increasing use, Ouroboros has moved forward with its planned upgrade path.

Ouroboros' development will take a step further with Ouroboros Genesis, which is scheduled to be released later in 2024.