Ouroboros Hydra (Hydra) is an off-chain protocol that IOHK has been working on for five years. Promises to give the Cardano network some substantial improvements in terms of scale.
A shared press release today says IOHK launched Ouroboros Hydra, an off-chain protocol created by the IOHK team and company partners from the DLT research lab at the University of Edinburgh. It took the team five years to create Hydra and now, according to the press release, it will give Cardano some crucial improvements.
How Hydra will improve the Cardano network
According to the press release, Hydra enables increasing scalability for the network Cardano and, at the same time, it will ensure low latency and minimal data storage per node.
Hydra will also allow developers to create multiple dapps, such as those dealing with micropayments, voting, etc., all where low fees and instantly confirmed operations are required.
The new solution will allow users to connect to the network and simultaneously create an additional ten ‘heads’. Each of them will create an additional performance 'lane' for transactions and data.
This will allow the system to run much faster and greatly increase its scalability.
Tests have shown that each Hydra ’head’ is capable of processing around 1,000 transactions per second. The more heads are created in the protocol, the greater the scalability.
The document states:
"Hydra enables Cardano to scale horizontally, increasing performance by adding additional nodes, rather than vertically, by adding more powerful hardware."
Among other options, Hydra allows for faster micropayments at Cardano and makes rates substantially lower.
