The Cardano Upgrade to Shelley Network is special because the evolution of the Proof of Stake is expected to elevate the blockchain ecosystem.  There are many eras of development in Cardano, the Shelley era is one of them.  Shelley is the beginning of decentralization for Cardano.

ADA which is available on the Cardano network represents the stake of the holder in the network.  The size of the stake is proportional to the amount of ADA held.  For instance, someone who holds 10% of all the available ADA is said to have 10% stake in the network. Rewards by staking are made available by delegating the stakes to someone running a stake pool.

In the world of cryptocurrency incentives are the motivators which encourage the participants to feel rewarded for sustaining the network uptime by running the nodes. Also, they need to get rewarded for being the slot leader and for delegating their stakes to a stake pool.  The ADA rewards contribute towards sustaining the interest of the participant.

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted:  “True Decentralization coming to Cardano (ADA) with the Byron and Shelley Mixed blockchain. Proof of Stakes and ADA Rewards Waiting for Delegates and Stake Pools.”

Cardano (ADA) Soft Fork and Hard Fork

Edsko De Vries, One of the Engineers from the Ouroboros Consensus layer, spoke about how they do the migration from Byron to Shelley and beyond.

He stated, “Now, as you are all aware, a blockchain despite the name isn’t a blockchain, there are occasions of soft forks in the chain. When one of the forks happen one of the responsibilities of the consensus is to choose the right fork. This is one of the main responsibilities of the consensus algorithm.”

He clarified and focused on the core change in concept by citing Hard fork definition per investopedia which reads:  “A hard fork (or hardfork), as it relates to blockchain technology, is a radical change to a network’s protocol that makes previously invalid blocks and transactions valid, or vice-versa. A hard fork requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software.”

Edsko De Vries, clarifies that the hard fork from Byron to Shelley and Beyond is not going to happen per the definition of hard fork stated in investopedia.

He clarifies that the first part of the investopedia definition does not apply.  They are going to have the Byron chain as it is at the moment. And, that Byron chain can be extended with Shelley Blocks.  We are going to have a mix chain. This is possible.  The hard fork is going to leave the Cardano network with a mixed chain of Shelley and Byron.  Thus, the longest chain of Byron ends in a Shelley Block. If at a future point in time they discover an even longer chain, the Shelly block will again be shifted to the longer chain of Byron and they will go forward again.

There is an elaborate presentation of how they do this.