IOHK Announce Alonzo Purple Has Started Onboarding Users

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the driving force behind Cardano (ADA) has announced that they have begun onboarding users for their Alonzo Purple testnet.

In a twelve-part thread on Twitter, IOHK relayed the key points of this latest development.

“This is an exciting and important next step in the #Alonzo journey, In fact, the #Cardano journey,” one of their tweets said. “With the support of our OG community testers on the Blue & White phases, #AlonzoPurple will be the first fully public Cardano testnet to support #smartcontracts.

“It’s an important moment, marking significant progress in the rollout of #smartcontracts on the #Cardano mainnet which is targeted for the end of August/early September.”

The thread went on to say that IOHK had asked a test team to join the Alonzo Purple network. More than 150 users from the IOHK community will make up the team. In addition, they announced that they would invite 300 graduates from the Plutus Pioneer program. The Plutus Pioneer program is a course that Cardano runs to train developers to code. 

Furthermore, the thread also stated that, once onboarding is complete, IOHK will hard fork the Alonzo Purple network.

Alonzo Purple on schedule

Alonzo Purple is the third phase in Cardano’s overall Alonzo rollout plan. Following the successful deployment of the Alonzo White hard fork back in July. Previous editions of IOHK’s regular monthly video updates showed the Purple phase planned for rollout in August.

In the latest update video from IOHK, published on July 29, head of delivery Nigel Hemsley revealed that the Purple phase would be split into two, named Light Purple and Dark Purple respectively. Each phase will differ in terms of the Plutus Application Backend (PAB) integration.

According to Hemsley, the Light Purple phase would not have any fully integrated PAB available. However, it would have all the other components.

“This does allow smart contracts to run” he explained. “We will have certain pioneers and some partners running some more simpler [sic] smart contract applications.”

Dark Purple is the second phase, in which PAB will be integrated.

“At that point, we will be able to see a lot more richer [sic] applications and an increase in the smart contract functionality,” Hemsley said.