According to U.Today, Cardano has achieved a significant milestone with the release of a major node update, as the network prepares for the highly anticipated Chang upgrade. The newly released Cardano Node 9.1.0 marks a crucial step toward the Chang hard fork, which aims to introduce governance features and initiate the technical bootstrapping phase outlined in CIP-1694 Bootstrapping Phase.

The release of Cardano Node 9.1.0, as stated in a Github release, is the mainnet candidate for Chang Upgrade #1. This update brings a configuration file update to the previously released Node 9.0.0. The main difference between Node 9.0.0 and Node 9.1.0 is the requirement of a Conway genesis file at start-up, which was optional in the earlier version. This file is essential for crossing the Chang hard fork boundary.

In addition to the genesis file requirement, Node 9.1.0 includes several bug fixes and enhancements to the CLI and API, such as a