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Intersect, a member-based organization for the Cardano ecosystem, recently shared an update it captioned as "Chang Readiness" in a recent tweet.

The Chang upgrades, the first of which is anticipated for August 2024 (assuming community readiness) mark a crucial milestone in the Cardano upgrade road map. Chang effectively is the first hard fork on the Cardano network's Voltaire era.

This upgrade is more than just a standard update; it represents a significant advancement in blockchain technology, addressing fundamental challenges and unlocking new potential for the Cardano network.

Chang Readiness 👀The hardfork working group have published a detailed review of ecosystem readiness to upgrade to Chang!We're getting closer to bringing on-chain decision making to Cardano mainnet, & there's more to do. So, are you ready for Chang? https://t.co/vDJ4yyHFSh pic.twitter.com/oiIme1A677

— Intersect (@IntersectMBO) July 19, 2024

As part of Voltaire, the Chang upgrade brings the ledger into the Conway era, laying the groundwork for decentralized decision-making through the implementation of CIP-1694 on-chain governance mechanisms.

Chang readiness

Chang is being finished in two parts to accelerate adoption. The first stage consists of an upgrade to node 9.0.0. Early upgrades by SPOs and dApps highlight any issue running in Babbage and help confirm no regression. The second is the upgrade to 9.1.0, which includes the Genesis file revisions and is to be undertaken by SPOs, dApps and exchanges.

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Node 9.0.0 has been released, being the node candidate to upgrade the Cardano mainnet to Chang. To be fully up-to-date, SPOs will need to include a small configuration update (node 9.1.0).  A hard fork combinator event can occur once over 75% of SPOs have upgraded to cardano-node 9.1.0.

SPOs, exchanges and dApps readiness

To activate the Chang upgrades, 75% of mainnet blocks need to be created by the final Chang node candidate. Presently, according to the latest status update on Mainnet Block Producing Readiness, 25% of SPOs have upgraded to 9.0.0.

DApp developers may also need to prepare for Chang. In this regard, Sundaeswap and USDM have ticked "in progress" statuses.

The exchange community needs to ensure around 80% of network liquidity is aligned with any hard fork event. Binance, HTX and WhiteBIT are leading currently in exchange preparedness with 17.57%, 11.88% and 11.5% liquidity. Crypto exchanges Coinbase and Bitrue marked liquidity of 3.32% and 2.39%, respectively.Â