The Goguen era will add smart contract functionality, giving developers the ability to build decentralized applications (dApps) on Cardano. DApp development will occur through Cardano's purpose-built smart contract language, Plutus, which makes use of the functional programming language Haskell. Goguen will also introduce Marlowe, a domain-specific language (DSL) for financial contracts built on Plutus. Marlowe and Plutus combined will enable developers to create Cardano-based tokens, such as native fungible or non-fungible tokens or the tokenization of external digital or physical assets (e.g., equity, commodities, real estates, etc.).

The Basho era will aim to optimize the network for scalability and interoperability. The goal is to improve the underlying performance of Cardano to better support growth and adoption for applications that require high transaction volumes.

Two of the primary developments proposed for the Bash era are sidechains and parallel accounting styles. Sidechains are new blockchains (like shard chains) that interoperate with the main chain. They can help off-load work from this base layer to increase the overall capacity of the network (scalability through parallel computation). While Cardano uses a UTXO model, sidechains will also have the ability to support account-based models. By having parallel accounting styles, Cardano might be able to interoperate with external networks more easily or support new kinds of uses cases.

The Voltaire era will introduce Cardano's proposed on-chain governance and treasury system. Participants will be able to use their staked ADA to voting on the future direction of the network.

Upon the launch of Voltaire, protocol improvement proposals will originate from community participants instead of solely through the management of IOHK and Emurgo. Token holders, either through direct staking or a delegation system, will then be able to vote on which proposals the network should implement. Voltaire will also see the addition of a treasury system, whereby a fraction of all transaction fees will be pooled to provide funds for development activities undertaken following the voting process.

The Byron era marked the first iteration of the Cardano network. It allowed users to buy, sell, and transaction its native cryptocurrency, ADA, across the protocol. The Byron chain ran on a purpose-built consensus layer, called Ouroboro Genesis, which operated as a federated network with the majority of the node managed by the Cardano Foundation. Therefore, any block rewards generated during this initial phase were burned (no inflation during Byron).

The Byron era also saw the delivery of the Daedalus wallet, IOHK's official desktop wallet for ADA, as well as Yoroi, a light wallet built by Emurgo for quick transactions and day-to-day use.

Shelley will introduce the Cardano's proposed Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus layer, enabling users to contribute to the transaction validation process either directly or via delegation, in exchange for staking rewards. The upgrade also marks a notable step forward on the path towards decentralization as the current mainnet operated as a federated network managed primarily by the Cardano Foundation.

The a href=" "full rollout of Shelley/a could take a month to reach completion. Cardano plans to release a Shelley mainnet candidate chain around Jun. 23 before releasing the code to mainnet on the Jun. 30 target date. The official hard fork that will activate Shelley’s changes could arrive on Jul. 29, which would give network participants enough time to upgrade their nodes and wallets. According to the roadmap, Cardano will begin paying out staking rewards around Aug. 18.