 
 
Cardano has launched a new update designed to significantly improve speed and lower transaction costs, outperforming other leading blockchains by a country mile. Dubbed Hydra Node 1.0.0, the update is considered a foundational baseline with the development team disclosing plans to build new features and optimizations.
Cardano Unveils Hydra To Turbocharge Network
Cardano has released Hydra Node v1.0.0, a production-ready layer-2 protocol leaning on off-chain Hydra Heads to process transactions at previously unseen levels. According to the announcement, Hydra will enable Cardano to process over 650,000 transactions per second.
At optimal capacity, early tests have revealed that Hydra is able to process up to 1 million transactions per second. Designed by Input Output, the new update will proceed toward real-world deployment, with the team expressing confidence in Hydra’s superiority over rival blockchains.
In terms of real-world use cases, Hydra will support low-cost operations for DeFi on Cardano, integrating with future zero-knowledge proofs. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has predicted the update to gain significant traction among users, tipping Hydra to “have an awesome 2026”
“This release represents our intention to continue to support our Hydra Head protocol implementation into the production environment,” read the announcement. “We believe we’ve built a strong product for others to build on, and we will continue to work on adding powerful new features, showcasing Hydra’s capability, and addressing user issues.”
 
In addition to the Hydra release, Cardano rolled out a raft of updates to improve the scope of its offering. Right off the bat, the new updates will now allow partial deposits, with key improvements to the Hydra API servers and bug fixes for incremental commits and decommits.
Meanwhile, Cardano developer Sebastien Guillemot has revealed information about Starstream, a proposed zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVVM) for the network. Guillemot disclosed that Starstream will be live in 2026, hinting that the offering will have quantum resistance upon launch.
“Privacy-preserving UTXO smart contracts, production-ready by next year,” said Guillemot. “That’s our goal with Starstream, and the whole team is working hard to achieve it.”
Amid the buzz around network improvements, ADA price has braved the broader cryptocurrency market decline to gain nearly 1%. At press time, ADA is trading at $0.71 while the global cryptocurrency market capitalization risks slipping below the $3.5 trillion mark.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/cardano-unleashes-hydra-1-0-to-outpace-rival-blockchains-with-1-million-tps/
