Cardano has produced the first block for its Shelley mainnet

• The first block for Cardano's upcoming "Shelley" mainnet has been created.
• Shelley is expected to turn Cardano into a fully decentralized proof-of-stake network.

Cardano has noted that its crypto upgrade Shelley has produced its first block. Shelley is designed to convert Cardano into a fully decentralized proof-of-stake network. It allows users who hold Cardano’s native crypto ADA to help power the network and earn rewards. 

Referencing the Lord of the Rings, Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK, the company building Cardano, tweeted:

Meanwhile in Cardano land, a Wizard arrives precisely when he means to! -@IOHK_Charles

Hoskinson said that Shelley is in an early “friends and family” testing stage and it would be rolled out in phases. First comes the closed-test phase, which is now complete with the mining of the first block. This will be followed by a “hybrid phase,” which will allow users to upgrade from Bryon to Shelley. Later, the mainnet proper will ship, allowing anyone to stake their coins on the network, locking them up as collateral and earning rewards.

According to IOHK, Cardano will be the most decentralized blockchain in existence once Shelley becomes completely functional. 

Come the end of the Shelley era, we expect Cardano to be 50-100 times more decentralized than other large blockchain networks, with the incentives scheme designed to reach equilibrium around 1,000 stake pools.

Current prominent blockchain networks are often controlled by less than 10 mining pools, exposing them to serious risk of compromise by malicious behavior – something which Cardano avoids with a system inherently designed to encourage greater decentralization.