Cardano has achieved a significant advancement in its scalability roadmap with the official release of Hydra Node version 1.0.0.
The release, which was recently unveiled by Cardano’s scaling team on GitHub, marks the transition of the Layer-2 scaling solution from experimental development to production readiness.
Hydra’s Core Features
For context, Hydra is an L2 scaling solution built on the Cardano blockchain. It operates through a protocol known as “Hydra Heads,” which allows participants to conduct transactions off-chain without adding congestion to the main Cardano network. This design significantly boosts transaction speed, scalability, and overall efficiency.
Often described as Cardano’s side-chain for scaling, Hydra is designed to enhance transaction speed, cost efficiency, and scalability across the blockchain. Notably, the upgrade also unlocks new possibilities for decentralized applications and real-time payments.
Last year, the Hydra system demonstrated the capability of processing more than 1 million transactions per second (TPS) during a Doom gaming test. Consequently, analysts noted its integration with Cardano would enhance the network’s ability to handle large-scale transactions, while keeping fees low.
New Updates
According to the team, the newly released version of Hydra comes with several features, refinements, and bug fixes.
It enables transactions to be directly submitted to Hydra Heads, allows partial deposit support, fixes the outdated information issue within the TUI, and improves API response and HTTP API status codes, among other things.
Other notable updates include enhancing Hydra’s capability with Cardano node 10.4.1, cardano-cli 10.8.0.0, and mithril 2524.0. The team also noted ongoing work to resolve the remaining “partial fanout” issue, which represents the biggest known challenge for Hydra. This challenge affects the spread of data across the system.
Despite this, the team celebrated the release of Hydra 1.0.0 as one that provides a solid foundation for Cardano’s broader scalability roadmap.
Cardano Founder Celebrates Launch of Hydra Node 1.0.0
Meanwhile, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has spoken highly of Hydra, highlighting its ability to handle large amounts of transactions at an incredibly low cost.
In January, when Solana suffered a network congestion issue, Hoskinson emphasized that upgrades like Hydra could handle such problems without any disruption or additional cost to builders.
He recently celebrated the launch of Hydra 1.0.0 and expressed optimism about its future, noting that he expects the scaling solution to achieve significant progress in 2026.
Hydra is going to have an awesome 2026 https://t.co/9N3R9YIH6K
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 9, 2025
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