According to a statement from the research and development company IOHK on Friday, Cardano’s first fully public Alonzo testnet has entered the “purple” phase.

Cardano in the Purple Phase

The new phase – previously “blue” and “white” – marks an important step in the introduction of smart contacts on the largest proof-of-stake blockchain.

The Alonzo Purple Testnet is completely public, which means that all members of the Plutus Pioneer Program, all operators of stock pools and exchanges can participate.

In contrast, Alonzo Blue and Alonzo White are limited to 50 users and 500 users, respectively.

IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson stated that Cardano will begin systematically adopting cryptocurrency exchanges.

The exact date of the hard fork combiner event will be announced in mid-August, according to Fxcryptonews.

According to the deployment strategy originally announced by IOHK at the end of May, the Alonzo hard fork is to be deployed in the mainnet after several partial phases at the beginning of September.

IOHK is currently deciding on the main candidates for the nodes that will be launched during the HFC event.

Alonzo will be the last phase of the Goguen era of Cardano and should enable the writing of smart contracts on the blockchain in the programming language Plutus.