The tool is the first in a planned suite of products. Each Hydra Head works as an off-chain “mini ledger” shared between a small group of participants, helping speed up transactions while lowering fees significantly.

🐲 0.10.0 is out!

After demonstrating Hydra heads on the Cardano mainnet in recent monthly review sessions, we have released the first mainnet compatible version of hydra-node today.

Check out the full release notes over here:https://t.co/Kl3KTyVnSX
— Sebastian Nagel (@ch1bo_) May 11, 2023

Developers can use Hydra Heads to add specialized, complex decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols on top of Cardano, according to the technical documentatoin.

The node’s release is the latest of several DeFi-focused upgrades on Cardano this year. January saw the launch of Cardano-based decentralized stablecoin djed, and in February, Cardano developer IOG proposed a way of improving cross-chain transactions.

Cardano's native ada (ADA) token is little changed in the past 24 hours, outperforming the broader crypto market which fell 3.3%, according to CoinGecko data.

Cardano Tech DeFi On-chain Data

Shaurya Malwa

Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis. Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM, BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA. He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome, Trader Joe, and SUN.