Documentation

This represents the major component of the Cardano protocol version. The ledger can only supply the major component of the protocol version, not the minor component, and Plutus should only need to care about the major component anyway. This relies on careful understanding between us and the ledger as to what this means.

Shelley era was introduced in protocol version 2.0

Allegra era was introduced in protocol version 3.0

Mary era was introduced in protocol version 4.0

Alonzo era was introduced in protocol version 5.0

The Vasil HF introduced the Babbage era and Plutus V2

Valentine was an intra-era HF where builtin functions VerifyEcdsaSecp256k1Signature and VerifySchnorrSecp256k1Signature were enabled.

The Chang HF introduced the Conway era and Plutus V3

The Chang+1 HF will be an intra-era HF where some new builtin functions are introduced in Plutus V2 and V3.

The set of protocol versions that are "known", i.e. that have been released and have actual differences associated with them.

This is a placeholder for when we don't yet know what protocol version will be used for something. It's a very high protocol version that should never appear in reality. New builtins should always be given this protocol version until they've been finalised.

We should not assign names to future protocol versions until it's confirmed that they are correct, otherwise we could accidentally associate something with the wrong protocol version.