Cardano development company Input Output and the Cardano Foundation have submitted a proposal for an update to upgrade the Cardano pre-production environment to protocol V8, which will take effect on February 11, 2023 at 08:00. Input Output stated that this upgrade will bring new encryption primitives to Cardano, encouraging better interoperability with Plutus and secure cross-chain DApp development. This environment will allow the community to continue the final phase of integration and upgrade testing before the countdown to the SECP upgrade on mainnet on February 14th. Examples of SECPs (cryptographic primitives) include Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and Schnorr signatures. These allow users to verify the integrity of specific signed hash data. After the new cryptographic primitives are implemented, Plutus will be able to easily verify transactions from other blockchains using the ECDSA and Schnorr standards.