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### Token Locking: Shelley Protocol Update

*Token locking* is a new feature that is being added to the Shelley protocol to enable various kinds of smart contract use cases, including creating and transacting with multi-asset tokens, as well as establishing support for the Voltaire voting mechanism. Token locking is the process of ‘reserving’ a certain amount of assets and committing not to dispose of them for a specified period of time.
*Token locking* is a new feature that is being added to the Shelley protocol to enable various kinds of smart contract use cases, including creating and transacting with multi-asset tokens, as well as establishing support for the Voltaire voting mechanism. Token locking is the process of ‘reserving’ a certain amount of assets and committing not to dispose of them for a specified period of time. This feature is enabled in the *Allegra* (token locking) upgrade and will allow recording of that a specific token is being used for a certain purpose during the *Mary* (multi-asset support) upgrade. The *token* can represent an item that is accounted for by the blockchain ledger, including ada, but soon will include other custom token types.

Token locking is used to record that a specific token is being used for a certain purpose. The *token* can represent an item that is accounted for by the blockchain ledger, including ada, but soon will include other custom token types.
**Token locking use cases**

Support for token locking is crucial to enable complex deal settlement and funds accounting. It can be used in the following scenarios:

+ **Contractual agreement** - when someone enters into a contractual agreement, to sell a property, for instance, it is important to promise that this property will not be sold to another person – only to the person who actually pays the money. In this case, the token can represent the property and the ‘promise’ – the actual token locking. If the property is sold to a different third party, then the contract becomes void.
+ **Vote registry** - within the Voltaire voting mechanism, token locking will enable users to lock a certain amount of their tokens to represent their voting rights. Ada holders who participate in the voting process will be required to ‘lock’ their tokens. This will represent their voting rights, according to the stake that they hold, and eliminate the risks associated with scenarios such as double-counting votes, allocating more votes than possible, contradictory votes, or vote duplication.
+ **Multi-asset tokens** - Cardano will soon provide support for multi-asset tokens, where the ledger will support the creation and use of multiple custom token types, besides ada. Token locking will allow ada tokens to be ‘locked’, for example, to create another custom asset of equivalent value.

**How does it affect the community?**

The introduction of token locking will not negatively affect general ada holders, since wallets such as Daedalus and Yoroi will update automatically without requiring any action from ada holders.

All the nodes that are involved in the network maintenance will have to ‘agree’ on this transition to a new protocol, that is, they will need to reach a consensus. Stake pool operators and exchanges that are running nodes will simply have to download the new version of the node software and verify its operation on the Cardano testnet.
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