The gradual roll-out of the Dencun upgrade continues within the Ethereum ecosystem — this time with no hiccups — as the multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) upgrade is activated on the Sepolia testnet.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, the Dencun network upgrade was activated on the Goerli testnet on Jan. 17, introducing several EIPs, including EIP-4844, which enables proto-danksharding, a highly anticipated improvement touted to reduce layer-2 transaction fees.
Related: Ethereum devs expect 10x lower rollup costs as Dencun upgrade hits testnets
Unlike the activation of Dencun on Goerli, which suffered a four-hour delay caused by a bug that prevented the testnet from finalizing the upgrade, Sepolia’s upgrade was carried out without incident on Jan. 30, as highlighted by Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano:
Dencun, the next Ethereum network upgrade, has now been activated on the Sepolia testnet and went off without a hitch!
— sassal.eth/acc (@sassal0x) January 31, 2024
Next up is the final testnet upgrade, Holesky, and if all goes well, we can expect Dencun to launch on mainnet sometime in March.
EIP-4844 is coming.
Galaxy Digital researcher Christine Kim suggested in an X post that the odds of the mainnet activation of Dencun were increasingly favorable but still dependent on the activation of the upgrade on Ethereum’s final Holesky testnet. The last testnet upgrade is scheduled for Feb. 7.
fwiw, based on how smoothly sepolia went today, id say odds of a mainnet activation for dencun in march is now 70%, up from 60%.
— Christine Kim (@christine_dkim) January 30, 2024
odds only get stronger if holesky upgrade next wednesday also goes smoothly! https://t.co/c5gV6NLrmL
Ethereum Foundation DevOps member Parithosh Jayanthi also highlighted the uneventful activation of Dencun on Sepolia in an X post.
Blobs are now flowing in Sepolia :D
— parithosh | (@parithosh_j) January 30, 2024
Uneventful testnet forks are the best ones! https://t.co/HTTVwYcytm pic.twitter.com/Al45RZz95B
The Dencun upgrade includes significant changes to Ethereum’s consensus and execution layers, as outlined in an official announcement from the Ethereum Foundation.
Related: Ethereum’s proto-danksharding to make rollups 10x cheaper
Dencun is set to significantly impact the cost of layer-2 scaling protocols within the Ethereum ecosystem. Proto-danksharding is aimed at reducing the cost of rollups, which typically batch transactions and data off-chain and submit computational proof to the Ethereum blockchain.
EIP-4844 will introduce data blobs that can be sent and attached to blocks. The data stored in blobs is not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and will be deleted after a certain time period, which is touted to drastically reduce transaction costs.
Happy birthday beacon chain!
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 2, 2021
Here's an updated roadmap diagram for where Ethereum protocol development is at and what's coming in what order.
(I'm sure this is missing a lot, as all diagrams are, but it covers a lot of the important stuff!) pic.twitter.com/puWP7hwDlx
Layer-2s stand to gain the most from EIP-4844, with these scaling protocols becoming an increasingly important part of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Following Ethereum’s shift to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism following the Merge in 2022, layer-2 networks are increasingly relied upon to provide fast, low-fee transactions for decentralized applications and Ethereum-based platforms. Their performance is also dependent on layer-1 upgrades like Dencun to decrease costs.
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