Ethereum Next Chapter: Dencun Upgrade To Launch On March 13

The much-awaited and anticipated upcoming technological upgrade known as the Ethereum Dencun Upgrade has now been set for launch on the network’s mainnet in a month.

Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Goes Live In A Month

After Dencun was successfully deployed to the Holesky testnet on February 7, ETH developers decided on the date and shared the information on Geth v1.13.12, also called Edolus. The Ethereum Dencun upgrade, which will introduce Proto-Danksharding and blobs, will be unveiled on March 13.

Proto-Danksharding aims to increase the amount of block space on Ethereum layer 2s by implementing blob-carrying transactions. Transactions that carry blobs are akin to standard transactions, except they also carry an additional piece of data.

According to a previous report, proto-Danksharding will reduce the number of blobs in each block to 16, with each being no larger than 128 kilobytes (KB). As a result, it is anticipated to increase block space by roughly 2 megabytes (MB).

The additional data space will allow both optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups to post commitments to transaction data on-chain. In addition, it will provide the actual data in blobs rather than ‘calldata.’

The Dencun upgrade marks the most major update Ethereum has introduced since the Shanghai upgrade. The aforementioned Proto-Danksharding often known as ETH improvement Proposal 4844 (EIP-4844) is considered to be the cause of the excitement around the model.

Notably, the upgrade on the mainnet will take place precisely at slot 8626176 on the previously stated date. However, developers’ approval and GitHub confirmation are still needed for the date.

They are expected to publish their final versions of Ethereum clients that include Dencun functionality by February 22. As a result, validators will have just two weeks to install the updated client versions on their nodes.

When the Dencun model is finished, the Ethereum network’s capabilities will be improved. More specifically, the network would be anticipated to process between 30,000 and 100,000 Transactions Per Second (TPS).

Additionally, it should reduce gas prices, which have been a significant bottleneck to the network since it was introduced, processing between 13 and 60 TPS.

Dencun Deployed On the Holesky Testnet

Dencun Upgrade is currently on the Holesky testnet, which went live on Wednesday, February 7. Christine Kim, a core developer, took to X (formerly Twitter) to confirm the launch on the testnet.

According to Kim, it will be the final one to be released on the testnet before the mainnet is activated. Before now, Dencun was deployed on the Sepolia Testnet in January before transitioning to Holesky.

When ETH upgrades are made, they undergo multiple testnets in order to confirm that they are ready to be launched on the mainnet. This is because every testnet is designed to replicate conditions on the mainnet. Due to this, developers can simply look out for bugs and errors, which are then fixed before they are made available to users and the public.

Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com