- The Ethereum (ETH) Dencun upgrade was finally triggered at 1:55 PM UTC and completed at 2:10 PM UTC on March 13.
- This hard fork in the ecosystem of the second-largest blockchain in the world next to Bitcoin (BTC) is expected to be one of the most important evolutions of Ether in almost a year.
The Dencun upgrade is supposed to come as Ethereum 2.0, which is a whole new version of the blockchain. But during development, the vision of the powers that be in Ether decided to adopt a “rollup-centric roadmap” instead, which brings us to the version we have now.
The major update addresses the scalability problems encountered by layer-2 networks built on Ethereum. Most importantly it provides a provisional solution to the high gas fees on L2 and unlocks faster transactions within the chain.
The key feature of the upgrade is the introduction of “blobs,” which are separate areas within the blockchain for keeping data. Such a space exists outside the path of regular transactions, thus, driving down their costs.
Proto-Danksharding in the Ethereum Dencun Upgrade
The blobs are enabled via the proto-danksharding element of the Dencun upgrade. Through this, user transactions are bundled up within the blockchain and processed in batches upon entry to the mainnet. This procedure is also referred to as a rollup.
Upon the implementation of the upgrade through the EIP-4844 proposal, L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon will gain access to a near-zero fee and a more efficient way of posting data. In the end, users are set to benefit from these advantages with a significant reduction in transaction fees.
However, take note that this is only one of the series of upgrades planned for Ethereum. The long play involves the full execution of “sharding” that will break down the blockchain into smaller chains (mini-shards or mini-chains) to further drop the cost of processing transactions. So far, there’s no solid timeframe for this goal, but judging the present conditions, we may be years away from its complete realization.
DA Layers Leveraging on Proto-Danksharding
The proto-danksharding solution is anticipated to help data availability (DA) layers like Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail, too. Basically, these blockchains are charged with aiding networks to efficiently store their huge chunks of data for rollups and produce them as needed.
With the key feature of the Dencun upgrade, the data downloads by these entities could be made cheaper.