Ethereum's development team has scheduled the Dencun upgrade, introducing the advanced "proto-danksharding" to enhance network efficiency, following a recent developers' meeting.
In a significant move for the Ethereum network, developers have earmarked March 13 as the date for the Dencun upgrade, a major step forward in blockchain technology, as decided during a bi-weekly coordination call this Thursday. This upgrade, featuring the eagerly anticipated "proto-danksharding," aims at streamlining transactions on Ethereum's layer-2 networks by offering specialized data storage solutions.
This announcement was made in the wake of the successful deployment of Dencun to the Holesky testnet, marking a smooth transition across all three test networks.
"It's great to see years worth of effort finally being scheduled for Ethereum mainnet," Parithosh Jayanthi, a devops engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, expressed his enthusiasm to CoinDesk via Telegram.
The implementation of Dencun on Ethereum's live network is scheduled to activate at the precise moment the blockchain hits slot 8626176, predicted to be at 13:55 UTC on March 13.
For this update to officially proceed, it requires confirmation from the developers and formal ratification on GitHub, the collaborative platform for software developers.
This Dencun update is set to introduce a groundbreaking transaction category known as “proto-danksharding.” This feature is designed to significantly lower transaction costs for rollups by utilizing data “blobs” for efficient data storage.
Improving Ethereum's Data Handling
The update is also aimed at reducing the costs associated with data availability on the Ethereum network, potentially enhancing the appeal of projects such as Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA.
To ensure a seamless transition to the mainnet, the development team has conducted a series of tests culminating in the recent successful testnet deployment.
Proto-danksharding represents the initial phase towards achieving “danksharding,” a key scalability solution that Ethereum developers are keen to implement.
The confirmation of the March 13 date for Dencun indicates a slight postponement from the original late 2023 timeline, attributed to unforeseen technical challenges, pushing the upgrade to early 2024.
Looking ahead, the Ethereum team is already plotting the next phase of network enhancements with the Prague/Electra hard fork, which may introduce “Verkle Trees.” This innovative data structure aims to facilitate the storage of extensive data volumes on nodes while maintaining block validation capabilities.