The Dencun upgrade for Ethereum, featuring “proto-danksharding,” has ended its final testing phase on the Holesky testnet and is now awaiting deployment on the mainnet.
Data indicates that the Dencun upgrade was forked on Holesky around 11:35 am UTC on Feb. 7, with Nethermind announcing the milestone shortly after. This upgrade is anticipated to reduce transaction costs significantly on Ethereum’s layer-2 networks.
Holesky 🤝 blobs
Dencun is live on the Holesky testnet! Nethermind nodes are green 🟢Mainnet, you’re next 🔜 pic.twitter.com/ZoQqxX4jnb
— Nethermind (@NethermindEth) February 7, 2024
Dencun will introduce proto-danksharding through Ethereum Improvement Proposal-4844, with its key component being “blobs,” allowing Ethereum nodes to temporarily store and access large off-chain data sets.
Philippe Schommers, head of infrastructure at Gnosis, previously suggested to Cointelegraph that implementing Dencun on the Ethereum mainnet could potentially reduce rollup costs by up to 10 times.
A decision regarding the mainnet deployment date of Dencun is expected during an AllCoreDevs call on Feb. 8, with Ethereum enthusiast Anthony Sassano indicating a potential deployment window in early to mid-March.
Combining elements from the Cancun and Deneb upgrades, Dencun is poised to become Ethereum’s most significant upgrade since the Shapella upgrade in April last year, which enabled the unstaking of Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain for the first time since the proof-of-stake chain’s launch in December 2020.
While Cancun primarily focuses on network scalability at the execution layer, EIP-4844 takes centre stage, accompanied by EIP-1153, EIP-4788, and EIP-6780 as part of the upgrade. On the other hand, Deneb aims to enhance Ethereum’s consensus layer.
In my continuing quest to document the history of Ethereum improvements in song, I present:
“Dencun Finalized On Holesky”
collect:
songaday [dot] world [slash] 5516 pic.twitter.com/lL04wcfalq— 16 years of song a day (@songadaymann) February 7, 2024
Before its deployment on Holesky, Dencun underwent testing on the Goerli and Sepolia testnets on Jan. 17 and Jan. 30, respectively. However, the deployment to Goerli experienced a four-hour delay due to a bug in Prysm, Ethereum’s proof-of-stake client, which hindered the testnet from finalising the upgrade.
Nebojsa Urosevic, a founder of Ethereum development platform Tenderly, highlighted the importance of multiple clients and testnets, stating that they serve as safeguards against such issues.
