In a recent announcement, the Ethereum (ETH) Foundation revealed that the highly anticipated Dencun network upgrade had been successfully activated on all testnets.

The upgrade, scheduled to go live on the Ethereum mainnet on March 13, 2024, marks a significant milestone in the protocol’s efforts to enhance scalability and reduce user transaction costs.

Ethereum’s Latest Milestone

The Dencun upgrade, following the successful Shapella upgrade of last year, introduces several notable changes aimed at improving the Ethereum network’s efficiency and capacity. 

One key feature is the introduction of temporary data blobs through Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844, affectionately known as “protodanksharding.” This addition is expected to reduce layer-2 transaction fees, making Ethereum more accessible and cost-effective for users.

Blobs minimize storage and processing requirements by caching the necessary data for short-term transaction verification, further enhancing the network’s transactional capabilities.

As announced, these features are paramount in supporting the growing ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) and accommodating the number of users on the Ethereum platform.

Urgent Update Required

To ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded mainnet, the Ethereum Foundation has issued specifications for the community, particularly for stakeholders and node operators. Users are advised to update their node’s execution and consensus layer clients to the specific versions outlined by the Foundation. 

Both the beacon node and validator client should be updated to ensure compatibility with the Dencun upgrade. Failure to participate in the upgrade by using an outdated Ethereum client would result in being stuck on an incompatible chain, unable to send Ether, or operating on the post-Dencun Ethereum network.

The Dencun upgrade initially launched on the Sepolia testnet in January 2024, following its successful deployment on the Goerli testnet. According to the official statement, this upgrade aligns with the network’s broader strategy to address scalability challenges and improve the protocol’s overall performance. 

Once fully implemented, the Dencun upgrade is expected to significantly increase ETH’s transaction processing capacity, potentially enabling the network to handle over 100,000 transactions per second. 

Related Reading: SEC Vs. Do Kwon: Trial Will Commence In Absence Of Terra Founder

Ultimately, the Foundation unveiled that “Dencun” for this upgrade follows Ethereum’s tradition of using star names for consensus and Devcon city names for execution layer upgrades. “Dencun” is a combination of “Deneb,” a prominent first magnitude star in the constellation Cygnus, and “Cancun,” the location of Devcon 3.

ETH, the second-largest cryptocurrency in the market, is currently trading at $3,242, reflecting a 3% increase in the past 24 hours and an impressive surge of over 42% in the past 30 days.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com