Breaking: Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Goes Live, ETH Price Sees Volatility

The Ethereum Dencun upgrade goes live on the Ethereum mainnet at epoch 269568 at 1:55 pm UTC and finalized at 14:10 UTC, activating blobs in blocks in just minutes. This marks another achievement for Ethereum developers and the community, after the last biggest upgrade — The Merge.

The word ‘Dencun’ made up of two words, ‘Cancun’ and ‘Deneb’, with Cancun being the name of the execution layer part of the upgrade and Deneb as the name of the consensus layer part of the upgrade.

Ethereum Dencun Upgrade

The Ethereum Dencun upgrade is a major advancement that will have a broader impact on the Ethereum ecosystem. The upgrade will finally deploy EIP-4844, also known as “proto-danksharding”, which significantly lowers L2 transaction costs. L2 blockchains such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon are going to benefit primarily from the upgrade.

The Dencun upgrade combines changes to both Ethereum’s consensus and execution layers: Ethereum developer unveils significant details about the next big thing in discussion in the crypto industry — blobs. The more use cases will have a high cost attached, but developers expect a cost reduction with time.

• EIP-1153: Transient storage opcodes
• EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVM
• EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions
• EIP-5656: MCOPY – Memory copying instruction
• EIP-6780: SELFDESTRUCT only in same transaction
• EIP-7044: Perpetually Valid Signed Voluntary Exits
• EIP-7045: Increase Max Attestation Inclusion Slot
• EIP-7514: Add Max Epoch Churn Limit
• EIP-7516: BLOBBASEFEE opcode

Ethereum developers Tim Beiko and Terence revealed that blobs are here in Ethereum blocks on mainnet. The first blob was recorded on slot 8626178, as per Beaconch.in data. Blobs persist in beacon nodes, not in the execution layer, so the required changes in the future will happen to the beacon node. It will enable the execution layer to work on other initiatives.

Blobs are short-lived making it easier to keep disk use manageable. This allows blobs to be priced cheaper than CALLDATA, which is stored in history forever.

Dencun went live, we've had blobs land in blocks on mainnet .oO 🎉

— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) March 13, 2024

EIP-4844 can bring Layer-2 fees down by 80% and enable Ethereum to remain competitive without sacrificing decentralization.

Also Read: Ethereum Dencun Upgrade: Everything You Need To Know

ETH Price to Rally?

ETH price fell under $4000 after the Dencun upgrade, with the price currently trading at $3,989. The 24-hour low and high are $3,831 and $4,083, respectively. Furthermore, the trading volume has increased by 20% in the last 24 hours, indicating a rise in interest among traders

Despite a slight drop in Ethereum price, the sentiment for $5,000 prevails as derivatives data shows strength. Ethereum futures and options open interests are at an all-time high. Deribit options data indicates calls for $4,500 and $5,000 strike prices before March 29.

Also Read: ETH Price Set for $5000 After Ethereum Dencun Upgrade: Derivatives Data