Ethereum Developers Delay the Security Enhancing Dencun Hardfork, Here’s Why

On Thursday, October 26, Ethereum client developers confirmed that they won’t be implementing the Dencun upgrade before the year-end. This is because the developer clients for the consensus layer and the execution layer are at odds among themselves. The delay in the developments might put further pressure on the Ethereum price.

Developers Cite Consensus Issues

Last month, the Ethereum developers launched the new Holešky testnet behind schedule. Also, the general consensus was that thoroughly testing the upgrade by the time the December holidays arrived was highly unlikely.

During yesterday’s All Core Developers call the consensus seemed to align with the viewpoint of the pseudonymous Prysm developer, Potuz. He asserted, “There is no way we are implementing a mainnet fork in 2023.”

He highlighted the persistent consensus issues that had emerged on the ten developer networks (devnets) established to test the upgrade over the past few months, emphasizing that “not a single one of them has gone smoothly.”

Ethereum clients are divided into two primary categories: those responsible for the execution layer and those managing the consensus layer.

In contrast to the consensus teams, the execution layer client teams reported that they are well-prepared for the upcoming testnets.

“We are in a pretty good place, a lot of things are also on Master now,” stated Lightclient, a Geth developer, referring to the main digital workspace for the Go Ethereum project, where code, files, and revision history are stored.

This week marked the launch of Devnet 10, with plans for the execution clients to transition to a broader test on the Goerli testnet. However, Prysm’s Potuz expressed his reservations about this idea.

“I’m definitely not comfortable at all having a full client fork on Goerli,” he remarked. “I see very significant and profound changes still being implemented in the branch,” he added, referring to Prysm, the software that currently powers 45% of the consensus layer clients.

About the Ethereum Dencun Upgrade

To ensure the security of the Ethereum scaling improvement called Proto-Danksharding, the Dencun upgrade utilizes advanced cryptography techniques.

The KZG Ceremony involved multiple participants, each contributing a secret and performing computations to merge it with previous inputs. This process leads to the creation of a “structured reference string” (SRS), a critical component for the KZG Commitments cryptographic scheme, which is integral to Proto-Danksharding.

The final result of this collaborative effort is integrated into the upgrade. As long as at least one honest participant is involved in the ceremony, the entire setup remains secure. After months of gathering contributions, a total of 141,416 participants ensured a high level of security.

On the other hand, Ethereum scaling project Scroll has been doing well and recently clocked more than $15 million in DeFi TVL.