Ethereum Foundation Affirms Dencun Upgrade Mainnet Launch Timeline

Amid the growing anticipation for the Ethereum Dencun Upgrade, the Ethereum Foundation has shared a new update regarding the highly anticipated event.

Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Launch Date Set as March 13

In a blog post, the Ethereum Foundation confirmed that the upcoming Dencun upgrade has already been activated on all testnets successfully. As such, it is now ready for deployment on the mainnet at epoch 269568. According to an earlier announcement made a few weeks ago, the deployment date remains unchanged, implying that bugs and code stabilizing has been recorded as expected. 

The Ethereum Dencun upgrade was designed to pass through three testnets including Goerli testnet, Sepolia testnet, and Holesky testnet. It was activated on the first two testnets on January 17 and January 30 respectively. 

Holesky happens to be the last testnet and was expected to simulate the Dencun upgrade. Precisely, it was projected that if nothing goes wrong on the Holesky testnet then no challenge would be seen during the deployment on the mainnet. On February 7, the Ethereum Dencun upgrade was finally implemented on the Holesky testnet. 

During the deployment on the Goerli testnet, the implementation of EIP-4844 was highlighted. This involved the introduction of a novel transaction mechanism called ephemeral blobs, or as it’s colloquially known, “Proto-Danksharding”. This is an approach that allows Ethereum nodes to temporarily store and access off-chain data, effectively mitigating the strain on storage resources.

Markedly, the introduction of Proto-Danksharding is expected to contribute to the reduction of transaction fees for Decentralized Applications (dApps), especially as it has to do with Layer-2 rollup chains. Apart from this feature, the Ethereum Dencun upgrade will come with certain adjustments to the network’s consensus and execution layers.

These changes are embedded in some specifications including EIP-1153: Transient storage opcodes, EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVMEIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions, and a host of others. 

Ethereum Foundation Provided Clarity Through FAQs

There are certain concerns about the much talked about Ethereum Dencun upgrade and the Ethereum Foundation has offered some explanation to put potential users’ minds at ease. 

Notably, some users are concerned about the actions that they need to take in preparation for the upgrade, however, the team noted that no effort was required of them following the mainnet launch of the upgrade unless their wallet provider says otherwise.

Stakers are expected to update their node’s execution and consensus layer clients to the versions listed in the blog post. This is in addition to ensuring that both their beacon node and validator client are updated.