Ethereum Dencun Upgrade: Everything You Need To Know

After weeks of continuous hikes, Ethereum has surged over the $4K mark, an impressive milestone for the coin. Ethereum Price is currently trading at $4,065.08, aiming for the ATH value of $4,891.70, which is just 16% higher than the current one. It is just a start for the coin, as there’s more coming with the Ethereum Dencum upgrade.

This blog covers everything you should know about the most awaited Dencum upgrade.

Introducing Ethereum Dencun Upgrade

Ethereum Deneb-Cancun or Dencun is a network upgrade that is taking place today to improve the user experience and help in lowering transaction fees for users. With this, some Layer-2 blockchain users will be relieved with the highly charged transaction fees.

In an effort to prioritize scalability, efficiency, and security, the Ethereum network has opted for  Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) like EIP-4844, which focuses on proto-danksharding.

This upgrade will focus on three main objectives, beginning with improving the scalability so that a large volume of transactions can be handled easily. Secondly, to offer a reduced gas cost for the Ethereum users. And lastly, it simplifies the integration of Layer 2 solutions and enhances Ethereum’s dApps and Smart Contract capabilities.

What’s Changing After This Ethereum Upgrade?

Compared to the layer-1 blockchain, the Layer-2 network offers better transaction speed and lower gas fees, but they depend on Ethereum for security and data storage. To scale up the transaction volume, the layer-2 transactions are bundled up by the rollups.

After this Ethereum Dencun upgrade, this information will be stored on the base layer with the help of a ‘blob’ in a temporary way, rather than permanently, which used to happen before. It is to decrease costs and enhance the efficiency of the platform. This blob data will be available for around 18 days.

Polymarket is predicting that blobs (~125 kB) will cost ~0.001 ETH.

Today, 125 kB calldata costs ~30 gwei per gas * 16 gas per byte * 125000 gas ~= 0.06 ETH

And if you think polymarket's guess that blobs will be 60x cheaper is over-optimistic, you can use the market to hedge! pic.twitter.com/vUwJInNhCP

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 3, 2024

Any layer 2 data that gets stored on Ethereum costs around 16 gas, but now it will decrease to 1 per byte of data stored, accounting for a 96% reduction in cost. This gas fee relaxation is offered for the layer-2 solutions only, the mainnet or layer-1 solution won’t be benefited from it.

9 Major EIPs of  Ethereum Dencun Upgrade

EIPs	Properties
EIP-4844 (Proto-danksharding)	Introducing “Blob” for better store of transactions Increase efficiency of Layer-2 Solutions.
EIP-1153	Temporarily store data in Smart Contracts Reducing storage data loads because of the permanent storing
EIP-6780	Restricts SELFDESTRUCT function of Smart Contracts
EIP-5656	Simplifying MEMORY AMANGENET IN THE EVM Efficient Smart Contract processing
EIP-4788	Access to Beacon Chain’s Block Roots Direct Access of Smart Contract to Network Consensus State without relying on external oracles Improve Cross-Chain Communication
EIP-7045	Maximum Slot increment
EIP-7044	Management of the Validator’s exit process
EIP-7514	Limiting the churn limit to 8 per epoch for Ethereum Validator Activation
EIP-7516	Introduction to BLOBBASETEE Opcode Management and prediction of blob cost efficiently

Conclusion

Ethereum Dencun chain is the next prominent upgrade after the Ethereum Merge. It is to streamline the scalability and gas fee issues on the network for the layer-2 solutions. Though it won’t be able to solve all the ongoing problems with Ethereum, it will play a prominent role in improving the scalability of Ethereum.