Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade set for launch in 2024, details here

Journalist

Posted: December 23, 2023

• Ethereum developers target January for the first testnet deployment.
• Progress made on the network increased, gas usage surged.

Ethereum [ETH] developers intensify testing for the upcoming Dencun upgrade, a significant milestone anticipated next year, introducing increased data storage capacity through the implementation of a process termed “proto-danksharding.”

More updates and upgrades

In a biweekly call on 21st December, developers revealed their target date of 17th January for the Goerli test network to undergo the Dencun upgrade, to enhance layer 2 rollup efficiency and expand blockchain scalability.

Tim Beiko, protocol support lead at the Ethereum Foundation, noted the possibility of cancellation in the event of major issues before the set date.

Last 2023 AllCoreDevs call about to kick off 🫡

Agenda: https://t.co/jVzStnpnmZ
Stream: https://t.co/pT6x13i7nD

Will recap here later today https://t.co/YDWpJbtOma

— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) December 21, 2023

Moreover, the Dencun upgrade, initially slated for Q4 2023, was rescheduled to 2024 due to the intricate engineering aspects. Developers outlined a tentative timeline for Dencun testing, intending to run through Sepolia on 31st January.

New folks, new forks

Additionally, the Goerli Shadow Fork took place with a network configuration involving 300 nodes distributed across North America, Europe, India, and Australia.

The fork proceeded smoothly, and post-Dencun, the network achieved a 99% participation rate. The term “participation rate” refers to the percentage of nodes that successfully adopted the changes introduced by the fork.

Once stability was established, teams initiated a network spamming exercise with blobs, aiming for an average of 4 per block, but the network stabilized around 3 as planned.

The introduction of blobs increased the network’s bandwidth usage by approximately 200 kbps, shifting from an average of 700 to 900 kbps.

Notably, 95% of blobs propagated in less than 2 seconds, with an average propagation time below 500 milliseconds.

How is ETH doing?

The news is likely to boost confidence within the Ethereum community. Moreover, it could potentially attract more users and projects to leverage the upgraded platform.

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At press time, ETH was trading at $2,315.75 and its price had grown by 4.15% in the last 24 hours. The overall interest in the network remained high during this period.

This was shown by the consistent gas usage on the Ethereum network. Coupled with that, the overall NFT trades occurring on the Ethereum network had also grown.

Source: Santiment