Source: Blockchain Knight
In a recent statement, the Ethereum (ETH) Foundation revealed that the highly anticipated Dencu network upgrade has been successfully activated on all testnets.
This upgrade is scheduled to be launched on the Ethereum mainnet on March 13, 2024. This upgrade is an important milestone in enhancing scalability and reducing user transaction costs.
Following last year’s successful Shapella upgrade, the Dencun upgrade introduces several notable changes designed to increase the efficiency and capacity of the Ethereum network.
One of the key features is the introduction of temporary data blobs through Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844, affectionately known as "protodanksharding".
This new addition is expected to reduce second-layer transaction fees, making Ethereum more convenient and cost-effective for users.
Blobs further enhance the network’s transaction capabilities by caching the data required for short-term transaction verification, minimizing storage and processing requirements.
As announced, these features are critical to supporting the growing ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) and accommodating the number of users on the Ethereum platform.
To ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded mainnet, the Ethereum Foundation has released specifications to the community, specifically stakeholders and node operators.
At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation issued recommendations to users to update the execution layer and consensus layer clients of their nodes to the specific versions listed by the foundation.
Both beacon nodes and validator clients should be updated to ensure compatibility with Dencun upgrades.
If you use an outdated Ethereum client to participate in the upgrade, you will be stuck on an incompatible chain, unable to send ETH, or run on the Dencun upgraded Ethereum network.
The upgraded version of Dencun was initially launched on the Sepolia test network in January 2024 and has been successfully deployed on the Goerli test network.
According to an official statement, the upgrade is in line with the network’s broader strategy to address scalability challenges and improve the protocol’s overall performance.
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Once fully implemented, the Dencun upgrade is expected to significantly increase ETH’s transaction processing capabilities, allowing the network to potentially handle more than 100,000 transactions per second.
Finally, the foundation announced Dencun for this upgrade. This is also the tradition of Ethereum, that is, using the star name to indicate the consensus and the Devcon city name to indicate the execution layer upgrade.
Dencun is a combination of "Deneb", a prominent first-magnitude star in the constellation Cygnus, and "Cancun", the location of Devcon 3.