The Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Is Here
Apart from the recent developments around Bitcoin and potential Ethereum Spot ETFs in the US, the Ethereum Dencun upgrade is one of the most anticipated events of the year. This upgrade is expected to lay the foundation for a long-term solution to Ethereum's scalability challenges.
In this article, we will take a look at the most important changes expected to be introduced by this upgrade.
What Is Dencun?
Dencun is a major Ethereum upgrade and hard fork, which successfully went live on the Ethereum mainnet at approximately 13:55 UTC on March 13, 2024. Also known as Cancun-Deneb, it is a portmanteau of two separate Ethereum update names: Cancun and Deneb, which have since been combined into one release.
Interestingly, while Cancun refers to the improvements for Ethereum's execution layer, Deneb is focused on upgrading the blockchain's consensus layer. Initially, the two layers operated independently, but they have been running in parallel since the Merge, Ethereum’s most significant hard fork to date.
As the latest hard fork since the Shapella upgrade (also referred to as Shanghai), Dencun is expected to introduce many new changes for Ethereum users. These include optimised block space on the first layer, improved security, an enhanced staking experience, and reduced data storage costs, among other improvements.
However, Dencun's most substantial change is the introduction of proto-danksharding. The latter phrase refers to the prototype of danksharding technology, which seeks to enhance the network's scalability and throughput. To achieve this goal, proto-danksharding will make it cheaper for Layer 2 chains to store and retrieve off-chain data via Ethereum's mainnet. In summary:
An Overview of the Dencun Upgrade's Most Important Changes
Proto-Danksharding
Probably the most anticipated improvement of the Dencun upgrade, proto-danksharding will make transactions cheaper on Layer 2 rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism. Proto-danksharding is Ethereum's current iteration of danksharding technology that aims to address the blockchain's scalability challenges.
To enable proto-danksharding, EIP-4844 introduces blobs and blob-carrying transactions. Simply put, blobs allow L2 rollups to post records to Ethereum's mainnet with significant savings on gas costs.
It is less expensive to store data in blobs, as blob data is inaccessible for the EVM and Ethereum's execution layer. Instead, the execution layer can only access a reference to the blob's data. Only the blockchain's consensus layer can download and store the records within blobs and only for approximately 18 days.
Besides EIP-4844, Dencun also introduces EIP-7516, which allows smart contracts to get the value of the blob base fee. This way, rollup contracts can account for the usage costs of blob data in a trustless way while making possible the implementation of blob gas futures.
Optimised Storage and Memory Operations
With EIP-1153, developers will introduce the concept of transient storage to Ethereum. By using an empty storage slot, writing a value to it, and clearing the space within a single transaction, transient storage allows network participants to use storage temporarily while a transaction is executed.
This introduces a third type of storage to the Ethereum ecosystem besides permanent, long-term memory storage and temporary storage via short-term memory. Transient storage will function as the Ethereum Virtual Machine's (EVM) medium-term memory, enabling decentralised application (dApp) developers and users to take advantage of reduced gas fees for complex transactions.
At the same time, EIP-5656 comes with a new EVM instruction called MCOPY to enhance memory copying performance. After implementing the proposal, moving data to the Ethereum Virtual Machine will become more efficient, potentially decreasing gas costs for network participants.
SELFDESTRUCT
EIP-6780 will disempower SELFDESTRUCT, an old EVM opcode that was intended to be utilised by developers to remove code that has been deprecated or is no longer needed from Ethereum's state. But it currently has limited use and – as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin describes it – could "bring more harm than good" to the ecosystem.
Due to the above, developers decided to disempower SELFDESTRUCT in the Dencun upgrade, which will also assist in the future implementation of Verkle trees.
Staking
Dencun also has two staking-related changes. First, EIP-4788 will minimise the trust assumptions of staking pools and restaking arrangements. It is a complex upgrade in which the parent beacon block root is directly placed into each execution block.
Simply put, this introduces an oracle at the protocol level for Ethereum. In the future (once this EIP is merged), the update could eliminate the need to utilise a trust oracle solution to gain insights into Ethereum's consensus state.
Simultaneously, EIP-7044 proposes changes to improve users' staking experience by ensuring that validators' signed exits remain valid indefinitely. Before Dencun, its validity was limited to two forks.
Further Improvements
Besides the ones explored above, the Dencun upgrade introduces further improvements to the Ethereum ecosystem, including:
EIP-7045: EIP-7045 will expand the range of attestation slots from one epoch to two epochs (the current and the next epoch) and adjust the P2P gossip conditions accordingly.
EIP-7514: By capping the epoch churn limit, the maximum validator growth rate will be updated from an exponential to a linear increase.
The Next Step in Enhancing Ethereum's Scalability
Rollups play an integral part in scaling Ethereum, making Dencun the project's most important hard fork since the Merge.
With the introduction of proto-danksharding, this now paves the way for Ethereum's future scalability improvements such as the implementation of full danksharding, optimised data storage and memory operations, as well as cheaper rollup transactions.
To stay updated with the latest developments in the Ethereum ecosystem, follow the Ethereum Foundation on Twitter (X).
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