Since Ethereum transitioned from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) 18 months ago, the largest upgrade, “Dencun,” is set to launch on Wednesday night (13th) Taiwan time. Overseas blockchain media “CoinDesk” has outlined five things to know about this upgrade.
The Gasless Era of Ethereum
Dencun will make transactions on Ethereum Layer 2 super cheap – almost costless, to the point where almost all activities on Ethereum will move to these networks, and there may even be some projects or protocols that incentivize usage by covering the gas fees users would normally have to pay (cheaper than paying for marketing costs!).
Major Milestone
Dencun is the largest upgrade for Ethereum since the “Merge” in September 2022, and this upgrade is also one of the steps towards achieving Ethereum’s ultimate goal, which is to support hundreds of different Rollups and Layer 2 scaling solutions, eventually processing millions of transactions per second.
Long-Awaited
Dencun will introduce the “Proto-Danksharding” process, a concept that has been theorized for a long time (originally mentioned by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin in 2019), which will change the way Ethereum stores data.
Unlike the costly and computationally intensive practice of storing all data directly on the immutable execution layer of Ethereum mainnet, Dencun will introduce a new, temporary “blobs” data storage method, which is more cost-effective. While Blobs may sound like an informal term, they are actually a common concept in computer science, with similar data management Blobs in programming languages like JavaScript and Python.
Origin of Proto-Danksharding
Proto-Danksharding is named after two Ethereum researchers, Dankrad Feist and Proto Lambda, who proposed this change. This naming is apt because Proto-Danksharding is a necessary step towards the full implementation of Danksharding, which will further simplify the concept of data storage but will take several years to achieve.
Furthermore, while the term includes “Sharding,” whether Danksharding or Proto-Danksharding, it is not the traditional method in computer science of “sharding” or splitting a database into smaller parts, which is the original plan for Ethereum’s scalability. In a sense, Dencun’s introduction of Proto-Danksharding deviates significantly from Ethereum’s initial roadmap, but it was chosen because it is easier to implement.
Largest Ceremony in History
The first step in establishing Proto-Danksharding took place at the world’s largest Trusted Setup ceremony held in 2022. Named after multiple researchers (Aniket Kate, Gregory M. Zaverucha, and Ian Goldberg) who created a crucial component enabling Blobs to be stored on Ethereum, tens of thousands of people participated in the “KZG ceremony,” a way for the Ethereum community to collectively generate the secret random string data needed for proto-danksharding to operate.
Source:
CoinDesk
Dencun Upgrade Livestream
For more related content, refer to the articles in the “Ethereum Cancun Upgrade” feature.