Ethereum, first testnet introduction target for next major upgrade “Denkun” is January | CoinDesk JAPAN (CoinDesk Japan)

Ethereum developers are accelerating the testing process for the next upgrade, Dencun. Denkun is a major milestone expected next year, increasing data storage capacity through a new process known as “protodunk sharding.”

During their biweekly conference call on the 21st, developers discussed setting a January 17th goal to introduce Denkun to the Goerli testnet. Denkun is a long-awaited upgrade that enables “protodunk sharding” to scale blockchains by reducing fees on layer 2 rollups by increasing space for “blobs” of data.

“We’re pretty clear that if we find a big problem or something weird happens before then, we can cancel at any time,” Tim Beiko, head of protocol support at the Ethereum Foundation, said on a conference call. This means publishing a blog post about the fork during the week of January 8th, which will give us at least a week’s time for updates.”

Denkun was originally targeted for Q4 2023, but was pushed back to 2024 due to the engineering complexity of the upgrade.

The developers also discussed a draft schedule for upgrades on Denkun’s testnet. We aim to deploy it to Sepolia, another testnet, on January 31st and Holesky on February 7th, followed by the mainnet around the end of February. The developers cautioned that this schedule is subject to change depending on the results of the testnet fork.

Denkun is the first major upgrade since Shapella earlier this year, which implemented the ability to withdraw staked Ethereum (ETH) from the blockchain.

｜Translation and editing: Rinan Hayashi
｜Image: Ethereum Foundation researcher Danclad Feist (Bradley Keoun)
｜Original text: Ethereum Developers Target January for First Testnet Deployment of Next Big Upgrade, ‘Dencun’