Ethereum's “Denkun” upgrade, target for mainnet introduction on March 13th | CoinDesk JAPAN

• Denkun is the biggest upgrade since April 2023 and is designed to reduce the cost of layer 2 transactions and data availability on the Ethereum blockchain.
• On the 8th, Denkun successfully implemented the third of three testnets.

Ethereum developers set a target date of March 13th for the long-awaited Dencun upgrade during their biweekly coordination conference call on the 8th. The countdown to the biggest upgrade since April 2023 has officially begun.

Decided the day after the last successful testnet

Denkun's upgrade is primarily known for its “Protodunk Sharding” feature. This feature is said to reduce the cost of transactions on the Layer 2 network built on the Ethereum blockchain by providing dedicated space for data storage.

This decision was communicated during a consensus layer conference call 127 for all core developers. The meeting came a day after the third of three testnets, Holesky, underwent a successful upgrade.

“It’s great that years worth of effort is finally on the way to the Ethereum mainnet,” Parithosh Jayanthi, development and operations engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk on Telegram. did.

Upgrade scheduled for March 13th

The Denkun upgrade on the mainnet will begin at 13:55 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on March 13th, when the Ethereum blockchain reaches slot 8626176.

This date must be approved by developers and confirmed via open source software platform GitHub.

Denkun enables a new type of transaction class called “protodunk sharding.” Helps reduce transaction costs for rollups through the introduction of “blobs”, a new category for storing data.

Ethereum data availability

It is also expected to reduce the cost of data availability on the Ethereum blockchain, making projects such as Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA more attractive. .

The developers have been running three tests to ensure Denkun runs smoothly on mainnet, culminating in its implementation on Horesky this week.

Protodunk Sharding is the first version of a technology feature known as “Dunk Sharding” that developers are working on implementing to extend blockchain.

The upgrade has been implemented later than the developers had originally planned. It was originally targeted for the end of 2023, but was postponed to early 2024 due to technical delays.

As part of the Ethereum blockchain roadmap, developers are already planning the next hard fork, Prague/Electra, which will include a new May contain data structures of types. Burkle trees help nodes store large amounts of data “without losing the ability to validate blocks.”

｜Translation and editing: Rinan Hayashi
｜Image: Unsplash
｜Original text: Ethereum Developers Target March 13 for Milestone 'Dencun' Upgrade on Mainnet