Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade Faces Testnet Hurdles

The much-anticipated Dencun upgrade faced unexpected challenges as it went live on the Goerli testnet. The blockchain data reveals that the upgrade was initiated at 6:32 UTC, but it failed to achieve consensus and finalize within the expected timeframe.

The upgrade encountered a potential threat of a "chain split" looming due to client synchronization capabilities issues. Client teams are now actively investigating the matter and are expected to release a fix soon. 

The network is currently awaiting finalization, and developers are optimistic that the identified issues will be resolved soon.

“The Dencun upgrade is expected to bring lower gas fees and higher transactions per second (TPS) to Ethereum Layer2 (L2), making L2 costs comparable to chains like BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon but potentially higher than Tron, Solana, Cronos, Fantom, etc,” Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget, told BSC News. “Some users may migrate from Ethereum mainnet, BSC, Avalanche, Polygon, etc., to L2, boosting L2's active users, transactions, and TVL.”

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Phased Approach to Implementation

The development team opted for a phased approach, initially implementing the upgrade on various testnets. Dencun's implementation on Goerli is part of a three-phased strategy designed to eventually introduce a new, more cost-effective method of storing data on the main Ethereum blockchain.

At the heart of this Dencun deployment on Goerli is the introduction of EIP-4844, a transaction mechanism known as ephemeral blobs or proto-dank sharding.

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Understanding the Ethereum Cancun-Deneb (Dencun) Update

The Dencun upgrade follows the Shanghai upgrade, which enabled staked ETH withdrawals in April 2023. It is set to implement nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), marking the beginning of the "Surge" era in the Ethereum roadmap.

Among the nine EIPs, proto-danksharding is a key upgrade facilitating an ecosystem-wide shift to rollups by lowering gas fees on Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. This approach enables the temporary storage and access of off-chain data by Ethereum nodes, significantly reducing storage demands.

“The Dencun upgrade introduces a new data structure, Blob, iterating on past limited data storage methods. Blob, designed as temporary storage for some nodes, significantly raises the data submission cap for Layer2 to the mainnet, potentially increasing the network's transactions per second,” Gracy Chen stated. “This, coupled with Blob's efficiency, lowers data storage costs."

According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's focus during The Surge is to eliminate scalability bottlenecks and achieve a transaction throughput of "10,000 transactions per second and beyond." With the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum aims to lay the foundation for mass scalability using layer-two rollups.

The primary beneficiary of this upgrade is expected to be Layer 2 rollup chains, leading to a substantial reduction in transaction costs for Ethereum dApps. Developers had previously cautioned that the Dencun upgrade is complex, emphasizing the need for thorough testing, which led to the delay of its initial launch in October 2023.