- Ethereum developers have set the stage for the Dencun upgrade after announcing the dates for the last two testnets
- The developers have scheduled the testnets’ completion to early February
- The Dencun upgrade is expected to make it cheaper to interact with Ethereum
The Ethereum Foundation has disclosed that the Sepolia and Holesky testnets will run on January 30 and February 30, respectively, paving the way for the much-awaited Ethereum upgrade dubbed Dencun. Being a major update, the upgrade is expected to fork Ethereum to introduce proto-danksharding, a feature meant to, among other things, make transactions on Ethereum scaling layers cheaper. The two testnets are theoretically the final steps in ushering in the new feature, placing the upgrade’s tentative data at around March.
Smoothly Operation Essential
In a blog post, the foundation noted that the upgrade started on the Goerli testnet last week, adding that it’ll be introduced on the main Ethereum blockchain only when it runs smoothly on all the testnets.
More testnet blobs on the way .oO
Dencun will activate on Sepolia Jan 30, and on Holesky Feb 7. If running a node on either network, now’s the time to update it!
Assuming both of these go smoothly, mainnet is next ✅https://t.co/QbEUACix2S
— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) January 25, 2024
The Ethereum Foundation also disclosed that Dencun is the second largest update after the Shapella upgrade that allowed stakers on Ethereum 2.0 to withdraw their funds.
According to developers, Dencun will improve the network’s scalability enabling the blockchain to handle more than 10,000 transactions per second. The developers believe such speeds can be achieved by reducing the cost of transactions on layer 2s like Polygon.
Node Operators Need to Update
The foundation noted that the average Ethereum user or Ether (ETH) holder isn’t required to do any, with the bulk of the work going to “non-staking Sepolia or Holesky node operators” who are required to update their “nodes’ execution and consensus layer clients to the [latest] versions.”
Final preparations for Dencun’s arrival come two weeks after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the network’s gas limit needs to be increased to boost Ethereum’s scalability. It also comes roughly a month after Buterin proposed a new way to make the blockchain lighter.
With Dencun’s arrival almost locked in, it’s evident that Buterin and his team are focused on making Ethereum the go-to network for web3 developers.
