- The upgrade was published to testnet after a four-hour delay.
- Experts say this development will benefit blockchain in the long run.
As planned, Ethereum (ETH) developers deployed the Dencun upgrade to the Goerli testnet on January 17th. But a YouTube livestream of the event showed it wasn’t without its problems.
This is because developers had difficulty finalizing the upgrade despite it being released at 6:32 UTC.
The Dencun upgrade is a combination of the Cancun and Denub upgrades, each geared towards scalability of the consensus and execution layers.
Once it reaches mainnet, the Dencun upgrade will reduce transaction costs for L2s such as Arbitrum (ARB) and Optimism (OP). However, the main goal of the Goerli testnet was to introduce EIP-4844.
This mechanism is also called Pronto-Danksharding.
A bug was identified and fixed when Goerli bends over.
The goal of this EIP-4844 is to make it cheaper to store off-chain data on the Ethereum blockchain. This is also the first step to full Danksharding, which increases transaction throughput and reduces gas fees.
Following the obstacles faced, Ethereum developer Terence Tao posted that the team needs to deal with bugs.
Prysm discovered a bug right in Goerli’s hard fork. The bug has been identified and a fix is currently being merged. Hot patch images will be released in the coming hours. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience! https://t.co/PR9V0lqoCN
— terence.eth (@terencechain) January 17, 2024
However, developers quickly discovered finishing issues. According to them, there were concerns about outdated network validators. This resulted in a synchronization failure with other nodes that lasted for almost 4 hours.
Shortly after, another Ethereum developer, Parithosh Jayanthi, presentation The validator is back online and Goerli has finalized it. He wrote on X (formerly Twitter):
“Any L2 using Goerli can now begin testing EIP-4844. We look forward to seeing the process unfold.”
Dencun is the last time the Goerli testnet will participate in network upgrades. This is consistent with a previous report from AMBCrypto that Ethereum is phasing it out.
After a successful upgrade, AMBCrypto checked whether development activities were affected. From January 15th to press time, Ethereum’s development activity fell from 3.56 to 2.94.
Source: Santiment
L2 hop-on
Decline means fewer public GitHub repositories. However, the number of developer activity contributors increased sharply on the 17th. The increase here was evidence that developers were proactive in fixing issues with the upgrade.
In the meantime, AMBCrypto spoke with some experts about what we can expect from Ethereum following the upgrade. The first person we spoke to was Ender Lu, CTO of Morph, a consumer-focused layer 2 blockchain solution.
According to Lu, Pronto-Danksharding could lead to increased L2 adoption. he said,
“By storing transaction data in a compressed blob format rather than individually, platforms like Optimism, Arbitrum and Morph can reduce storage costs by up to 80%. also, “As cost efficiencies improve, we could see a new wave of Layer 2 adoption in dApps that were previously priced for frequent interactions.”
At press time, we had assessed the total value locked (TVL) of Arbitrum and Optimism. Arbitrum’s TVL was $11.22 billion, according to data from L2BEAT. This is an increase of 18.25% over the past 30 days.
On the other hand, the TVL of the OP mainnet was $5.9 billion. Like Arbitrum, OP’s TVL also increased by double digits over the same period.
Additionally, Optimism’s TVL occupied a market share of 26.66% among all L2s. Arbitrum’s market share was 50.65%, indicating that major players trusted its optimistic rollup more than any other L2.
TVL in Arbitrum | Source: L2BEAT
Experts think the direction of the project is good.
If Lu’s prediction comes true, TVL could go higher than stated here. When asked about the possible aftermath of the mainnet, Lu told AMBCrypto:
“I expect Ethereum to solidify its position as a trusted data availability and payment layer. “As transaction fees drop, more dApps will deploy natively on Layer 2 rather than Layer 1, which will help reduce congestion on the Ethereum native blockchain.”
Regarding the expected transaction cost savings, the Bitrue research team said:
“Historically, rapid increases in network accessibility have triggered a surge in on-chain activity and ecosystem development.”
Bitrue is an exchange where you can buy and sell hundreds of different cryptocurrencies. But our chit-chat didn’t end there. According to Bitrue, this upgrade could strengthen Ethereum’s position as a leader in construction projects.
The team added:
“The Dencun upgrade sets the stage for further improvements to the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, including sharding, which will be implemented in the coming years. “This will help the Ethereum ecosystem leverage trends already happening, such as the emergence of interoperable DeFi 2.0 with enhanced functionality, tokenized real-world assets, and more.”
How much is 1,10,100 ETH worth today?
After Goerli, the Ethereum Foundation fixed the Sepolia testnet for January 30th. The Holesky phase takes place on February 7th.
However, looking at the roadmap, we see that the foundation has not yet set a date for the Dencun mainnet. However, it was announced that it would be held before the end of the first quarter of 2024.