Ethereum’s Duncan upgrade, expected in mid-March, will introduce a technique called “proto-danksharding.”
This upgrade is capturing the attention of Ethereum enthusiasts with its potential to enhance layer 2 solutions such as zkSync, Optimism, Arbitrum, etc. and marks Duncan as an important development for the future.
Proto-danksharing (or EIP-4844) aims to include more data in Ethereum transactions without impacting block processing times by incorporating off-chain ‘data blobs’. It is touted as the key to Layer 2 scalability in the network, providing the ability to take advantage of increased data capacity.
As a result, transaction costs on Ethereum Layer 2 are expected to decrease significantly. “The biggest difference users will notice with the EIP-4844 upgrade is the significant reduction in transaction fees,” Anthony Rose, director of engineering at Matter Labs, a key zkSync contributor, told The Block.
zkSync, which functions as a layer 2 network on the Ethereum mainnet, aggregates hundreds of thousands of transactions in batches and then verifies them on the mainnet. However, this verification incurs a fee, which is passed on to the user.
As of this writing, zkSync’s transaction fees average around $0.20. The component affected by EIP-4844 (related to data costs) is approximately $0.08 to $0.10 per transaction. The team predicts that this data-related component could potentially be reduced by nearly 10 times post-Duncan, which could lower average fees (per transaction) to less than $0.10.
Use of Boojum
Matter Labs implemented code improvements to zkSync last year under EIP-4844 to target performance and improve batch transaction and verification capabilities.
“We are working on a number of improvements to the protocol that, combined with certain changes in EIP-4844, will have a significant impact on the performance of zkSync,” Rose said.
Among them is the launch of Boojum, a STARK-based attestation system designed to allow networks to compress and publish significantly more data within a batch to the mainnet.
Boojum has been instrumental in the amount of data zkSync aggregates into Ethereum per Layer 2 deployment, and now the cost efficiencies Duncan will bring will make it even more cost-effective.
“With the Boojum upgrade, we’ve included several changes to the way we publish data to L1 (partly to prepare for EIP-4844), which introduces better data compression while also increasing the L2 batch size. There was.” Rose explained.
“Our deployments will be larger and transaction costs will be cheaper,” he added.
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