What is Ethereum Dencun Upgrade?
16 Mar 2024
1 min read
Dencun, an amalgamation of two separate upgrades — Deneb and Cancun — tackles both Ethereum’s consensus and execution layers in a single upgrade.
The objective of the Deneb upgrade is to augment the consensus layer, which deals with how network participants agree on the state of the blockchain. Cancun, on the other hand, improves the way transactions are managed and processed on the execution layer. The Dencun upgrade came nearly a year after the Shanghai upgrade in April 2023, which enabled Ether holders to unstake ETH, which was locked into the network.
Dencun was a series of nine different Ethereum Improvement Proposals, or EIPs. The most important was EIP-4844, which dramatically cuts the cost of transacting on layer 2 networks.
EIP-4844 introduced “blobs,” which are a unique transaction format that segregates layer 2 network transactions from standard network activity on the Ethereum mainnet, reducing congestion and transaction fees.
How the Ethereum Dencun upgrade benefit users and developers
Proto-danksharding lowers costs for layer-2 scaling solutions based on Ethereum, offering users a more cost-effective experience, especially when using NFTs and DeFi services.
Layer-2 solutions bundle transactions before sending them to the main Ethereum blockchain, and Dencun enables them to keep some transaction data off-chain to save costs.
