- Ethereum core developers suggest that the Dencun upgrade may be delayed.
- Dencun promises to address Ethereum’s scaling concerns with proto-danksharding.
- The feature was initially billed to come with the Shapella upgrade in April 2023.
Over the past year, Ethereum developers have been hard at work rolling out upgrade after upgrade from The Merge, an impressive feat of engineering that saw the network transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to Shapella, which unlocked staked ETH withdrawals.
The latest planned upgrade to the Ethereum network, dubbed Dencun, among other things, intends to address scalability concerns that have long plagued the network. Previously expected to go live later this year, developers hint that the long-anticipated upgrade may face delays.
Core Devs: Dencun May Be Delayed
In the 118th Consensus Layer meeting on Thursday, September 21, Ethereum core developers hinted that the long-awaited Dencun upgrade may face delays.
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During the meeting, Ethereum Foundation Protocol Support member Tim Beiko expressed concern that the upgrade was yet to make it to any Ethereum testnet. Beiko noted that a failure to deploy Dencun on an Ethereum testnet before this year’s Devconnect, scheduled for November 13 through 19, could mean that the upgrade will not make it to the mainnet till early 2024.
The news may come as a blow to many community members as it would be the second time they would have to wait for the key feature of the Dencun upgrade, which was initially expected to go live with Shapella in April 2023.
What Dencun Brings To The Table
Like Shapella, Dencun combines two upgrades, Deneb and Cancun, which will change Ethereum’s consensus and execution layer.
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By far, the most anticipated feature of the upgrade is Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844, also known as proto-danksharding. It is the first in a series of changes that intend to solve congestion issues on the network by breaking the chain into smaller pieces that run in parallel, called shards. Developers assert that this initial upgrade will at least make it cheaper for users to transact on Layer 2 chains.
On the Flipside
- The upgrade will likely only be delayed if developers fail to deploy the Dencun upgrade on the testnet before Devconnect.
- Developers maintain that the true danksharding vision that promises to resolve Ethereum’s scalability concerns fully will take years to achieve.
Why This Matters
The Dencun upgrade promises to bring the Ethereum network one step closer to resolving its scalability concerns, which have long served as a barrier to entry and a bottleneck for builders.
Read this to learn more about EIP-4844:
Vitalik Buterin Shares New Sharding Proposal – What You Should Know About EIP-4844
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