Ethereum Devs Schedule Final 'Dencun' Testnet Enhancements

• Imminent Major Upgrade for Ethereum Blockchain Confirmed
• About Dencun
• Testing the Upgrade
• Recent Developments
• Final Testing Phase
• Dencun Upgrade's Initial Test Launch

Imminent Major Upgrade for Ethereum Blockchain Confirmed

Developers associated with Ethereum$2,315 -2.42% have announced an extensive upgrade for Ethereum blockchain, referred to as Dencun. These significant changes are slated for implementation on two crucial test networks. All these confirmations were made public in a blog post. Theoretically, these steps are the last ones before launching live on the main network.

About Dencun

The Dencun upgrade is a considerable hard fork planned for the Ethereum blockchain. It aims to enable a technical feature named proto-danksharding. This feature is expected to lower transaction costs on layer 2s and facilitate cheaper data access on the blockchain.

Testing the Upgrade

Before having Dencun go live on the main blockchain, developers will conduct a mock-up of the protocol changes on the Sepolia and Holesky test networks (testnets). The scheduled dates for these tests are January 30th and February 7th.

Recent Developments

This announcement comes in the wake of an upgrade carried out on the Goerli testnet in the past week. Despite encountering minor difficulties, the upgrade successfully went live. The Dencun upgrade is scheduled to be implemented on Sepolia at 22:51 UTC and at epoch 132608.

Final Testing Phase

Provided everything proceeds as intended, the definitive test for the Dencun upgrade will be executed on Holesky on February 7th at 11:34 UTC, at epoch 950272. Upon successful completion of this, a date will be set for Dencun to be integrated into Ethereum's mainnet. The target period for this is currently the end of February or the beginning of March.

Tim Beiko, the protocol support lead at the Ethereum Foundation, has advised those running a node on either network to promptly update it.

Dencun Upgrade's Initial Test Launch

The Dencun upgrade has been previously launched, but it failed to finalize on the testnet. Despite this, developers are optimistic about the upcoming implementations and tests, expecting better results.

Edited by Jonathan Stoker