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Excitement is building in the Ethereum community as the final countdown for the Dencun upgrade begins. After successful activation on all testnets, the Dencun network update is now ready to deploy on the Ethereum mainnet and will be activated on the network on epoch 269568, which will take place on March 13, 2024, at 1:55 p.m. UTC.
The upgrade, which follows last year's Spella upgrade, has several changes, the most notable of which is the implementation of ephemeral data blobs with EIP-4844, better known as “protodanksharding”, which will help reduce L2 transaction fees.
Tim Beikoa core Ethereum developer, tweeted excitedly about the countdown to X, saying: “Less than 24 hours until Dencun.”
The initial announcement regarding the Dencun mainnet upgrade was made on February 27, and Beiko highlighted that several customer teams have since created Dencun-compatible builds containing significant performance and stability improvements.
A March 12 update to this first blog post explains client builds, listing minimum and recommended builds.
The Minimum Version column indicates the lowest Dencun compatible version for a client, while the Recommended version contains performance and stability improvements.
Before the big launch on the ETH mainnet, Chain of Gnosis has deployed a version of the Dencun upgrade to its network. Gnosis Chain, formerly known as xDai Chain, functions as a sidechain for Ethereum and is managed by GnosisDAO.
This milestone was welcomed by the Ethereum community as a whole as well as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.
Expectations for Dencun Upgrade
According to recent analysis by IntoTheBlock, Ethereum's major Layer 2 (L2) could see fee reductions of at least 80% after the Dencun upgrade. This also includes OP stack chains, which should receive upgrades including data blob functionality.
Based on estimates, USDC deposit costs on platforms such as Aave could fall to $0.0091, representing a 27x decrease. Fee reductions for L2s could be considerably larger, potentially 60 times lower than current levels, according to PolyMarket estimates.
While the likelihood of fee reductions remains, the exact magnitude of these reductions resulting from the Dencun upgrade remains largely unknown.