By
Chimamanda U. Martha
May 14th, 2024
Currently, there are plans to deploy Dencun on the Sepolia testnet on January 31, and then on the Holesky testnet on February 7.
Among the many things that the crypto industry has to look forward to, there is the Dencun upgrade for the Ethereum network. Touted as a way for Ethereum to increase its data processing abilities and scalability, it is largely seen as a game-changer by those in the industry. Now, we are a step closer to this upgrade as Ethereum developers have deployed a testnet of Dencun on the Goerli test network. This took place on January 17, 2024, at 6:32 UTC.
Dencun Coming Soon
While the Dencun testnet launch was eventually deployed, it did meet some challenges along the way. Most notably, it wasn’t able to reach finality and this is credited with validators not completing software upgrades and this led to low participation rates.
“And it seems like we have a chain split! Client teams are looking into it, but it’s likely to take a while to pin down + fix the issues. Keep an eye out for updates!” Tim Beiko, an Ethereum core developer, said.
Finality, in terms of blockchains, refers to the mechanism that makes transactions irreversible. It is one of the most important parts of any blockchain network and has to be gotten right. The developer teams have confirmed that they are looking into these issues and should resolve them in the next few days.
At the same time, this is one of the purposes of testnet deployment- to make sure that any potential kinks are worked out before the final launch date. And this isn’t the last deployment we will see before Dencun fully goes live.
Currently, there are plans to deploy Dencun on the Sepolia testnet on January 31, 2024, and then on the Holesky testnet on February 7. All these will lead up to the final Dencun deployment by the end of the first quarter of the year.
Why the Dencun Upgrade Is Vital
One thing that the blockchain community knows very well at this point is that a single network upgrade can change the very trajectory of an ecosystem. Ethereum itself experienced this with its last major upgrade that saw the network moving from a proof-of-work consensus to a proof-of-stake one. This move saw the network’s energy use cut by over 95% and made Ethereum much better for the environment.
The Dencun upgrade is also on track to be impactful by introducing proto-danksharding. This is a mechanism that will increase Ethereum’s capacity for data handling and make it cheaper to use. As such, Ethereum will become more scalable once it is implemented and naturally, there has been a lot of anticipation for this. While this testnet launch has seen its hiccups, we can hope that they are sorted and the final Dencun upgrade goes off without a hitch.