Dencun Upgrade to be Activated on Mainnet at 21:55, just a few hours away from the upgrade. As the largest fork since the Ethereum Merge, this article aims to provide users with a summary of the changes in the Dencun Upgrade in 3 minutes.
Table of Contents:
1. EIP-4844, Ethereum Extension Protocol Proto-Danksharding
2. EIP-1153, Temporary Storage
3. EIP-5656, MCOPY Opcode
4. EIP-6780, SELFDESTRUCT Opcode
5. EIP-7044/7055, Staking Improvement
Why is it called “Dencun”? Ethereum has two types of clients – execution clients and consensus clients, each with its own set of upgrade names. For example, there is the Cancun upgrade for execution clients, and the Deneb upgrade for consensus clients. When combined, we get the name Dencun.
Additionally, the Dencun Upgrade includes 5 EIP proposals. This is a major step towards Ethereum’s scalability and has been in progress for 2 years. It introduces the use of “blob” as a way for Rollup to release transaction data, laying the foundation for future scalability.
The blob will reduce the cost of Rollup by 10-50 times (to be confirmed) as Rollup will no longer directly release data to the Ethereum blockchain. Furthermore, since Rollup data will no longer compete for normal block space, the cost of other L1 transactions should also decrease.
Note: Blob is primarily used to reduce the data storage cost on L2 (data storage cost previously accounted for over 90% of L2 transaction gas fees), thereby reducing the Gas fees on Ethereum L2, rather than directly reducing the Gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet.
This is a change that application developers (especially Uniswap) have long proposed, adding a new type of storage in the EVM. Previously, data could be stored in short-term storage (cheap, in memory) or long-term storage (expensive). EIP-1153 adds the option for temporary storage.
This type of storage persists throughout the entire transaction process but ceases to exist after the transaction is completed. This makes reentrancy attack protection cheaper, unlocking a new set of smart contract designs without increasing state bloat. It is expected that many applications/contracts will use these opcodes, including Uniswap V4.
Application developers have also widely requested the use of these opcodes, as almost every contract requires memory copying and incurs significant gas costs to complete. These opcodes simplify the process and reduce costs, making smart contracts more efficient.
The SELFDESTRUCT opcode was initially intended to reward developers for deleting state from the chain, but it has brought more problems than benefits. Therefore, EIP-6780 limits the functionality of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode to specific scenarios.
EIP-7044 makes staking withdrawals easier, as pre-signed exit messages will now be valid indefinitely. EIP-7045 extends the window for validators to provide proofs, speeding up block confirmations (LMD-GHOST will be faster).
Overall, EIP-4844 is the largest change in this hard fork so far, significantly reducing costs and providing a better user experience. Temporary storage and MCOPY will further reduce costs, especially on L1. Good luck to the core developers, and we look forward to a smooth upgrade.