As Ethereum developer teams continue to work towards fully switching the second largest blockchain to the Ethereum 2.0 iteration, another major update is approaching quickly – Dencun. It has already been activated on all the testnets related to Ethereum and is about to launch on the mainnet this week.
The launch is scheduled for Wednesday, March 13, epoch 269568, at 13:55 UTC. Dencun follows the previous Shapella upgrade eleven months ago – in April 2023. Shapella consisted of two more minor upgrades, Shanghai and Capella. One of the significant benefits it brought to users was that stakers could finally withdraw their ETH from multiple staking pools based on cryptocurrency exchanges. Before that, in September 2022, ‘The Merge’ upgrade took place. Dencun is part of a much bigger upgrade called ‘The Surge.’ The latter also includes ‘The Scourge,’ ‘The Verge,’ ‘The Purge,’ and finally ‘The Splurge.’
Here’s What to Know About Dencun
The crucial thing that Dencun brings to the network is Proto-Danksharding, a feature that further improves transaction throughput and scalability on Ethereum. This will increase Ethereum adoption and make it attractive to new startups operating in the DeFi space. Besides, it is expected to let the ETH price reach unprecedented highs, so traders are also watching out for the new update, keeping an eye on ETH charts.
During the first several years after the launch in July 2015, the second most popular blockchain and the global mother platform for dapps, DeFi, and NFTs suffered from frequent congestion, with transaction fees often soaring to unbelievable levels. Therefore, one of the vital goals of switching from Ethereum to Ethereum 2.0 is to permanently reduce gas fees and ensure that Ethereum has sufficient throughput regardless of how big the transaction load is. The fall in gas fees is expected to happen immediately after Dencun goes live and reaches a monumental 75% decline compared to the current transaction costs.
To reach the above goals, Ethereum developers intend to integrate Danksharding, but it is taking several stages, standing far apart from each other over time. Dencun will see that Proto-Danksharing is integrated (also known to developers as EIP-4844). Danksharding will improve Ethereum’s scalability by introducing so-called blobs for distributed data sampling. Proto-Danksharding is to introduce ‘blob-carrying transactions’ (blobs being short for “Binary Large Objects’), reducing transaction fees and making it possible to conduct many transfers without causing congestion.
According to various experts and Ethereum developers, when Dencun rolls out, there is nothing that average ETH users need to do to help that happen – the upgrade will launch automatically. They do not have to worry about a thing.
Ethereum Breaks Through $4,000
Within the past seven days, Ethereum has shown an impressive bullish performance, printing a massive increase of nearly 28% - the coin rose from $3,213 and reached the $4,000 peak, which was last seen on the market in December 2021.
Apart from Ethereum, the whole altcoin market has been pumping, following in the footsteps of Bitcoin – earlier this month, BTC first broke through the $69,200 all-time high, then soared above $70,000, printing another historic rise, and today, on March 12, it suddenly jumped above $72,950 – the highest price level in history so far.
Traditionally, when Bitcoin begins rallying, it also fuels the growth of all major altcoins. Ethereum is the biggest one, standing right behind Bitcoin on the market capitalization scale.
Ethereum’s market capitalization comprises $474,906,396,043, with a trading volume of $23,113,817,814 over the last 24 hours. ETH reached an all-time high in November 2021 when it surpassed $4,891. ETH’s historic price peak occurred the same month after Bitcoin reached $69,000 that year.
Last year, when Ethereum underwent the Shapella upgrade, ETH saw a significant price increase from $2,100 to $3,950. Many expect that once Dencun rolls out on the mainnet, ETH price will skyrocket, fueled by the new step forward towards Ethereum 2.0 and not only thanks to Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high.
According to Forbes experts, Ethereum can potentially show $4,500 by the end of March and soar as high as $5,000 by the end of 2024, going to $6,500 in early 2025.
