Since the release of its white paper in 2013, Ethereum has gone through nine years of development. During this time, Ethereum has successfully undergone 11 major upgrades, each injecting new narratives and opportunities into its ecosystem. In the current Serenity phase (Ethereum 2.0), founder Vitalik Buterin plans to complete the upgrade roadmap in six stages, focusing on scalability, security enhancements, consensus mechanisms, and optimization of the economic model. According to the Ethereum roadmap released by Vitalik Buterin, the Dencun upgrade is part of the “The Surge” phase of the Ethereum upgrade roadmap.
The Surge
The Surge phase primarily aims to address the long-standing scalability issue, with the goal of eventually achieving a performance level of 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), approaching the speed of traditional electronic payment systems. This upgrade will be achieved through Danksharding (DS), also known as sharding. This is the main focus of this article, as the Dencun upgrade is planned for implementation this year.
What is the Dencun Upgrade?
The Dencun upgrade is an important upgrade for Ethereum, aimed at increasing data storage and reducing costs. The Dencun upgrade consists of five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), with EIP-4844 being the most market-focused. Its main objective is to address Ethereum’s scalability issues and help reduce transaction costs for Layer 2 solutions, which will benefit the related L2 ecosystem. In addition to the core EIP-4844, other improvement proposals include EIP-1153, EIP-4788, EIP-5656, and EIP-6780.
On January 17th and January 30th, 2024, Ethereum began testing the Dencun upgrade on the Goerli and Sepolia test networks. The test networks are currently operating normally, with a normal number of Blob submissions. There will be further testing with Holesky on February 7th, and the implementation date for the main network has not been announced yet.
EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding)
Currently, all transaction data for Ethereum Layer 2 is stored in the Calldata of Layer 1. However, Calldata has limited space, which cannot meet the growing storage demand and leads to high data usage costs and increased computational burden on Ethereum nodes.
The Dencun upgrade introduces Blob, a new data storage structure introduced by EIP-4844. Blob is specifically designed to store transaction data submitted from Layer 2 to Layer 1 and is stored on the consensus layer, separate from Calldata, which cannot be accessed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Blob serves the purpose of allowing the stored data to be accessed and verified by the demand side within a certain period (automatically deleted within approximately one month) without requiring Layer 1 execution, significantly reducing node burden.
Currently, the size of a Blob is fixed at 128 KB, so a single Rollup can only directly purchase the entire Blob, and it cannot selectively purchase part of the data. Overall, attaching six complete Blobs to a block will increase the block size by approximately 40%. Considering that the current block size can reach approximately 1.875 MB, a complete set of Blobs may increase by about 0.75 MB. This increase occurs within an 18-day rolling cycle, so network nodes will not increase their long-term storage capacity.
New Precompiled Point Evaluation Precompile
In addition, EIP-4844 also introduces a new precompiled called Point Evaluation Precompile, which facilitates the verification of Blob-related data for Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup. In Optimistic Rollup, the main purpose of Point Evaluation Precompile is to verify the underlying data provided when submitting a fraud proof. In ZK Rollup, Point Evaluation Precompile is mainly used to verify two key commitments: the Blob commitment and the ZK Rollup commitment itself. By utilizing Point Evaluation Precompile, ZK Rollups can effectively prove that these two commitments point to the same data, ensuring data consistency and providing reliability and security guarantees for the entire ZK Rollup system.
EIP-1153 (Instant Storage Opcode)
Currently, all data storage on Ethereum follows a permanent storage model, including storing temporary data during smart contract execution, resulting in waste and consuming a significant amount of gas fees. EIP-1153 aims to introduce a new mechanism for handling temporary or instant storage during smart contract execution. The introduction of instant storage opcodes allows smart contracts to use temporary storage, where smart contracts can read and invoke temporary storage data during one complete transaction execution cycle and directly clear temporary data after the transaction execution cycle ends.
EIP-4788 (Beacon Block Root Submission)
The current independent nature of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the Beacon Chain (Ethereum’s consensus layer) brings some challenges. The EVM cannot directly access the Beacon Chain and can only obtain data and states from the Beacon Chain through external trusted oracle methods. This pattern carries risks such as oracle failures and malicious manipulations.
EIP-4788 will place a Beacon Chain block root on each execution block header, allowing the EVM to directly obtain the state and data from the Ethereum consensus layer. This is equivalent to introducing a protocol-level oracle, improving operational efficiency and accuracy, and eliminating risks associated with external oracles.
EIP-5656 (MCOPY Opcode)
EIP-5656 introduces the MCOPY opcode to optimize the process of copying memory data during smart contract execution. Memory copying refers to the process of moving data from one location in memory to another, which is a fundamental operation used in computations to construct data structures and copy objects. The adoption of the MCOPY opcode will reduce the gas cost of related operations and improve the performance of contract execution.
EIP-6780 (Restrict SELFDESTRUCT)
As the name suggests, the existing SELFDESTRUCT opcode allows developers to completely remove smart contracts from the blockchain by using this opcode. After execution, the contract’s code and storage are removed from Ethereum, and the remaining ETH in the contract is sent to a specified address. This operation involves significant changes to the state of accounts, as it involves removing deployed contract code and storage data from the chain.
EIP-6780 aims to restrict the usage of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode. It will only take effect when creating a smart contract and executing the SELFDESTRUCT opcode in the same transaction. In other cases, no code or storage deletion will occur.
In conclusion, as a pioneer in blockchain technology, Ethereum has been continuously pushing for updates and upgrades to meet the growing business needs and user expectations. The Dencun upgrade is an important step for Ethereum in its roadmap for scalability and performance improvements.
With the implementation of the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum has made significant progress in terms of security, scalability, and sustainability, laying a solid foundation for broader blockchain applications in the future.
This article is provided by the official source and does not represent the stance or investment advice of this site. Readers must conduct their own careful evaluation.