Posted:
- Ethereum developers are targeting January for the first testnet deployment.
- Progress on the network increased and gas consumption increased dramatically.
Ethereum [ETH] developers are stepping up testing for the upcoming Dencun upgrade, a major milestone expected next year, and introducing increased data storage capacity through the implementation of a process called “proto-dankhardening.”
More updates and upgrades
In a biweekly call on December 21, developers announced their target date of January 17 for the Goerli test network to undergo the Dencun upgrade, to improve layer 2 rollup efficiency and expand blockchain scalability.
Tim Beiko, head of protocol support at the Ethereum Foundation, pointed out the possibility of cancellation in case of major problems before the set date.
The last AllCoreDevs call of 2023 is about to start 🫡
Agenda: https://t.co/jVzStnpnmZ
Current: https://t.co/pT6x13i7nDWill summarize here later today https://t.co/YDWpJbtOma
— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) December 21, 2023
In addition, the Dencun upgrade, initially scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023, was moved to 2024 due to its complicated technical aspects. Developers outlined a tentative timeline for the Dencun tests, which would take place on January 31 via Sepolia.
New people, new forks
Furthermore, the Goerli Shadow Fork took place with a network configuration with 300 nodes spread across North America, Europe, India and Australia.
The split went smoothly and after Dencun the network achieved a 99% participation rate. The term “participation rate” refers to the percentage of nodes that successfully adopted the changes introduced by the fork.
Once stability was achieved, the teams initiated a network spamming exercise with blobs, aiming for an average of 4 per block, but the network stabilized around 3 as planned.
The introduction of blobs increased network bandwidth usage by approximately 200 kbps, from an average of 700 to 900 kbps.
Strikingly, 95% of the blobs propagate in less than 2 seconds, with an average propagation time of less than 500 milliseconds.
How is ETH doing?
The news is likely to increase confidence within the Ethereum community. Moreover, it could potentially attract more users and projects to leverage the upgraded platform.
Is your portfolio green? Check out the ETH profit calculator
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $2,315.75 and its price was up 4.15% over the past 24 hours. General interest in the network remained high during this period.
This was evident from the consistent gas consumption on the Ethereum network. Coupled with this, total NFT transactions on the Ethereum network had also grown.