The Dencun upgrade, one of the major upgrades in the Ethereum blockchain, went live on January 17, successfully integrating proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) to the Goerli tesnet. This testnet deployment will set the stage for the next upgrades on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets and the final launch on the Ethereum mainnet.Ethereum Evolves
Lower Transaction Costs Coming Soon?
Dencun is one of the major upgrades of the Ethereum network, following the Merge and Shanghai. The upgrade is expected to introduce a number of improvements to Ethereum, such as reducing the cost of storing transaction data and storage demand, improving the cross-chain design, and changing the blocks’ data structure, among others.
Dencun also aims to significantly reduce transaction costs for Optimism Rollups like Arbitrum or Optimism, attracting more users and enhancing Ethereum’s scalability.
Before its finalization on Goreli, the development team had initially implemented Dencun on multiple testnets to check for possible problems. If Dencun operates smoothly without major bugs in all these testnet environments, the activation on the mainnet will be planned and scheduled within Q1/2024.
With the successful implementation, all eyes are set on Ethereum’s price movement during the year’s first quarter. Layer 2 protocols will also be in the spotlight since the Dencun upgrade is expected to bring major benefits to these protocols.
At the press time, Ethereum is trading at around $2,500, down 2.35% in the last 24 hours. The decline followed a report of the Ethereum Foundation engaging in the sale of ETH through over-the-counter (OTC) exchanges. Notably, the team conducted a transfer of 100 ETH (equivalent to $253,000) to address 0xd77, receiving 253,000 DAI in return.
While ETH is a leading token, it will have to fight with other blockchains going forward. SOL, for example, is getting attention, and this could make it a real threat to ETH in the coming years.
Throughout 2023, the organization reportedly liquidated 2,262 ETH at an average price of $1,609 per ETH. These divestitures are often observed preceding market declines, drawing attention within the cryptocurrency community.
Despite these sales, the Ethereum Foundation maintains a substantial ETH portfolio. On-chain data indicates total ETH assets amounting to $886 million, comprising $806 million in ETH and $79.81 million in WETH. Additionally, they possess around $500,000 in stablecoins and $15,000 in Binance Coin (BNB).
