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Dencun Upgrade Overview

Welcome back, Blobs!

This is the first article of a series of educational posts regarding all things Dencun, EIP4844 and lower tx fees on Ethereum L2s.Here, we will discuss the Dencun Upgrade at a high level, explaining all the changes it’ll bring to Ethereum, both on its Execution Layer and its Consensus Layer.

Introduction

What’s an EIP?

EIP-1 describes it as:

EIP stands for “Ethereum Improvement Proposal“.EIPs are design documents providing information to the Ethereum community, or describing a new feature for Ethereum or its processes or environment!

Anyone can start a conversation, regarding a change they wish to make on Ethereum, on a forum like Ethereum Magicians or Ethereum Research: once an agreement about the idea has been reached, the author may write the EIP, following the process described in EIP-1.

What are the Execution and Consensus Layers?

Ever since Ethereum underwent The Merge (a.k.a. “Paris Upgrade”), Ethereum has been operating with 2 distinct, isolated layers: the “execution layer“ and “consensus layer“.

The layers serve different functions, and together they form the PoS version of the Ethereum blockchain:

  1. Execution Layer (EL): Is responsible for applying changes brought by transactions to the blockchain.If you’re wondering “wtf does that mean??“, let’s see it with an example!Take the case in which Alice wants to swap 10 WETH for BLOB: Alice will, of course, have to send a transaction to the Ethereum blockchain, specifying to trade her WETH for BLOB. When Alice’s transaction is included in the blockchain, the Execution Layer is the one responsible for executing all necessary code (the coin swap on the Sushiswap pair) and update Alice’s coin balances and approvals, effectively modifying the blockchain’s database!💡 Essentially, you must imagine the Execution Layer as Ethereum’s engine, which makes its wheels turn as users do stuff on the blockchain!
  2. Consensus Layer (CL): is responsible for making all blockchain nodes agree with each other. Given that blockchains are supported by a network of distributed participants, such participants (often called “nodes“) must all agree on what the blockchain looks like! In case this wasn’t to happen and the Ethereum nodes were to disagree, then we’d be in a world in which it’d be possible that part of Ethereum believes Alice holds 10 WETH and another part of Etherum belives Alice has no WETH balance!💡 Imagine the Consensus Layer as Etheruem’s steering wheel, which defines the next road the entire Ethereum blockchain will take!

🗝️ Key takeaway🗝️Exeuction and Consensus layers are separate and independent, maintained by different teams!

What is Dencun?

Dencun = Deneb + Cancun

Because of the fact that Ethereum is now composed by 2 independent layers, both layers must undergo their own modifications, in order to support large-scale changes (like EIP4844!).

As a result, large upgrades will now require upgrades to both layers! Because of this, the Ethereum Core developers like to refer to the general Ethereum upgrade with a name which is obtained by merging together the names of each Layer’s upgrade

  • Shapella = Shanghai (EL) + Capella (CL)
  • Dencun = Cancun (EL) + Deneb (CL)

🎈 Fun fact 🎈EL upgrades take names of cities🏙️, while CL upgrades take names of stars ✨

Now that we understand the two major parts of Dencun, lets break into them!

Deneb, the CL upgrade, will include 5 EIPs.Cancun will include 6 EIPs.

Deneb : Consensus Layer EIPs

  1. EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVMThis EIP will add a “proof“ of the Consensus Layer’s conditions and make it available to smart contracts on Ethereum (which live on the Execution Layer!).Systems like staking pools, restaking protocols and bridges will benefit from improved trust assumptions when operating.
  2. EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions 💖This EIP introduces a new transaction format for “blob-carrying transactions“. This new transaction format will be employed by L2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism to post their own L2 transactions on Ethereum in a compressed format. The improvement will also create a separate fee market for these transactions - this means that Ethereum users and L2 networks will not compete in the Ethereum fee market, but rather each will have its own gas price!🎯 We will see this EIP more in detail in a future post! 🎯
  3. EIP-7044: Perpetuall Valid Signed Voluntary ExitsThis EIP brings a quality-of-life improvement for Ethereum validators operating with split credentials, making it easier to withdraw a validator’s stake in the case in which the validation credentials are held separately from the withdrawal credentials.🤓 Curious readers may learn more about this EIP here
  4. EIP-7045: Increase Max Attestation Inclusion SlotThis EIP will extend the maximum time in which an attestation may be submitted for a proposed Ethereum block.💡 Attestations are “votes“ that validators cast in favor of a proposed block: enough votes determine whether the new block will be accepted and added to the blockchain or not!
  5. EIP-7514: Add Max Epoch Churn LimitThis EIP intends to introduce a limit to the “epoch churn limit“, which directly translates into a limit on the “maximum validator growth rate“.💡 Ethereum core developers intend to limit the speed at which the number of Ethereum validators may grow, allowing the team to have more time to research into more comprehensive solutions to a problem that may arise in case 100% of ETH was to be staked.

Cancun : Execution Layer EIPs

  1. EIP-1153: Transient Storage OpcodesThis EIP will introduce TLOAD AND TSTORE opcodes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine.These will be used to specify that some smart contract data is transient: it will return to its original value before the transaction finishes! This means that smart contracts will be able to have storage that will only change within a transaction! At the end of a transaction, such storage will return to its original conditions!💡 Many contracts and protocols will benefit from these, as the gas cost for variables used in reentrancy guards will decrease! (reentrancy guards are variables set to an initial value, which is modified during a transaction’s execution, and which are reset to the initial value at the end of the transaction)
  2. EIP-4788: Beacon Block Root in the EVMThis EIP interests both the CL and EL. Its been discussed above!
  3. EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions💖Our beloved EIP-4844, has already been discussed in the Deneb section!
  4. EIP-5656: MCOPY - Memory Copying OpcodeThis EIP will introduce MCOPY opcode to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing to copy a segment of memory and writing it to a different section of memory, during a smart contract execution.
  5. EIP-6780: SELFDESTRUCT Only in the Same TransactionThis EIP is part of the master plan to deprecate SELFDESTRUCT. It will change the behaviour of this opcode to delete the account only in the case in which it is executed in the same transaction that creates a smart contract!💡 SELFDESTRUCT has been intended to be deprecated for a long time now, as it hinders the immutability of the Ethereum blockchain. As a result, opcode will be modified to only be able to delete an account in the same transaction as when a contract is being created!
  6. EIP-7516: BLOBBASEFEE OpcodeThis EIP introduces the BLOBBASEFEE opcode, which returns the current data-blob base-fee.Similarly to how transaction fees work on Ethereum today, data-blob transactions will be priced using an elastic base fee mechanism, which will determine the total gas price of sending such transactions!Just like the normal transactions base fee, the blob base fee will progressively increase if the number of blob transactions surpasses a target number of transactions, and progressively decrease if it’s under such target!

Conclusion

Congratulations Blob! You made it to the end! 🏁Revising what we learned about today, we:

  • Introduced EIPs
  • Learned about the distinction between Ethereum’s Execution and Consensus layers
  • Understood what Dencun means
  • Learned about the Consensus Layer changes coming to Ethereum in Dencun
  • Learned about the Execution Layer changes coming to Ethereum in Dencun

🧠 Not bad, Blob! 🧠

In the next post of the series, we’ll delve into how L2s function in the pre-Dencun era and understand why EIP-4844 was first introduced, what issues it solves for L2 networks and the road it paves for additional future scaling efforts!

As a final note, if you enjoyed this blog post, please consider following our blog and our X account ! Or drop by our telegram community and say “Hi!“, we’d love to see you there!

onwards and upwards, Blobs

Dencun Ethereum
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