- Optimism and Base have launched blobs on their devnets.
- Developers have teased a near testnet release of the Dencun feature.
- The upgrade promises to have a significant impact on the fees paid by users.
Nearly a year after the monumental Shapella upgrade, Ethereum is set to take another leap forward with Dencun. Ahead of the launch expected in Q1 2024, Layer 2 chains built atop the leading blockchain are racing to prepare for the upgrade with Optimism and Base eying the pole position.
Optimism and Base Try-Out Blobs
In an X post on Thursday, January 25, Base developer Roberto Bayardo disclosed that Base and Optimism developers had now deployed the most anticipated feature of the Ethereum Dencun upgrade, EIP-4844 or proto-danksharding blobs, on their respective devnets.
Base and OP Labs successfully activated the Ecotone hardfork on their respective Goerli devnets, and today enabled posting of batches via EIP-4844 blobs. Here's the Base goerli-devnet batcher, you can see recent transactions are "type 3" (== Blob type). https://t.co/RYfBtubhTG
— Roberto Bayardo | bayardo.eth (@roberto_bayardo) January 25, 2024
Commenting on the development, Base creator Jesse Pollak asserted that developers have been working on implementing blobs for nearly two years and are preparing to ship the feature on the testnet and mainnet next.
“i’m so excited to get this live ASAP!” Pollak added.
Ethereum Dencun: A Boon for Layer 2 Chains
Blobs are temporary, low-cost, data-carrying memory designed to make verifying batch transactions of Layer 2 chains more efficient and cheaper on Ethereum.
Instead of verifying each transaction, the network will only have to confirm that the data in the blob is correct—this blob implementation results in a sizable reduction in fees paid by end users on Layer 2 chains.
The reduced fees come as most of the fees paid on Layer 2 chains go to storing data on Ethereum. At the same time, blobs allow for greater data availability as they do not permanently occupy space on the network.
Base’s Jesse Pollak estimated that the upgrade could lead to a two to five times reduction of fees on the Coinbase-incubated Layer 2.
On the Flipside
- There is yet to be a clear timeline for when the improvement will get to the testnet where users can also interact with it.
- Other Layer 2 networks are likely already preparing to deploy blobs on devnets and testnets ahead of the near Dencun upgrade.
Why This Matters
The introduction of blobs with the Ethereum Dencun upgrade promises to serve as a boon to Layer 2 chains by significantly reducing user costs. The move by Base and Optimism to deploy the feature on the devnet puts them in an excellent position to take advantage of the upgrade as soon as it goes live on the Ethereum mainnet.
Read this for more on the Ethereum Dencun upgrade:
Ethereum Dencun Upgrade on Schedule Despite Initial Snag
Learn about Polygon’s interoperability layer launch:
Polygon MATIC 2.0 Takes Shape with Near Interop Layer Launch
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