The Ethereum blockchain has undergone quite a few upgrades in the past couple of years. These ongoing enhancements are necessary to achieve optimum levels of decentralization, security, and scalability. Increased demand pushes the transaction fees to the extent that Ethereum becomes prohibitive to some users. In the case of Ethereum, emphasis is placed on decentralization and security, therefore limiting the number of transactions per second. The Dencun upgrade (Cancun-Deneb) is a step in the right direction, yet a long-term solution is necessary. Simply put, it can help, but the answer lies in a multi-chain solution encompassing appchains and rollups.
The dawn of “The Surge” area in Ethereum’s roadmap sees various enhancements to scalability, most notably proto-danksharding under EIP-4844. Buying at the current Ethereum price USD seems like a good bargain. Where to buy Ethereum, though? A cryptocurrency exchange offers a hassle-free way to buy Ethereum with bank transfer using different fiat currencies. Back on topic, EIP-4844 is the first step towards full danksharding implementation on the blockchain for new levels of scalability. If you’re curious to know what proto-danksharding is and why it generates buzz in the cryptocurrency community, please continue reading.
Danksharding And Proto-Danksharding Are Two Vital Components in Upgrading the Ethereum Consensus Layer
Danksharding allows Ethereum to become a genuinely scalable blockchain. For the time being, the network can’t process more than 15 transactions per second, so activity migrates to scaling solutions, which have lower gas fees. Ethereum is a global platform, so there’s an urgent need for scalability. Danksharding has been developed to boost the performance and efficiency of the blockchain, but introducing it will take several upgrades. Upgrading the Ethereum network is challenging due to the number of apps that depend on it; it can take months or even years to update the network’s consensus.
Danksharding and proto-danksharding are two approaches to scaling the sheer amount of data on-chain. Danksharding represents a way of communicating with Layer 2 solutions, creating a landscape where more block space is available. More complex transactions can be processed without slowing down the network or raising gas fees. Proto-danksharding is a transitional step, approved as part of EIP-4844 within the Dencun upgrade. More precisely, it’s a way for rollups to add more affordable data to the blocks. Proto-danksharding is named after Ethereum developers Proto Lambda and Dankrad Feist.
EIP-4844 Was Activated on The Goerli Testnet On January 17
The highly-anticipated upgrade to the Ethereum network was activated on the Goerli testnet on January 17, 2024, which serves as a precursor for the launch on the mainnet. The subsequent implementation steps included its activation on the Sepolia test network on January 30 and the Holesky test network on February 7. The Ethereum team revealed the mainnet implementation date for the Dencun upgrade as 13th March 2024. Dencun is a combination of Deneb (a star) and Devcon 3 location Cancun.
Proto-Danksharding Will Introduce Data Blobs That Can Be Sent/Attached to Blocks
The aim of proto-danksharding is to address a fundamental challenge in Ethereum’s architecture, namely the high cost of transactions on Layer 2 blockchains, such as rollups. Calldata is used to send compressed transaction data to the on-chain contract. The minimum price of a transaction is 21,000 gas. The data is processed by all Ethereum nodes and stored indefinitely on the blockchain, which explains the high cost. Proto-danksharding proposes a new type of transaction called a blob-carrying transaction, which allows Layer 2 solutions to retrieve data in a manageable timeframe. It’s undoubtedly cheaper than call data.
Rollups post the transactions they execute in data blobs, operating more efficiently and passing on the savings to end-users in the form of more affordable transaction fees. The blobs have an expiry date of 18 days, so they significantly reduce storage costs. They’re stored on the consensus layer (Beacon nodes), not the Ethereum Virtual Machine – each block can contain up to 16 data blobs. Proto-danksharding takes advantage of the KZG polynomial commitment scheme, a new type of cryptography. The prover can compute a commitment to a polynomial, the properties of which can be opened at any position.
Proto-Danksharding Deals with The Bottleneck Effect That Hinders Scalability
The Ethereum blockchain does its best to match the transaction processing efficiency of giants like Visa. Secondary frameworks or protocols built on top of the existing system are preferable when it comes to competing with adversaries. Payment card services like Visa are able to process transactions fast and streamline payment timelines because the networks are closed, so they don’t require consensus. The incorporation of new data structures, such as blobs, helps Ethereum solve all three core aspects of the blockchain trilemma. The integrity and security of the system are reaffirmed even as it scales.
Even if there’s no perfect solution to the blockchain trilemma, developers have devised various innovative solutions. Layer 2 scaling solutions don’t change the fundamental design of the underlying blockchain network. They accommodate large transaction volumes while keeping fees affordable and transaction speeds consistent. Some experts believe the blockchain trilemma can never be solved, with one advantage being sacrificed for the other two. Proto-danksharding is much easier to implement compared to more advanced danksharding techniques. It might take some time until the Ethereum mainnet integrates the technical upgrade.
Conclusion
All things considered, full danksharding is a couple of years away, according to Ethereum.org, the leading online resource for the Ethereum community. Proto-danksharding will arrive soon enough. The standard for the platform is mature, the specification is agreed upon, and clients have implemented prototypes of danksharding. Validators will still need to check the availability of the complete data directly. Indeed, bandwidth is somewhat limited, yet it presents opportunities for significant scalability gains. Proto-danksharding will support the expanding ecosystem, enabling thousands of transactions per second.
EIP-4844 is a scalability upgrade for Ethereum, which means that it materially increases and introduces improvements to the transaction capacity of Ethereum itself. The aim is to reduce rollup costs by introducing binary large objects, which can be attached to the blocks without crowding out existing space. To achieve full danksharding, Ethereum must implement data availability sampling and erasure encoding, the combination of which is tested at a smaller scale through other blockchain projects.