Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Goes Live With Fees Expected to Drop on the Network

Ethereum’s core developers have activated the highly significant Dencun upgrade, marking a pivotal moment in the network’s evolution. This upgrade, which took effect at 10 a.m. ET saw the integration of EIP4844, also known as blobs, heralding a new era of low fees in the network.

The much-anticipated Dencun upgrade is expected to drastically reduce transaction fees on Layer 2 projects in Ethereum, such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. This would allow them to compete with low-fee specialists like the Solana network, which has become an easy alternative for users looking to escape Ethereum’s excessive transaction deductions.

Best Upgrade Yet?

Unlike the previous’ call data’ system, blobs utilize a unique mechanism that ensures data accessibility without disrupting the network’s existing infrastructure, thereby reducing transaction fees. While this feature is currently available in some Layer 2s, it will take time for the entire network to fully integrate it.

Speaking on the upgrade, Ethereum core developer Marius Van Der Wijden said, “I think that this upgrade will have the biggest effect for users of all the Ethereum upgrades yet. Dencun is a much bigger update than Shanghai.”

The Shangai upgrade last year allowed users to access their staked Ethereum during the network’s Merge. It was one of the numerous updates after Ethereum migrated from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).

Blast Stalls Afterwards

Just a few minutes after the Dencun upgrade, Layer 2 network Blast reported an outage, which it stated was related to the update on Ethereum.

The Blast Mainnet has stopped producing blocks due to issues related to Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade.

Core engineering contributors are working on a fix. We’ll share an update and post-mortem once the fix is live (eta 30-60 min).

— Blast (@Blast_L2) March 13, 2024

The outage started around 10.05 a.m. ET and lasted for over two hours. Afterward, Blast posted a new update stating that the issue was corrected and that the network updated its node repo to fix it. It further urged “devs running their own nodes to docker compose pull to get the latest version.”

Surprisingly, Ethereum barely reacted price-wise to the Dencun upgrade, as the price remained almost flat after the update. ETH continued its futile effort, at least for now, to topple $4,000 and is currently trading at $3,971.