Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Timelines Shared For Sepolia and Holesky Testnets – Mainnet Next?

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Jimmy Aki

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Jimmy Aki

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Jimmy has nearly 10 years of experience as a journalist and writer in the blockchain industry. He has worked with well-known publications such as Bitcoin Magazine, CCN, and Blockonomi, covering news...

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January 25, 2024 13:54 EST

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The highly anticipated Ethereum hard fork Dencun is gearing up for its testnet debut on Sepolia and Holesky in the upcoming weeks.

Confirming this development in a recent blog post, the Ethereum Protocol Support Team stated that the latest upgrade to the smart contract network is scheduled for January 30 and February 7.

The Dencun upgrade, a part of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) series, will introduce the ‘proto-danksharding’ feature, which runs on data blobs. It is duly denoted with the EIP-7569 tag, and the ‘proto-danksharding’ feature is only one of the offerings.

Once they hit the public Ethereum blockchain, data blobs are expected to be more storage efficient and radically reduce layer-2 (L2) scaling solutions’ rollup costs and transaction fees.

Currently, the Dencun hard fork is being battle-tested on the Goerli testnet after making its official launch on January 17.

On January 30, it would migrate to the Sepolia testnet and make its final stand on Holesky on February 7. If the testing phase proceeds without significant issues, the Dencun upgrade is slated to transition to the Ethereum mainnet.

More testnet blobs on the way .oO

Dencun will activate on Sepolia Jan 30, and on Holesky Feb 7. If running a node on either network, now's the time to update it!

Assuming both of these go smoothly, mainnet is next ✅https://t.co/QbEUACix2S

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) January 25, 2024

Delving into the details, the Ethereum Protocol Support Team stated that the Sepolia testnet series for Dencun will activate at 22:51:12 UTC at the epoch height of 132608. The first epoch confirming its slot succession will kick in at 4243456.

On the other hand, Holesky’s launch is scheduled for 11:34:24 at the epoch height of 29696, with its first epoch slot going online at 950272.

The Dencun upgrade follows in the footsteps of the Shapella upgrade, which activated staking on the Beacon Chain after the Ethereum blockchain switched to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

Similar to Shapella, Dencun introduces nine features, including transient storage opcodes (EIP-1153), Beacon block root in the EVM (EIP-4788), shard blob transactions (EIP-4844), and six others.

Ethereum Spot ETF Approval Delayed

The Ethereum network is the second most valuable blockchain-based protocol after the Bitcoin network.

Controlling as much as 19% of the emerging industry, Ethereum is home to everything powered by smart contracts, including decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Metaverse, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

With so many use cases, the protocol has garnered comparable or even lesser recognition than the Bitcoin network, with several legacy-backed asset management firms looking to offer exchange-traded fund (ETF) products underlying the network.

One such entity is Grayscale Asset Management, which has recently encountered a delay from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its spot Ethereum ETF.

And another one … @SECGov delays @Grayscale Spot Ethereum ETF application.

IMO: All Ethereum ETFs will be delayed pending a conclusion to the Coinbase and Binance SEC hearings. The president to approve this ETF applies to all Proof Of Stake projects and will be delayed until…

— MartyParty (@martypartymusic) January 25, 2024

Although the Grayscale spot Ethereum ETF, like others, faces a temporary setback, many anticipate its eventual approval. The product is designed to track the Ethereum network’s performance and provide users with tokenized securities underlying the digital asset.