Ethereum developers aim to launch the Dencun testnet in January, the network's next major update

Ever-evolving Ethereum

It is all ready. Ethereum developers have confirmed that the launch of Dencun, the network's next major update, will take place next January, to pursue major improvements to the mainnet's scalability.

In total, as agreed by the devs, there will be three testnets that will implement the update: Goerli, on January 17th, Sepolia, on the 30th of the same month, and Holesky on February 7th. All of this is functional to the introduction of proto-danksharding and the so-called data "blobs", which we have already technically explored elsewhere. In short, an improvement in the scalability of the network through "sharding" (a division of the blockchain into several parts, so-called "shards"), and data management separately from that of regular transactions (thanks to these "blobs") .

The goal, much desired by the community, is to take a significant step towards reducing gas fees, which have been plaguing users for years and undermining the network's capacity for development and adoption.

A test has already been conducted (and successfully) on Goerli to evaluate the performance of the Ethereum network in a post-Dencun scenario, and for this reason the devs decided to announce the implementation.

The challenge between ETH and SOL

Dencun is the most important step in the development of Ethereum since the Shapella hard fork last April, which opened up the withdrawal of staked ETH. And it could represent a response to the performance of Ethereum's Layer-1 competitors. First of all, Solana, which thanks to its very low transaction fees is catching up on ETH in every area of the crypto sector, starting from the NFT one, where it is most evident.

The trend in the price of the token, from this point of view, is only one of the symptoms, but nevertheless significant. If Ethereum has recorded substantial lateralization in the last few weeks (contradicted only in the last few hours), for Solana the data is of a completely different kind, with a +52% in the last 30 days and a +774% since January 2023.

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