The Ethereum blockchain is on its way to a massive rebranding as its long-awaited Dencun upgrade is now live on the Sepolia testnet. The Ethereum Foundation projected that the Dencun upgrade would launch on Sepolia by Jan. 30, and the successful integration was revealed by core developer Terrence.eth, for which he received many accolades from the community.
The Dencun upgrade going live on Sepolia is one of the two remaining steps required to launch the update on the Ethereum mainnet. Ethereum has long been plagued with lower scalability and high gas fees. For this, it has continued to receive intense backlash from industry analysts like legendary trader Peter Brandt, who considers its high cost of operation a basis for its demise in the long term.
The Dencun upgrade will attempt to resolve scalability issues while also making Ethereum more cost-effective as a protocol. The Dencun upgrade will specifically introduce proto-danksharding, a compressed data storage mechanism dubbed "blobs" to help optimize performance.
Development efforts are now in their advanced stages as the upgrade was launched on the Goerli testnet earlier this month. The last step before the mainnet debut will be to launch on the Holesky testnet, an upgrade that is scheduled for Feb. 7.
Ethereum to fight back against its competitors
Many new protocols have emerged to capitalize on the weakness of the Ethereum protocol. From Solana (SOL) to Cardano (ADA) and even Avalanche (AVAX), the race to dethrone Ethereum remains the core mantra for many developers in the Web3 ecosystem today.
With the Dencun upgrade, many of the pain points on Ethereum can be resolved, thus making the protocol more attractive to developers and end users overall. With the upgrade, Ethereum is poised to extend its dominance as the top blockchain of choice for all things decentralized finance (DeFi) and more.