Ethereum Developers Confirm Dencun Testnet Dates, Look To Following ‘Pectra’ Upgrade

On Jan. 4, Ethereum developers wrapped up the first All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) call for 2024.

Dates for Dencun’s testnet deployments were locked in during the meeting, starting with a Goerli deployment on Jan. 17. Follow-up deployments are set to go live on Sepolia and Holesky on Jan. 30 and Feb. 7 respectively.

Dissenters argued that 13 days may not provide sufficient time for any requisite changes to be made based on observations from the Goerli launch. However, the next ACDE call is slated for Jan. 18, meaning the scheduling could be adjusted should developers encounter any issues during the 24 hours proceeding the Goerli fork.

“Most other clients felt the timeline, albeit somewhat aggressive, was acceptable,” tweeted Go Ethereum, an Ethereum client provider. “Assuming all goes well, expect client releases for Goerli next week and for Sepolia/Holesky the week of Jan. 22.”

Dencun will usher a significant reduction in transaction fees for Layer 2 rollups by replacing calldata with less gas-intensive blobs via EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding, improving data availability on Layer 2.

The Verge

The meeting then discussed what measures should be prioritized in Ethereum’s following upgrade, Pectra. Go Ethereum noted that all client teams are in favor of focusing on introducing Verkle Trees — a data structure enabling the network to become stateless, meaning clients will not need to store Ethereum’s entire state history in order to validate blocks.

Speaking at the Ethereum Community Conference in July 2022, Vitalik Buterin said instituting Verkle Trees, also called “The Verge”, will bolster the network’s decentralization by reducing the hardware requirements associated with becoming a validator.

“You will be able to verify Ethereum blocks and even be a validator without having hundreds of gigabytes on your disc, which is great for decentralization,” Buterin said.

Go Ethereum tweeted that the introduction of Verkle Trees will likely require more than 12 months for development at minimum, meaning Pectra is unlikely to go live in 2024. Lightclient estimated Verkle Trees could take between 18 and 24 months to realize.

Other Ethereum Improvement Proposals may also be included in Pectra.