Why You Should Pay Attention to Ethereum Dencun Update

What is Dencun Upgrade?

Dencun (EIP-4844) is a long-awaited update to Ethereum that introduces proto-danksharding, significantly reducing gas fees on Layer 2 blockchains.

How much will the gas change? About 10-50 times, depending on the type of transaction. You can compare commissions before and after EIP-4844 here. This update is especially relevant amid the surging gas, when fees on major L2s could surpass $2 per transaction.

How is the reduction in gas fees achieved and why does it not affect the Ethereum network itself? It's all about the amount of information stored by L2 blockchains on Ethereum. Proto-dunksharing reveals a new approach to data compression using binary large objects (blob) that will not be stored forever on Ethereum. 

Storing them for a short period of time (up to several months) saves a large amount of memory, thus reducing the load on the network and, consequently, the amount of commissions. Rollups take a couple of weeks at most to verify this data, and then it can be deleted.

Why Is Dencun Important For Airdrop Hunters?

So far, several major Layer 2 blockchains haven't announced the launch of their coins. On the horizon we have zkSync, Scroll, Linea, Zora, and many more airdrops, not to mention the fact that new L2s launching almost every week. 

In addition, we should not forget about LayerZero, the main link between EVM blockchains, and many new projects building on Layer 2 blockchains: DeFi, GameFi, and many more...

On-chain transactions, boosting volumes, and interacting with different smart contracts will now become significantly cheaper, and thus increase the efficiency of farming airdrops. Dencun will also decrease the entry threshold for new users. Now it looks like Layer 2 blockchains will be able to compete with Solana in terms of gas fees!