Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade launches on Goerli testnet

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Ethereum developers have successfully deployed the Dencun upgrade on the Goerli testnet today, according to a tweet from Ethereum developer Paritosh Jayanthi. After Goerli, Dencun will be deployed on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets. If all is successful, it can be activated on the Ethereum mainnet.

Goerli forked and blobs are now enabled on the testnet!

We're debugging a client issue right now, we should have more info in a bit. Expect to hear more later today and a deeper dive at ACD tomorrow! https://t.co/BUA74IfLzo

— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) January 17, 2024

The upgrade initially stumbled, facing difficulties achieving consensus within the expected timeframe. This was due to a low participation rate among Prysm validators, with 80% being online, according to Terence, a maintainer of Prysm, an Ethereum consensus layer client.

PSA: setting expectations for the Goerli hard fork tonight👇

The participation is low (~80%). Losing finality requires approximately 10% of validators to be offline. Being offline could be due to operators not upgrading a piece of software (and there are multiple)…

— terence (@terencechain) January 16, 2024

However, the situation saw a turnaround as Jayanthi reported that the issue was resolved as validators returned online, allowing the Goerli testnet to finally reach consensus.

The goerli fork finalized! 😀https://t.co/LIa3d4Ml5H

After the fix was patched in, the validators came back online and the chain started finalizing again. The MEV circuitbreaker automatically disables and mev-blocks have started flowing through as well.

Yay client diversity! https://t.co/cLz3ZRxnXq

— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) January 17, 2024

The Dencun upgrade, initially slated for 2023, was postponed to Q1/2024 due to unsuccessful upgrade tests. As one of the major events this year, Dencun is expected to introduce several major changes to Ethereum, most notably the introduction of ephemeral data blobs with EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding, which is poised to significantly reduce Layer 2 transaction fees and enhance Ethereum’s scalability. Further information about other protocol changes can be found here.

According to Tim Beiko, the head of the protocol support team at the Ethereum Foundation, Dencun will be Goerli’s last upgrade. Following its activation on the mainnet, the Ethereum Foundation and its clients will no longer support the Goerli testnet. 

Blobs are coming to Goerli .oO

On Jan 17, at 6:32 UTC, Dencun will activate on the testnet! It will be the last network upgrade before Goerli shuts down in a few months.

More info on the upgrade, client releases, and more, in the full announcement 📣https://t.co/WJ7GYT6Sbk

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) January 11, 2024

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