Ethereum Got a Makeover: The Decun Upgrade Explained

3 min readMar 14, 2024

Imagine a busy highway. Too many cars trying to get through at once leads to a traffic jam. That’s kind of what was happening with Ethereum. The Decun upgrade is like adding extra lanes to this highway. Here’s the simple breakdown:

What is the problem? Too many people using Ethereum caused slow transaction speeds and high fees.

What is the solution? Decun allows storing extra information outside the main network, freeing up space.

Think of it like this; transactions are like cars. Decun lets them carry less luggage (data) on the main highway, allowing them to move faster.

This upgrade, a hard fork, started at Ethereum epoch 269,568 at 13:55 UTC (9:55 a.m. ET), and was finalized at 14:10 UTC. This is a significant update to the Ethereum blockchain.

This can improve scalability, aiming to address the challenges of handling a high volume of transactions on the Ethereum network. It also targets bringing down the transaction fees, especially on Layer 2 solutions built on top of Ethereum.

As seen on ccn,

“The Ethereum Dencun upgrade is poised to mark a pivotal moment for layer-2 scaling solutions. It will reduce transaction fees across layer-2 networks and bolster Ethereum’s scalability overall.”

The key feature of the Decun upgrade is proto-danksharding (EIP-4844). This introduces a new type of transaction called “blobs” that allows for storing large amounts of data off-chain. It makes transactions more efficient and reduces the burden on the main Ethereum network, impacting Layer 2 fees. While not directly lowering fees on the mainnet, it paves the way for Layer 2 solutions to operate more efficiently, indirectly influencing the overall gas price.

This is considered the most substantial upgrade since Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake in September 2022 (The Merge).

Here are some tweets celebrating blobs