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On March 13th, according to Etherscan data, the Ethereum mainnet block height reached the scheduled epoch for the Dencun upgrade (269568).
The main goal of the "Dencun" upgrade is to enhance the scalability and modularity of the L2 network, strengthen the security features of the Ethereum network, and improve overall usability. The most anticipated proposal is EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), a precursor to the full version of sharding expansion called Danksharding. The entire sharding scheme revolves around Rollup for on-chain scaling, aimed at expanding L2 Rollup, reducing fees, and increasing throughput while paving the way for full sharding implementation.
In simple terms, the biggest benefit of Dencun is the reduction of transaction costs on L2.
Ethereum core developer eric.eth has stated that the implementation of EIP-4844 will result in gas costs for Ethereum L2 transactions dropping to around $0.01. According to Optimism's website, the cost of executing a swap on Uniswap will decrease from the current $0.59 to $0.01.
As Bitcoin prices continue to rise, data from analyst @0xCryptoChan indicates that the percentage of BTC held by holders for more than 155 days is declining, suggesting a shift of liquidity away from Bitcoin towards other assets.
With the anticipation of the Dencun upgrade and Ethereum ETF, Ethereum surged from $2300 to $4000. Now that Dencun has been activated on the mainnet and gas fees have been reduced, it is expected to encourage users to participate in more applications and increase their on-chain activity.
However, some in the community believe that EIP-4844 will reduce Ethereum's overall revenue. Although the fees for L2 transactions on Ethereum will indeed decrease, this reduction is unlikely to have a significant impact on Ethereum's total fees. L2 transaction fees account for only about 7-10% of Ethereum's total fee revenue.
Furthermore, with the comprehensive outbreak of airdrops, lower gas fees on L2 may further incentivize airdrop farmers to increase their on-chain interactions, potentially increasing the overall value generated within the network and benefiting Ethereum and its ecosystem.
On the other hand, according to @cheng_shutong, most altcoins have annualized fees of 100% or even higher, indicating that most retail investors are chasing after altcoins amid Bitcoin and Ethereum's consecutive all-time highs.
After the Dencun upgrade, some believe that more DApps will independently adopt Rollup, which may benefit the RaaS (Rollup as a Service) market. Charles d'Haussy, CEO of the dYdX Foundation, previously stated to BlockBeats that if the ecosystem wants to further develop, it needs to build its own chain.
The speculation surrounding Dencun is essentially about three key enhancements introduced by EIP-4844 and Blob-carrying transactions. In addition to reducing transaction costs, these enhancements include improving Ethereum's scalability, testing the network's ability to handle increased data loads in production, and preparing for comprehensive sharding upgrades.
Compared to existing methods, EIP-4844 and Blob-carrying transactions can more efficiently utilize block space. Additionally, since blobs are completely different types of transactions, they have their own fee market and are not affected by regular transaction activities on the Ethereum mainnet.
Bankless analysts point out in an article that in the long run, as L2 becomes cheaper, it will open up design space for building unique applications. For example, many applications with high throughput requirements, such as AI and dePIN projects, may choose to build on L2 or even L3.
Despite this, L2 is still not seen as a competitor to Solana. According to L2BEAT data, as of writing, in the top L2s, the DA layer has switched to Blob from Ethereum mainnet, including ZkSync and Starknet in the ZK Rollup family, and Optimism and Base in the Optimistic Rollup family. After the switch, the gas fees for these four L2s have decreased by an order of magnitude.
However, @0xNing0x pointed out that the current reduction in gas fees was achieved under the condition that large DA consumers such as Arbitrum and Blast had not switched DA layers, and the current DA fees are still two orders of magnitude higher than Celestia DA fees.
Furthermore, Arbitrum stated that ArbOS Atlas has introduced additional Arbitrum fee reductions for Arbitrum One, which will be activated on March 18th. After activation, the remaining fee for each compressed byte on L1 will be reduced from 32 gwei to 0, and the minimum basic fee on L2 will be reduced from 0.1 gwei to 0.01 gwei.
Therefore, the specific effectiveness of the Dencun upgrade will depend on the gradual transition of all top L2s to the DA layer and the balance of Rollup parameter adjustments and market competition strategies.
From the current market performance, Ethereum and general-purpose L2s have not seen significant gains. @0xNing0x believes that after the Dencun upgrade, the main business model of the Ethereum mainnet will focus on selling block space, and the revenue from application layer taxes will be transferred to general-purpose L2s. However, general-purpose L2 teams are heavily ideological and are not competitors to competing chains like Solana.
During this cycle, SOL's price has steadily risen, and even the tokens of the entire Solana ecosystem have seen a general increase. Projects in other ecosystems have followed Solana's pace, with multiple sectors such as DeFi, DePin, and AI blossoming, allowing Solana's TVL to rise all the way to $3.6 billion as of writing. |
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