After the successful deployment of the Shapella upgrade that enabled staking withdrawals, the Ethereum (ETH) development team is preparing for the launch of the Dencun upgrade, expected in late 2023, which promises to bring lots of new updates and could even lead to an ETH price hike.
Specifically, ‘Dencun’ is a joint term for two major Ethereum upgrades – Cancun, which is the upgrade to Ethereum’s execution layer (EL), and Deneb, which refers to the consensus layer (CL) upgrade, as described in an article published by Ethereum-focused cryptocurrency market news site EtherWorld on June 24.
As it happens, the Cancun upgrade introduces several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) focused on improving storage, scalability, and optimizing gas efficiency, such as through the regulation of block rewards and delaying the gradual increase in Ethereum mining difficulty for a smooth transition to Ethereum 2.0.
At the same time, Deneb focuses on expanding the size and efficiency of the Ethereum blockchain, with one notable EIP that aims to upgrade its proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm toward increasing its power and improving user experience.