Go Ethereum, the most widely used Ethereum execution layer client, announced on February 9 that it has released a new version of its software, called Edolus, in preparation for the upcoming Ethereum mainnet Dencun upgrade. The Dencun upgrade, which consists of two parts, Cancun and Deneb, is expected to go live on March 13, 2024, and will introduce significant changes to the Ethereum blockchain, such as the “proto-danksharding” feature.
Edolus is also known as Geth v1.13.12. It includes the network fork number for Cancun. This means it will automatically switch over to the new Ether rules when Dencun goes live next month. The update also fixes a bug that impacted how miner tips are enforced. The update recommends validators who don’t take advantage of miner extractable value check their miner gas price flag if they want to change it.
The notable Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) of the update are the following:
- EIP-1153: Transient storage opcodes
- EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVM
- EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions
- EIP-5656: MCOPY – Memory copying instruction
- EIP-6780: SELFDESTRUCT only in same transaction
- EIP-7516: BLOBBASEFEE opcode
Dencun is the biggest change to Ethereum since the Shanghai upgrade last April. Shanghai brought in upgrades like EIP-1559. That made transaction fees more predictable and burned some fees to reduce ETH supply. Dencun upgrades both the execution layer and consensus layer of Ether. The execution layer processes transactions and smart contracts. The consensus layer secures the network and agrees on the blockchain state.
Geth’s Role In Ethereum’s Evolution
A major part of Dencun is EIP-4844, called “proto-danksharding.” This aims to increase Ethereum’s efficiency and ability to scale. It allows parallel transaction processing across multiple environments. Today, processing happens sequentially in one environment. Parallel processing can raise transactions per second, lower gas costs, and support more use cases.
Go Ethereum or Geth, is the largest Ether execution layer client. It’s written in the Go language. Many nodes, validators, developers, and users rely on Geth to interact with Ethereum. As of last Friday, Geth powers about 70% of execution layer nodes, according to Ethernodes.org.
Geth is one of the first execution layer clients to implement the Dencun specifications and release a supporting version. The new version, Geth v1.13.12 or Edolus, includes the Cancun fork number. This means it will switch over when Dencun goes live next month. Go Ethereum recommends all users, especially non-MEV validators, update as soon as possible. They should also check the miner gas price flag if they want to adjust it.
Dencun is expected to increase demand and value for ETH cryptocurrency. The coin prices have trended up since early this year. According to CoinMarketCap, ETH is currently trading at the price of $ 2,529.46, with a market cap of $303.97 billion. ETH has slightly gained 1.52% in the last 24 hours.
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