Vitalik Buterin sheds light on how the Dencun hard fork improved the blockchain’s scaling and efficiency.

Indeed, proto-danksharding marks a significant shift, reducing transaction fees for rollups by a staggering factor of over 100. According to Ethereum’s co-founder, this development paves the way for a more scalable, cost-efficient ecosystem. It addresses long-standing concerns about blockchain bloat and high fees.

Why Ethereum’s Future Looks Bright, According to Vitalik Buterin

The Dencun hard fork signifies a pivotal transition for Ethereum. The blockchain’s shift towards a Layer 2 (L2)-centric ecosystem reflects a forward-thinking approach to decentralization, with major applications transitioning from Layer 1 (L1) to L2.

This transition reimagines Ethereum’s infrastructure to support a broader range of applications and improve user experience across the board.

Vitalik Buterin emphasizes the importance of separate data availability space. This is a novel concept that allows L2 projects like rollups to store data in a section of a block inaccessible by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The new mechanism enables data to be broadcasted and verified separately from the block.

Therefore, it lays the groundwork for future scalability through data availability sampling. This method promises to dramatically expand Ethereum’s data capacity without compromising security or requiring significant changes from users or developers.

“Because data space is not EVM-accessible, it can be broadcasted separately from a block and verified separately from a block. Eventually, it can be verified with a technology called data availability sampling, which allows each node to verify that the data was correctly published by only randomly checking a few small samples. Once this is implemented, the blob space could be greatly expanded; the eventual goal is 16 MB per slot (~1.33 MB per second),” Buterin wrote.

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The roadmap outlined by Buterin includes several critical areas for development. These include increasing blob capacity and enhancing L2 protocols to maximize data usage efficiency. The introduction of PeerDAS, a simplified version of data availability sampling, and EIP-7623 aims to further streamline Ethereum’s capacity for handling transactions and data, marking an ongoing commitment to scalability and efficiency.

Buterin also addresses the need for improvements within the L2 protocols themselves, from optimizing data compression to enhancing security measures. These improvements are crucial for supporting Ethereum’s growth and maintaining its position as a leading blockchain for decentralized applications.

“We no longer have any excuse. Up until a couple of years ago, we were setting ourselves a low standard, building applications that were clearly not usable at scale, as long as they worked as prototypes and were reasonably decentralized. Today, we have all the tools we’ll need, and indeed most of the tools we’ll ever have, to build applications that are simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly,” Buterin emphasized.

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The vision is for Ethereum to become a blockchain ecosystem that is capable of supporting a wide array of applications at scale and one that prioritizes user experience, security, and decentralization.