Ethereum’s Upcoming Upgrade ‘Cancun-Deneb’ Set to Begin Testing on January 17
Ethereum’s upcoming upgrade, “Cancun-Deneb” (also known as “Dencun”), is set to begin testing on January 17, as per an official note published on the Ethereum Github repository.
According to the latest Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call report, Ethereum developers have confirmed their progress towards launching a Goerli shadow fork for testing the Cancun/Deneb upgrade with all clients. This testing phase is expected to be initiated within the next one to two weeks.
The initial testing will take place on the Goerli testnet, followed by implementation on the Sepolia testnet on January 30 and the Holesky testnet on February 7.
The Cancun/Deneb upgrade is currently undergoing testing on Devnet 12, where all execution layer (EL) and consensus layer (CL) client combinations, including the Prysm client, have been integrated. The MEV-Boost software has been activated for most client combinations, with the exception of those involving the Prysm client.
The introduction of a shadow fork is part of the testing process, serving as a smaller-scale test fork that focuses on specific improvements needed before implementing the Dencun upgrade on the main protocol.
However, the Ethereum team has not yet specified when Dencun will be deployed on the mainnet. The Dencun upgrade includes several tools designed to reduce fees, enable new features for bridges and staking pools, and limit the use of self-destruct operations on smart contracts.
After testing, the next goal will be to distribute the changes on the mainnet around the end of February, although these dates are subject to change depending on the outcome of the testnet forks.
The upcoming Ethereum upgrade is set to introduce changes to the two mainnet layers of Ethereum: the
