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Ethereum's Cancun upgrade successfully goes live as Sepolia, with the final testnet Holesky launching on February 7th.

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Ethereum Cancun Upgrade Dencun Goes Live on Sepolia Testnet

The highly anticipated Ethereum Cancun upgrade Dencun went live on the Sepolia testnet at 06:51 on the 31st (Taiwan time), with Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko noting that the upgrade went smoothly.

Sepolia is the second testnet for the Ethereum simulated Cancun upgrade. Previously, the first testnet, Goerli, encountered node client synchronization issues upon launch.

Ethereum Cancun Upgrade (Dencun) Goes Live on Goerli Testnet, Client Synchronization Issue Yet to be Fixed

Why is the Ethereum Cancun Upgrade Dencun Highly Anticipated?

This Ethereum upgrade includes Dencun, Proto-danksharding/ EIP-4844, among others. Proto-danksharding will introduce a new compressed data storage mechanism, blob, to reduce transaction costs on L2, making data availability cheaper and addressing scalability issues. Given the rapid growth in the number of L2s, this upgrade is seen as a crucial step in the ecosystem roadmap.

The Cancun upgrade is expected to launch the third testnet, Holesky, on February 7, with the final Ethereum mainnet upgrade anticipated towards the end of the first quarter.

Explainer | What is the Cancun Upgrade Dencun? How Does it Impact Ethereum and L2?

Prior to this, analysts at The Block Research expected the Cancun upgrade to increase adoption of L2 based on Ethereum Rollup. However, a few analysts are not optimistic about the short-term impact of the Cancun upgrade on L2, believing Arbitrum One and Optimism (OP) will remain the mainstream L2 solutions.

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