On March 13, the cryptocurrency Ethereum launched its biggest upgrade in a year and a half.
The upgrade introduced an eagerly awaited technology, the “Proto-Danksharding”-feature, also known as EIP-4844. The feature aims to enhance Ethereum’s scalability and efficiency.
“Proto-Danksharding brought to the table so-called ‘blobs’. These are sizable chunks of data that can be incorporated into Ethereum blocks but are kept distinct from the transaction data needed for smart contract execution,” cryptocurrency analyst Mads Eberhardt at Steno Research explains.
He elaborates, “‘Blobs’ are crafted to temporarily store hefty data elements from rollup transactions, such as batches of transactions or zero-knowledge proofs, and are deleted from the blockchain after 18 days, once they are no longer required for transaction validity verification.”
Although it has been just a little over a week since the upgrade went live, Eberhardt feels confident that it will live up to its promise.
“This upgrade is poised to unlock a whole new realm of possibilities for the Ethereum ecosystem and pioneer new use-cases onchain,” he says.