Awaiting Dencun: Execution Layer upgrades
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Although we are marching towards the Dencun upgrade and all posts are filled with its mentions, a basic understanding of the changes coming with it can still be challenging for the community. Today is the time for an explicit post explaining all EIPs which is going to be implemented on the Execution Layer within the Cancun part of the Ethereum upgrade. EIP-1153: Transient storage opcodes 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1153 👥 Authors: Alexey Akhunov, Moody Salem 📑 In a nutshell: Running a transaction in #Ethereum can generate multiple frames of execution, each created by CALL (or similar) instructions. Currently, these frames can communicate either via inputs/outputs passed via CALL instructions, or via storage updates. If there is an intermediate frame belonging to another untrusted contract, the first option is not secure. The second one is costly. Proposed transient storage is a dedicated and gas-efficient solution to the problem of inter-frame communication. EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVM 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4788 👥 Authors: Alex Stokes , Ansgar Dietrichs , Danny Ryan , Martin Holst Swende , lightclient 📑 In a nutshell: It will force the commitment of a hash tree root of each parent beacon block in the corresponding execution block header, and store each of these roots in a smart contract on the #Ethereum mainnet. This will lower the trust assumptions inherent to the applications that require information about the Ethereum consensus state to function correctly, such as liquid staking protocols, restaking applications, smart contract bridges, MEV mitigations and more. EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4844 👥 Authors: Vitalik Buterin , Dankrad Feist , Diederik Loerakker , George Kadianakis , Matt Garnett , Mofi Taiwo , Ansgar Dietrichs 📑 Proto-Danksharding, represented in EIP-4844, is a proposal to incorporate the logic, transaction formats, and verification rules of a complete Danksharding specification, without actually implementing sharding. In this setup, all validators and users are still required to validate the availability of the complete data directly. For a detailed explanation, check out my thread: https://twitter.com/eth_everstake/status/1766137603500212728 EIP-5656: MCOPY – Memory copying instruction 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5656 👥 Authors: Alex Beregszaszi , Paul Dworzanski , Jared Wasinger , Casey Detrio , Pawel Bylica , Charles Cooper 📑 In a nutshell: It introduces a new EVM instruction, MCOPY. The purpose of MCOPY is to improve the performance of memory copying (the process of moving blocks of data from one location in memory to another) and assist in a more efficient means of building data structures. This EIP is strictly an efficiency improvement to the #Ethereum virtual machine, and does not have any trade offs or incompatibilities as there are no current functional references to MCOPY. EIP-6780: SELFDESTRUCT only in same transaction 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6780 👥 Authors: Guillaume Ballet , Vitalik Buterin , Dankrad Feist 📑 In a nutshell: As well, as the prev one, this is a housekeeping update that won't change the overall direction of Ethereum. It will disempower the SELFDESTRUCT opcode. The existing usage of SELFDESTRUCT should be unaffected, while future references to the opcode will be stripped of their potential negative capabilities. This change is partially motivated by the upcoming implementation of Verkle trees. EIP-7516: BLOBBASEFEE opcode 🔗 eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7516 👥 Authors: Carl Beekhuizen 📑 In a nutshell: Also, the one an EIP so that #Ethereum mainnet functions properly. It will add a BLOBBASEFEE (0x4a) opcode that returns the value of the blob base-fee of the current block it is executing in. It is identical to BASEFEE, except that it returns the blob base-fee as per EIP-4844. The intended use case is to get the value of the blob base-fee for contracts. ▫️ Hope this concise EIPs overview will provide you with a solid understanding of the main concepts behind the changes that will be implemented on Ethereum EL and Dencun in general. For a deep dive into all the key aspects of Dencun and what they mean, our comprehensive article is a must-read! https://everstake.one/blog/ethereums-dencun-upgrade-key-features-and-market-implications submitted by /u/irina_everstake |
