The development team of Ethereum announced the planned dates for the Dencun hard fork in test networks, scheduled for the first two months of 2024. Tim Beiko, the project leader, stated that if everything goes according to plan, the hard fork will be carried out according to the following schedule:

• January 17th in the Goerli test network
• January 30th in the Sepolia test network
• February 7th in the Holesky test network

Beiko also noted that in case serious problems are detected, the process could be canceled. It is expected that information about the hard fork will be published in the blog about a week in advance, so that network participants can prepare for the update.

After a successful launch in the test networks, the Dencun hard fork will be implemented in the main Ethereum network around the end of February. Initially, the hard fork was planned for the last quarter of 2023, but the timeline was shifted to the next year due to consensus issues.

Dencun is an update that includes EIP-4844, introducing the Proto-Danksharding option for scaling the network by creating a new type of transactions for large arrays of binary data. This is expected to help reduce the size of fees for second-level solutions based on Rollup technology.

The hard fork also includes changes in the consensus (Deneb) and execution (Cancun) layers. In September, the Holesky test network was launched, intended to replace Goerli. This test network plays a key role in the implementation of Dencun, providing stricter conditions for testing the update.