The Dencun upgrade was forked on Ethereum’s Holesky testnet on Wednesday, bringing “proto-danksharding” one step closer to mainnet deployment.

Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade was finalized on the Holesky testnet, marking its final deployment on a testnet before it officially hits the mainnet at a date still yet to be announced. 

At around 6:34 am ET on Wednesday, Dencun was forked on the Holesky testnet, according to data from the blockchain explorer. Etherem execution client Nethermind also confirmed that Dencun was live shortly after, noting nodes were green and the upgrade had finalized.

Holesky 🤝 blobs
Dencun is live on the Holesky testnet! Nethermind nodes are green 🟢

Mainnet, you’re next 🔜 pic.twitter.com/ZoQqxX4jnb

— Nethermind (@NethermindEth) February 7, 2024

The widely anticipated upgrade will bring “proto-danksharding” to Ethereum, a feature that introduces blob-carrying transactions that will move temporary data storage off-chain for nodes. These transactions will have the biggest impact on Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism, which will be able to facilitate high-throughput transactions at a much lower cost. 

“Churn limit looks good so far and blobs are flowing smoothly,” noted Ethereum developer Paritosh on X. 

The deployment on Holesky is the final test turn before the Dencun upgrade goes live on the mainnet, with developers expected to set a date for the mainnet launch at the AllCoreDevs meeting later today.

An uneventful testnet simulation is a good sign that developers will be confident enough to schedule the upgrade for mainnet deployment within the next few weeks, particularly after the Goerli upgrade saw a delay in finalizing after a bug was discovered in Prysm nodes during the hard fork. “By most estimations, it is reasonable to expect this hard fork to launch towards the end of March, or possibly sometime in April,” said Ethereum infrastructure company Consensys in a blog post.