Ethereum Protocol Upgrades

With every protocol upgrade part of Ethereum’s roadmap, we build a network that is more sustainable, scalable, and secure for builders around the world.

Latest Upgrade

Ethereum Dencun Upgrade

The Dencun upgrade, also known as Cancun-Deneb, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2024 and will focus on increasing the scalability and efficiency of the network through nine EIPs. The most important EIP implemented as part of the upgrade is EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding. Ethereum end-users are expected to benefit from lower gas fees on layer two (L2) transactions following proto-danksharding.

Past upgrade

The Merge

By evolving the network’s approach to consensus, the Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy requirements by 99.95% ensuring that the network can sustainably support the next generation of web3 creators and developers.

Explore The Merge
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The Ethereum Roadmap

The vision of Ethereum, with every upgrade essential to future development of the protocol, is best captured in Vitalik Buterin’s roadmap:

Ethereum Milestones

What we did

2023

Preparing validator withdrawals at Edelweiss Interop

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2022

Readied devs, tested the Merge and prepared Ethereum at Amphora

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2021

Helped design fee optimization scheme

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2019

Executable Beacon Chain Proposal and Formal Verification of Spec

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2018

Improve scalability with state channels

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Upgrading Ethereum

Our research areas spans all key topics to enable the success of distributed technologies

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ETH Staking & Withdrawals

The Shanghai/Capella upgrade is doubly named because it is the first simultaneous upgrade of Ethereum’s execution and consensus layers — designed to enable staked ETH withdrawals.

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Scalability (Sharding and zk)

The combination of sharding with the explosion of rollup innovation promises to address concerns around scalability

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Diverse and Open

Client, validator and layer-2 diversity ensures a healthy and scalable network

From the genesis block, Consensys has helped to build and democratize Ethereum. We believe that through decentralized networks like Ethereum humankind can achieve more, and we’ve contributed our people, products and resources to help drive its evolution.

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More scalable

Investing in Layer 1 and Layer 2 upgrades to support 1000s of transactions per second and make dapps faster and cheaper to use

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More secure

Formal verification of core protocol changes and helping to scale the staking mechanism needed to secure and decentralize Ethereum

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More sustainable

Defining, testing and supporting the transition to Proof of Stake

Our Vision

Envisioning a future Ethereum

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