$ETH Ethereum has undergone several significant updates recently, with the most notable being **"Dencun" (Deneb + Cancun)**, which went live on **March 13, 2024**. This was a major hard fork aimed at improving scalability and reducing transaction costs, particularly for Layer 2 (L2) solutions like rollups.

### **Key Features of the Dencun Upgrade**

1. **Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844)**

- Introduces **"blob transactions"**, allowing rollups to store data more cheaply.

- Expected to **reduce L2 transaction fees** significantly (some L2s saw fees drop by ~90%).

2. **Other Important EIPs in Dencun**

- **EIP-1153**: Introduces transient storage, reducing gas costs for smart contracts.

- **EIP-4788**: Improves cross-chain communication by exposing Ethereum consensus data.

- **EIP-5656**: Minor optimization for the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).

- **EIP-6780**: Limits the `SELFDESTRUCT` opcode’s functionality for security.

### **Next Major Upgrade: Prague/Electra (Pectra)**

- Expected in **late 2024 or early 2025**.

- Likely to include:

- **EIP-7251 (Increase staking limits)** – Raising max effective balance per validator.

- **EIP-3074 (Account abstraction improvements)** – Enhancing wallet usability.

- **Verkle Trees (EIP-6800)** – A step toward stateless clients (may come later).

### **Recent Ethereum Improvements**

- **The Merge (Sept 2022)**: Transitioned Ethereum from PoW to PoS.

- **Shanghai Upgrade (April 2023)**: Enabled staked ETH withdrawals.

- **Surge Phase (Post-Dencun)**: Focuses on scaling via sharding & rollups.