Ethereum Newsletter January 2024

In this month’s newsletter:

Top news of 2023 that will shape 2024
Vitalik’s updated Ethereum roadmap
Dencun hard fork testnet timeline

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Top news of 2023 that will shape 2024

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While I am still chugging through the 193 pages of Messari’s Crypto Theses for 2024, let’s start things off with news highlights of 2023, which will influence the expected 2024 bull market.

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The top 4 projects that will continue to dominate headlines, taken from the DeFi newsletter The Decentralised:

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#4: Coinbase launches a blockchain
(Blockdaemon offers RPC + data APIs for Base)
#3: MakerDAO prepares for Endgame
(Blockdaemon wallet supports tokenization)
#2: Solana emerges from the ashes
(Blockdaemon’s staking, nodes + API for Solana)
#1: Ethereum staking goes wild
(Blockdaemon’s staking, nodes + API for Ethereum)

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Most importantly, we support YOU with all your institutional blockchain endeavors in 2024!

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Image source: @BlockdaemonHQ on X

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Vitalik’s updated Ethereum roadmap

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With the latest update, it becomes visually clear once again that there is still a lot of innovation and development happening in the Ethereum space. When Vitalik first talked about this roadmap in July 2022, he suggested that after the Merge, Ethereum would only be 55% complete. So are we at ~60% yet with Shapella done?
Anyway, great progress last year and lots to do, let’s go! 💪

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Image source: Vitalik’s tweet on X

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Dencun hard fork testnet timeline

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Shortly before the holidays, the Ethereum core devs announced the following testnet schedule for the upcoming Dencun fork:

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Goerli: Jan 17, 6:32:00 UTC
Sepolia: Jan 30, 22:51:12 UTC
Holesky: Feb 7, 11:34:24 UTC

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Assuming all goes well, this points to a Dencun Mainnet release in March (~4+ weeks after last testnet).

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The main benefit will come once L2’s adopt the newly introduced proto-danksharding in order to reduce gas costs, and the activation queue capacity will be temporarily reduced to 8 validators per epoch.

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