Danksharding

Danksharding, named after Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist, is an advanced and simplified version of traditional sharding architecture and represents Ethereum’s ultimate strategy for scalability.

Initially, Ethereum planned to implement 64 shard chains within the execution layer to address the prominent throughput limitation. This design aimed to distribute the transaction load across multiple shards for parallel execution, thereby significantly boosting overall throughput. However, with the rapid progress and adoption of Layer 2 networks and rollup technology, Ethereum shifted its strategy to Danksharding. Instead of dividing the execution layer as initially planned, Danksharding distributes the data availability function across multiple shards while offloading the execution function to external rollups. This transition transforms Layer 1 Ethereum from a monolithic structure to a more modular blockchain architecture.

Core enhancements introduced with Danksharding include:

Blobs: Blobs are large, efficient data chunks that are stored temporarily on the consensus layer without being processed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This design allows transactions from Layer 2 and Layer 3 to bypass costly EVM processing, significantly reducing their gas costs. An early version of blobs was introduced as part of the Dencun upgrade in April 2024 through the Proto-Danksharding implementation.

Data Availability Sampling (DAS): The complete overhaul of the Ethereum structure with the introduction of blobs as a new data type necessitates a more efficient and secure method to ensure data availability. To address this, Danksharding will include Data Availability Sampling (DAS) as a core enhancement. DAS enables nodes to efficiently check data availability by sampling random parts of the data, rather than downloading entire blobs. This technique allows even nodes with limited resources, such as light nodes, to actively participate in verifying transactions, promoting scalability without compromising decentralization.

Unified Fee Market: Danksharding will introduce a unified fee market across the entire Ethereum network to simplify transaction processing. Under this new system, all shards will share a single fee market, achieved by appointing a single block proposer per slot instead of each shard having its own blocks and proposers. 

Proposer Builder Separation (PBS): With the introduction of blobs and a unified fee market, the current block creation mechanism would impose a significant computational burden on a single validator. To prevent potential centralization due to the need for more powerful hardware by validators, Danksharding will implement the Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS).

In PBS, the tasks of building and proposing blocks are divided among different validators. Block builders are responsible for creating blocks and offering them to the block proposer in each slot. The proposer, unable to see the contents of the block, selects the most profitable one, pays a fee to the block builder, adds necessary metadata such as the block header, and then sends the block to peers.