Proto-danksharding: Introduction and How It Works

Proto-danksharding is an important step in Ethereum's scaling roadmap, aimed at reducing the costs of rollups by introducing blob transactions. It lays the foundation for full danksharding, but does not directly increase Ethereum's transaction processing capacity.

The core of proto-danksharding is EIP-4844, which introduces a new transaction type - blob transactions. Blob transactions can be attached to Ethereum blocks, providing additional data space for rollups without affecting regular transactions. Each block can contain up to 4-6 blobs, with each blob being a maximum of 128kB.

Blob data will only be stored at the consensus layer for about 3 weeks before being discarded, which is different from the permanent storage of regular transactions. Blob transactions have an independent fee market, where initial fees will be very low and increase with usage.

Proto-danksharding is expected to reduce rollup costs by 100%-900%. It lays the foundation for the future introduction of more advanced technologies such as data availability sampling (DAS) and erasure coding, which can further increase the number of blobs and reduce costs.

EIP-4844 also introduces the KZG commitment scheme for efficient validation of blob data. This requires a one-time trusted setup ceremony, and nearly 100,000 contributions have been received so far.

Proto-danksharding primarily benefits rollup users and operators, with limited impact on ordinary Ethereum users. It reflects the attention of Ethereum developers to scaling through rollups. However, due to the current sluggish on-chain activity, it may be difficult to see significant effects in the short term.

Overall, Proto-danksharding is an important step for Ethereum's transition to a modular blockchain, paving the way for more thorough scalability solutions in the future.