Ethereum core developers met on Thursday to discuss the next upgrade after Shapella: Cancun-Deneb.
To make Ethereum cheaper for users, the upgrade will implement new changes across Ethereum's two mainnet layers: the execution layer, which handles smart contract execution, and the consensus layer, focused on blockchain consensus via staking. To provide clarity, the upgrade for the execution layer will be called Cancun. The consensus layer upgrade will be named Deneb — thus giving the combined upgrade its name, Cancun-Deneb.
The Cancun-Deneb upgrade is expected to take place later this year, with the most significant change expected to be EIP-4844, also known as "proto-danksharding," which aims to augment Ethereum's scalability by bring temporary storage and retrieval of off-chain data by Ethereum nodes to address the data and storage demands of blockchain applications.