Key Insights:
Shibarium has implemented the Cancun Hardfork to help align its L2 chain with the Dencun Upgrade in Ethereum.
Cancun consists of Heimdall and Bor upgrades focused on blobs and burn rate related changes in Shibarium.
The Cancun upgrade aligns with Vitalik Buterin's vision of reaching a cohesive Ethereum ecosystem.
All Shibarium validators must upgrade their software to reflect the changes introduced by this hard fork.
Shibarium's Cancun Hardfork went live on its mainnet on block number 8200512. The news was shared by official Shiba Inu website.
This hard fork is designed to improve the alignment between Ethereum (layer-1) and Shiba Inu's Shibarium chain (layer-2). The fork consists of two parts: the Heimdall upgrade and the Bor upgrade.
Shibarium's current hard fork is a response to Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade, which improved data processing between Layer-1 and Layer-2 chains. Shibarium, being an ETH layer-2, must improve its tech stack with each Ethereum upgrade to work better.
The Heimdall upgrade is aimed at validators and makes their job easy by improving how Shibarium's data is fed into ETH Layer-1 blobs. This feature has reduced gas fees in ETH to virtually zero.
Shibarium developers said that "This [Shibarium] version ensures seamless operations in the post-Dencun environment," meaning that it would improve Shibarium's ability to leverage ETH blobs and benefit with a decreased L1 fee.
After Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade went live in March 2024, subscription support was needed on the Shibarium blockchain. Blobs make processing batch transfers on Ethereum much easier.
The Bor upgrade will allow Shibarium to eliminate ancient blocks by pruning them without compromising security. This pruning is essential because it helps keep the Shibarium blockchain light and fast without compromising security.
It also aims to improve the current burn mechanism in Shiba Inu. At present, SHIB follows a burn algorithm that burns a part of the transaction fees charged to Shibarium users.
The upgrade will make the burn rate upgradable, which means the team can increase it in the future without going through another hard fork or even a soft fork.
An increased burn rate aligns with Shiba Inu users' expectations and helps them achieve a better deflationary mechanism, which then benefits them with an improved token price.
Burn rates are essential in Shiba Inu because they help keep the tokenomics deflationary; otherwise, Shiba Inu would find it difficult to maintain its token supply of 589 trillion coins.
A while ago, Vitalik Buterin commented on the need for a better alignment between layer-1 i.e., Ethereum and its layer-2 chains so that the entire Ethereum ecosystem becomes more efficient and does not seem like a cluster of random projects.
At present there are more than 47 Ethereum layer-2 chains with a combined TVL of $53 billion (including ETH). The blockchains in the Layer-2 ecosystem provide a high degree of scalability and low transaction cost to Ethereum users and, hence, are a critical part of its ecosystem despite the fall in ETH gas fees.
In the coming few months, Ethereum will introduce a few major upgrades, starting with the Pectra Upgrade. These upgrades aim to improve Ethereum's security, accessibility, decentralization, scalability, and gas costs.
In the near future, Shibarium might introduce several new upgrades on its blockchain, similar to the Cancun Upgrade, to keep up with Ethereum's upgrades like Pectra.
A hard fork is a major change in any blockchain that completely changes a core feature. As a result, the older blockchain might not be compatible with its new version. These hard forks are often implemented when a major change is needed in the blockchain.
Since a hard fork introduces major changes in the blockchain, all nodes and validators must upgrade their node software or make other changes as necessary. This is also the case in the Cancun Hardfork of Shibrium, where the validators must upgrade their software to remain validators in Shibarium.
Conversely, a soft fork is a minor change in the blockchain that does not require its users to change how they interact with it.
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