Danksharding: Ethereum's Path to Mass Scalability

Ethereum is currently facing serious challenges—high fees, network congestion, and limited throughput. To address these issues, Ethereum researcher Dankrad Faiest proposed a revolutionary approach called danksharding. This is not just another technical upgrade but a key element of Ethereum’s long-term development strategy, aimed at transforming it into a truly scalable blockchain network.

Why does Ethereum need danksharding?

The main problem with Ethereum is that each node in the network is required to process, verify, and store all transactions. As the number of users grows, this leads to exponential increases in load. Danksharding solves this problem through a fundamentally new approach—dividing the network into multiple independent segments, or “shards,” each handling its own subset of transactions and smart contracts.

This division creates a dual effect: the network becomes significantly faster, and transaction fees decrease. Instead of all nodes doing the same work, they distribute the load among themselves, like a team of workers splitting a large project into separate tasks.

How danksharding works

Imagine Ethereum as a city with a single post office. Letters come from all over the city, and one worker has to process, sort, and deliver them all. Now, open 64 post offices in different districts—each handles the mail for its own area. That’s the essence of danksharding.

An additional innovation is the use of a single block creator instead of a distributed system. This architecture simplifies coordination between shards and makes transaction processing more efficient. The network no longer spends resources on consensus between multiple block producers—one coordinates, while others verify.

In practice, this means one shard can process transactions for addresses starting with letters A–D, another for E–H, a third for I–L, and so on. Each operates independently, but all data remains synchronized.

Implementation path: Proto-Danksharding and full danksharding

Ethereum has developed a two-phase approach to implementing this technology.

Proto-Danksharding has already been activated through the Cancun upgrade in 2024 via the EIP-4844 standard. This interim solution introduces so-called blob transactions—temporary data storage for Layer 2 solutions (rollups). This has reduced operation costs for Layer 2 users by 10–100 times, but full scalability is still not achieved.

Full danksharding is in development and promises much more. Once fully implemented, it will divide Ethereum into 64 full shards, each with its own capacity. This architecture will enable the network to process over 100,000 transactions per second—an order of magnitude higher than current capabilities.

Comparison: proto-danksharding vs. full danksharding

The future of Ethereum scaling

Danksharding represents the culmination of years of blockchain research. Proto-Danksharding has already demonstrated the approach’s effectiveness, significantly improving the economics of Layer 2 protocols. Full implementation of danksharding is not just a technical upgrade but a transition to a new level of capability, allowing Ethereum to serve millions of users without sacrificing speed or reliability.

This solution is especially important for the development of decentralized web applications, financial protocols, and any systems requiring high throughput with minimal fees. Danksharding is Ethereum’s answer to the global scalability challenge of blockchain.