Crypto exchange Coinbase supports Ethereum‘s next upgrade, EIP-4844, which will reduce the cost of layer 2 rollups by 10-100x and usher in a new era of low-cost on-chain activity, according to the exchange’s recent blog post.

Following Ethereum’s major upgrade known as the “Merge,” the network’s next step is the “Surge.” Surge (EIP-4844) refers to Ethereum introducing systems that will make the network more expandable (scalable) by allowing the creation of layer 2 products, such as sharding and rollups, making it easier for users to operate on the Ethereum network.

At Coinbase, we are excited about the Surge because we believe that reduced on chain transaction fees and increased throughput will have a positive impact on the rate of adoption of the crypto economy and help build the bridge to web3. says the blog post.

The EIP-4844 upgrade will include ‘proto-danksharding,’ which will increase data availability for rollups, resulting in lower fees and higher transaction throughput. It is an attempt to propose a workable solution to Ethereum’s high gas fees.

Danksharding is an Ethereum sharding scheme that significantly simplifies how validators handle transaction data.

DankSharding, in contrast to previous sharding protocols, introduces the merged-fee market. Instead of a fixed number of shards with distinct blocks and block proposers, Danksharding has a single proposer who selects all transactions that enter that slot.

According to the blog, Coinbase began collaborating with OP Labs and the Ethereum Foundation in May of this year to specify, implement, and test EIP-4844.

In a blog post, Coinbase states:

Thanks to the hard work of these teams and others, we now have a full specification for the execution and consensus clients, working implementations in the Prysm and Geth clients, nearly complete preparations for the KZG ceremony, and a launched Devnet v1.

Over the next few months, the team plans to harden the specs, even more, expand implementation work to new clients, and launch a fully functional testnet. They believe that “the sooner EIP-4844 can safely be deployed to mainnet, the better.”