Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has completed a software upgrade that aims to make its network cheaper. Called Dencun, the update lowers the cost of so-called layer-2 networks — which include chains like Base, Polygon and Arbitrum — to about a cent for transactions that previously cost $1, while exchanges that used to cost a few cents are reduced to fractions of a cent. Accomplished through a new system of storing data, the upgrade is being welcomed as a harbinger of a development renaissance brimming with new applications and free services.

CoinDesk calls it a “landmark move to reduce data fees,” explaining that “a key element of the upgrade is to enable a new place for storing data on Ethereum — referred to as ‘proto-danksharding,’ which gives room for a dedicated space on the blockchain that is separate from regular transactions and comes at a lower cost.”

While the move to Dencun is often referred to as an upgrade, CoinDesk points out that it is technically a hard fork. The shift “has been viewed as a crucial moment in the blockchain’s history, ushering in a new era for tackling Ethereum’s notoriously high transaction fees, and could touch off a race among the biggest layer-2 networks to take advantage of the changes in scaling the blockchain.”

Bloomberg goes into detail about how the new storage system works, the upshot being that “with Dencun, layer-2s can store the data in a new type of repository called blobs. Blobs will be cheaper because the data will only be warehoused for about 18 days” as opposed to being stored forever, “on every Ethereum node.”

Dencun is unpacked in detail by Ethereum Foundation developers in a video called The Dencun Upgrade Explained. And CoinDesk provides a helpful “5 Things to Know…” (informing, among other things, that languages like Python and JavaScript also use blobs).

“It will now take a period of about a month or two for settlement contracts across all layer-2 networks to incorporate the update,” Decrypt reports, noting that “once they do, gas fees on layer-2 networks should immediately fall by 75 percent,” according to Terence Tsao, a developer of Arbitrum, a layer-2 network on Ethereum.

“Gas fees” are transaction fees on  Ethereum, and Decrypt says Dencun may force them so low “that they will be covered by crypto companies and projects going forward — essentially making such fees a thing of the past.”