Linea’s Dencun Voyage will provide members of Linea’s community an opportunity to become “Ecosystem Leaders”, to lead celebrations around the Cancun-Deneb Upgrade and how it will impact Ethereum scalability with Linea users and partners worldwide.

After successfully completing the Shanghai/ Capella upgrade in April 2023, Ethereum’s core developers have been working hard to prepare for the next upgrade, code-named “Dencun”.

The name Dencun is a portmanteau word that combines Cancun and Deneb, with both names referring to changes being made to Ethereum’s execution-layer and consensus-layer, respectively. It is scheduled to happen in December this year.

EIP-4844 or “proto-danksharding” is one of the more anticipated features that the Dencun upgrade brings to Ethereum. Proto-danksharding introduces a new, cheaper method for rollups like Linea to store transaction data on Ethereum—paving the way for reduced gas fees and increased throughput on Layer 2 (L2).

We believe this change is worth celebrating, particularly as it moves us closer to the goal of making transactions cheaper and providing users with the same level of scale and usability as web2 applications running on centralized infrastructure. This is why we are launching the Linea Voyage: Dencun Upgrade to give Ethereum’s next major upgrade the attention it deserves.

The Linea Voyage: Dencun Upgrade will provide members of Linea’s community an opportunity to become “Ecosystem Leaders”. Ecosystem Leaders will be selected from various countries and will be provided support to host local meetups to celebrate the Dencun upgrade and discuss its importance in scaling Ethereum and preparing web3 for the next billion users.

This Voyage reflects two of Linea’s most important values: (1) an unwavering commitment to its community of users, partners, and advocates, and (2) alignment with Ethereum’s long-term vision, values, and goals. Through this Voyage, we plan to empower selected advocates to rally web3 communities around the world, while putting Ethereum’s efforts at creating a better, scalable, and more efficient blockchain ecosystem in the spotlight.

Local meetups will run throughout November and December 2023, in step with Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade. Participation in local meetups will be open to both local Linea community members as well as other web3 users and enthusiasts interested in the next phase of Ethereum’s ambitious roadmap. By supporting efforts to build web3 communities across key geographies, we’re hoping to foster a sense of cohesion—not just among members of Linea’s community, but also in the wider Ethereum ecosystem.

We’re also looking to empower some of Linea’s biggest advocates and supporters through this Linea Voyage. In addition to receiving financial support for hosting local meetups, Ecosystem Leaders will participate in a leadership workshop that includes training on improving public speaking skills, building sustainable and thriving communities in web3, and managing real-life events. Leaders will also enjoy 1:1 access to Linea’s core development team, invites to exclusive Discord channels, and participation in product development discussions (with opportunities to influence Linea’s product roadmap).

Other benefits associated with the Ecosystem Leader role include:

• Video interviews and meetup coverage to be distributed across Linea community channels

• Access to Linea communication channels to distribute media materials from local meetups and drive publicity for local/regional events

• ‘Ecosystem Leader’ badges on Discord

• Eligibility for a special NFT airdrop

• Exclusive Linea swag

To apply for Ecosystem Leader role, you only need to have at least 0.001 ETH on Linea mainnet; another nice-to-have for prospective Ecosystem Leaders is proof of participation in the first Linea Voyage (eg. ownership of a Voyage NFT minted in celebration of Linea’s mainnet launch). But these are but one part of the selection criteria; applicants will also be selected to participate in the Ecosystem Leader program based on other relevant factors, particularly historical participation in the web3 community and experience coordinating in-person meetups.

Interested community leaders can start submitting applications from now through October 13, 2023. We’ll evaluate various applications between October 13, 2023, and November 13, 2023—before announcing the first-ever cohort of Linea’s Ecosystem Leaders and launching the Global Celebration at the DevConnect conference in Istanbul, Turkey in November 2023.

This is a rare opportunity for community members to shape Linea’s future—and indeed, the future of Ethereum and web3. We’ve begun accepting applications for the Ecosystem Leadership program, and look forward to reviewing your entries!

Rollups have succeeded in reducing the cost of using Ethereum applications, with networks like Linea offering transaction fees 15x lower than Ethereum’s (ETH transfers on Linea can cost less than $0.05). But even this level of cost reduction isn’t enough for average users—which is why competing Layer 1 (L1) blockchains continue to attract users away from Ethereum, even if those protocols make fundamental trust assumptions and tradeoffs to achieve cost efficiencies.

Currently, L2 transaction costs are dominated by fees paid to Ethereum L1 for security, with that security coming in the form of on-chain data availability. EIP-4844 (part of the Dencun upgrade) mitigates a key issue for rollups like Linea that store transaction data on L1 by introducing a new transaction format for rollups to store “blobs” of data on Ethereum.

Unlike “calldata” (a form of persistent storage currently used by L2 chains to store transaction data on L1), blob data is pruned from Ethereum’s storage after 18 days. Blobs are also expected to be cheaper to use on average, particularly as Ethereum nodes can safely discard the data and avoid keeping it on disk. This enables Ethereum to safely process more data from rollups—especially as transaction volumes on L2 increase—and ensures rollup chains can provide users with lower transaction fees and faster finality without making tradeoffs that affect security and decentralization.

In under two months, Linea has onboarded 200+ web3 projects, attracted over $45M in total value locked, and created one of the most thriving and vibrant communities in web3. One marker of Linea’s popularity is that Linea’s Voyage NFT drop was among the largest on-chain actions in Ethereum’s history. We’ve also renewed our commitment to supporting web3 builders by setting up the Ecosystem Investment Alliance (EIA) fund—an initiative to support developers and entrepreneurs looking to build the next generation of applications on Ethereum’s premier L2 network: Linea.

But we’re setting our sights on even bigger goals. At Permissionless II, Declan Fox, Product Lead at Linea, gave a talk on the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Linea. This talk included details about Linea’s product roadmap—especially upcoming changes that promise to improve the experience of using Linea. Furthermore, in keeping with DeFi’s decentralization ethos, we shared more information about long-term plans to progressively decentralize the network and create a robust, trustless, and censorship-resistant base layer for the next generation of DeFi applications.

If you are at Permissionless this year, you can come meet us at booth 1121 at the Austin Convention Center. Apart from meeting the team and learning more about Linea, you will be able to attend talks with our ecosystem partners who will be sharing insights about the L2 ecosystem.

For further updates on the Linea Voyage: Dencun Upgrade and the latest on all things Linea, follow us on Mirror, Twitter, and Lens. You can also check out our website, developer portal, and technical documentation to start using and building on Linea’s L2 network.