Crypto glossary
Danksharding
Danksharding is Ethereum's data-sharding design for rollups: blocks carry large data blobs that nodes check by sampling instead of downloading them in full.
Early Ethereum plans split execution across many shard chains. Danksharding, named after researcher Dankrad Feist, replaced that idea with something simpler: a single chain whose blocks carry big blobs of data for rollups. Validators do not need to download every blob; they verify that the data was published by sampling small random pieces, protected by erasure coding and KZG cryptographic commitments.
Ethereum is getting there in stages. Proto-danksharding, EIP-4844 in the Dencun upgrade of March 2024, introduced the blob transaction format and a separate fee market, which cut rollup costs sharply. PeerDAS, shipped in the Fusaka upgrade of December 2025, added the first form of sampling so nodes only keep part of the blob data. Full danksharding would extend sampling further and allow many more blobs per block.
Danksharding increases data space, not execution capacity: transactions still run on rollups. Blobs are pruned after a few weeks, so it is not permanent storage. The final design depends on further research, and timelines for the full version remain open.
Example
A layer 2 team explains that its fees fell after Dencun because it now posts batches as blobs, the first step toward full danksharding.