Key Points
- The Cerastes Upgrade goes LIVE at block 43447600 on Monday, March 17 2025, 7:00 UTC: This introduces the Venoki hard fork to Ronin, which incorporates all EIPs in the execution client from Ethereum’s Shanghai and Cancun hard forks.
- What This Means for Ronin: This upgrade enables Ronin to direct a portion of RON gas fees to the Ronin Treasury, increases storage size and overall efficiency for validators, and introduces the Path-Based Storage Scheme. More details below.
- Developer Action Required: If you’re running a validator or an RPC node on mainnet, please upgrade to Cerastes here before the upgrade goes LIVE.
Calling all builders, developers, and validators! The Cerastes Upgrade will go LIVE on Ronin mainnet at block 43447600. This brings storage and efficiency improvements to validators, directs a portion of RON gas fees to the Ronin Treasury, and aligns our network with Ethereum’s latest advancements. Here’s what that means:
Introducing the Venoki Hardfork: Aligning with Ethereum
The Venoki hard fork is part of the Cerastes Upgrade, and incorporates all EIPs in the execution client from Ethereum’s Shanghai and Cancun hard forks. This aligns Ronin with Ethereum’s latest advancements. Here are a couple notable updates:
- Enabled base fee for EIP 1559. This changes how Ronin processes gas fees, directing a portion of the RON used for gas fees to the Ronin Treasury.
- Increased contract size to 32 KB. This enables the deployment of more complex contracts without requiring alternative development patterns. Start deploying here.
EIP-1559: Growing the Ronin Treasury
EIP-1559 introduces a base fee for gas on Ronin, a portion of which will go to the Ronin Treasury. This means all users will pay the same base gas fee at a given block, reducing bidding wars and overpayments to process transactions. That said, the base fee will scale with demand – rising when demand exceeds the target block size and falling when demand is low. As a result, users can expect more predictable gas fees. This will also remove more RON from circulation while growing the Ronin Treasury faster, benefiting everyone holding RON.
You might be wondering how much base fees can rise or fall. On a slow day, the average swap fee might be about 0.008 RON. On a busy day, this might increase to 0.016 RON. However, consider this: if network activity remains high for a full year, the Ronin Treasury would collect up to 3M RON – or 0.3% of total supply! This is a win-win for RON holders: low network activity means low base fees, while high network activity means high treasury inflows. In the end, the overall gas fee you’ll pay will continue to remain multiples lower than other chains.
Final Thoughts
The Cerastes Upgrade is scheduled to take place at block 43447600. If you’re running a validator or RPC node on mainnet, please upgrade to Cerastes before March 17th. We appreciate your cooperation and look forward to a successful Cerastes upgrade!
For Developers
What is the Path-Based Storage Scheme?
The Path-Based Storage Scheme is part of the Cerastes Upgrade. It optimizes state storage by restructuring how data is stored within the database. The scheme organizes data based on the full Merkle Patricia Trie path of each node instead of storing state trie nodes using their hashes as keys – which can result in redundant storage and inefficient access patterns.
By using structured keys that reflect the trie hierarchy, the Path-Based Storage Scheme improves lookup efficiency, reduces unnecessary duplication, and enhances the effectiveness of garbage collection and pruning. This minimizes redundant reads and writes, leading to more efficient disk usage and better sync times. As a result, validators and RPC node operators become more efficient.
