Proto-danksharding (aka EIP-4844) is a planned change to the Ethereum protocol which introduces ephemeral data storage. Because the data does not need to be stored by the network forever, it will be cheaper to use than on-chain storage (i.e. CALLDATA). Rollups (Layer 2s) can use this storage to post transaction data or proofs back to Layer 1 (mainnet). The benefits are lower transaction fees on the L2, greater scalability and more accessibility to more people!

Proto-danksharding requires a new cryptographic scheme: KZG Commitments. This ceremony, sometimes called a "Trusted Setup", will generate a structured reference string (SRS) which is needed for the commitments to work. An SRS is secure as long as at least one participant in the ceremony successfully conceals their secret.

This is a multi-party ceremony: each contributor creates a secret and runs a computation to mix in with previous contributions. Then, the output is made public and passed to the next contributor. To guard against attempts to corrupt the ceremony, participants need an Ethereum address or GitHub account with an established history to participate. The final output of the Ceremony will be included in a future upgrade to help scale the Ethereum network.