According to a report from the joint Ethereum development team, the delay in the release of the Dencun security update was caused by a disagreement between the designers of the consensus and execution layer clients.
The consensus layer is critical to reaching agreement in the network because it ensures that all nodes are synchronized, while the execution layer is responsible for executing smart contracts and managing the state of the blockchain.
The Dencun update is designed to improve security during the scaling phases of Etherium, specifically by utilizing Proto-Danksharding technology to increase network throughput by up to 100,000 transactions per second.
After months of collective effort involving more than 140,000 blockchain testers, the Dencun update was expected to be rolled out by December 2023