Ethereum regularly conducts hard fork upgrades. Since the merge, these consist of two parts (the consensus layer and execution layer) happening at the same time. The next such hard fork is planned to be the "Dencun" hard fork (a portmanteaux of "Deneb" and "Cancun", the names of the upgrade on the two layers).

There is still active work ongoing testing the implementations of this hard fork, so it has not yet been scheduled for a specific time. This prediction market aims to answer the question whether it will end up being scheduled for before or after the end of 2023.

To allow for more capital efficiency, this market tries to resolve as early as possible. In particular:

• If Dencun has not been scheduled by then, it will resolve to NO on Dec 1. Hard forks are always scheduled several weeks in advance, and Ethereum core devs do not schedule (non-emergency) hard forks for the second half of December.

• The market will resolve early if a mainnet timestamp for Dencun has been picked before Dec 1 (since the merge, Ethereum hard forks are scheduled by timestamp). It then resolves to YES if that timestamp is in 2023, and NO otherwise. Even a preliminary decision is accepted for resolution - the threshold is that it is accepted as the candidate mainnet timestamp on an ACDC (All Core Devs Consensus) or ACDE (All Core Devs Execution) call.

Edge case clarification (this list might be extended over time):

• The ACDC and ACDE calls are the place where Ethereum coordination decisions are made, including hard fork timing. In the very unlikely case where this changes (either in general or just for this hard fork) before resolution of this market, I will exercise discretion to determine whether a timestamp has been "accepted as the candidate mainnet timestamp" in some other way by Dec 1.

• If there is another (presumably emergency) hard fork before Dencun, it does not affect this market.

• If some other unforseen circumstances arise that create significant uncertainty as to whether this market should resolve YES or NO, I reserve the right to resolve N/A instead.

See also this closely related multiple choice market for the arrival of EIP-4844 on Ethereum mainnet. EIP-4844 is intended to be a part of the Dencun fork:

Side note: As a new Manifold user, this is my first time creating a market. Trying to resolve early (a natural resolution date would of course have been Jan 1, to see if any hard fork ended up actually happening) is an experiment. If you have any feedback on whether that's a good idea (or on the market in general), please leave a comment!