Etymology: Proto-Danksharding is named after two Ethereum researchers, Dankrad Feist and Proto Lambda, who proposed the change. It’s fitting because Proto Danksharding is necessary for the full rollout of Danksharding — which is several years away and takes the idea of simplifying data storage further. Also, although the term “sharding” is in the name, neither Danksharding nor Proto-Danksharding is a traditional way to “shard” — or split — a database into smaller parts as known in computer science, which was the original plan for getting Ethereum to scale. In a sense, Dencun’s introduction of Proto-Danksharding is a serious deviation from the original roadmap for Ethereum, chosen because it’s easier to implement.