Originally published on: October 23, 2024
A recent surge in airdrop claims on Ethereum’s new layer-2 network, Scroll, caused blob fees to spike up to $4.52, marking the third time blobs have become expensive since the Dencun upgrade in March.
Cryptocurrency data analyst Hildobby highlighted this increase in blob fees due to an airdrop for Ethereum L2 Scroll, which listed its governance token, SCR, on Binance and distributed it to users on Oct. 22.
According to data from Dune Analytics, blob fees hit a four-month high on Oct. 22, reaching $4.52. This significant increase in blob prices has only been seen twice before, once in July during a surge in L2 activity and during the launch of Blobscriptions in March.
While higher blob fees result in increased gas payments to the network, they also raise the costs associated with transactions and transfers on Ethereum L2s.
However, the brief spike in blob fees on Oct. 22 quickly normalized as L2 activity slowed down, returning to near zero cost at the time of writing.
This trend comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned in a recent thread about the full capacity of the “blob count” and its impact on Ethereum’s scalability. In response, Ethereum developers introduced a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) on Oct. 18 aimed at increasing the fixed “blob count” to enhance network scalability.
The introduction of blobs during the Dencun upgrade in March significantly reduced transaction costs on Ethereum L2 networks. With the addition of blobs and proto-danksharding, fees on networks like Arbitrum and Polygon plummeted, showcasing the cost-saving benefits of blobs as temporary data storage units.
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