Ethereum falls victim to ‘blobscription’ in first stress test of new blockchain data system
Ethereum blockchain completed a landmark just a few weeks ago upgrade The plan is to reduce fees while easing congestion by creating a dedicated space to store data known as a “blob.”
But already, new projects have emerged to disrupt the so-called blob space, raising fees and putting the nascent blob market under its first major stress test.
Ethereum gas prices on the blob soared on Wednesday after a project called Code of ethics They created a new way to write data, or mint inscriptions, into data blobs, called “blobscription.”
According to the Dune Analytics dashboard, Blob’s base price soared to at least 582 Gwei ($266) on Wednesday. As of writing on Thursday, BLOB’s base price had fallen to about 18 Gwei ($8.69).
“As widely predicted, March 27, 2024 will likely be remembered as the day the BLOB is Free EIP-4844 Launch Discount” party ended – courtesy of Blob Inscriptions ” said Blocknative CEO Matt Cutler. , wrote to X.
EIP-4844 is the name of the proposal that ushered in a new blob market that was included as part of Ethereum’s groundbreaking Dencun upgrade, which was completed on March 13th.
Blob space is especially important for the myriad layer 2 networks built on top of Ethereum to process transactions faster and cheaper than the main chain, such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Coinbase’s Base. As part of the process, Layer 2 needs to store large amounts of data on Ethereum, making up a large portion of the overall cost.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledged in a blog post on Thursday that the new blob fee market has entered “price discovery mode” on blob subscriptions, but data fees are still much higher than they used to be. He added that it remains cheap. Old system of parking data as “calldata” in regular Ethereum transactions.
“BLOBs are not free, but they are still much cheaper than calldata,” Buterin wrote. “We will continue to do significant scaling work, both increasing the number of blobs and improving rollups’ ability to get the most out of each blob, but it will be more gradual. ”
