The price of Ethereum blob fees momentarily increased to $4.52 as a result of a sudden surge in the number of Scroll airdrop claims.
The cost of Ethereum blob fees momentarily reached $4.52 due to a frenzy of airdrop claims for a new Ethereum layer-2 network called Scroll. This is the third instance in which blobs have become expensive since Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade in March.
Ethereum blob fees on High Rise
In an October 22 post to X, pseudonymous crypto data analyst Hildobby stated, “Scroll airdrop claimers just triggered the blob market; they’re no longer free.”
He attributed the increase in Ethereum blob fees to an airdrop for L2 Scroll, which listed its governance token SCR on Binance and airdropped the token to its users on October 22.
Ethereum blob fees reached a four-month peak of $4.52 on October 22, as data from Dune Analytics indicated.
Before the launch of Blobscriptions on March 27, a protocol that enabled users to directly inscribe data onto blobs, a significant increase in blob price has only been observed twice: once during a surge in L2 activity in July and earlier during the protocol’s launch.
Higher blob fees are a double-edged sword for Ethereum. Blobs that are more costly generate more significant amounts of blob gas that are returned to the network; however, they also increase the expenses associated with executing transactions and transfers on Ethereum L2s.
The price of Ethereum blob fees experienced a rapid retracement as activity across L2s slowed, ultimately stabilizing at a cost of nearly zero at the time of publication. This is particularly noteworthy.
This announcement was made just one month after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin emphasized in a September 27 X thread that the “blob count” — the maximum number of available blobs per block — was approaching its maximum capacity and could potentially impede Ethereum’s scalability if no action was taken to resolve it.
A new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) was unveiled by Ethereum developers on October 18, weeks later, to increase the current fixed “blob count”—the maximum number of available blobs per block.
EIP-7742 will establish a mechanism for the Ethereum consensus layer to “dynamically” establish the blob gas target and maximum values, thereby optimizing for blob-carrying transactions and enhancing network scalability in the forthcoming Pectra fork, according to Christine Kim, Galaxy Digital’s vice president of research.
In March, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade was implemented, primarily designed to decrease transaction costs on the layer-2 networks of Ethereum. This upgrade included the introduction of blobs.
Transaction fees on Ethereum L2 experienced a significant decrease after the implementation of proto-dank sharding and structures. Arbitrum’s swap fees decreased from approximately $1.25 to less than $0.02, and Polygon’s fees experienced a comparable decline.
It is worth noting that Ethereum developer Dan Cline inscribed the entire Bee Movie script to the Ethereum mainnet for a mere $14, thereby illustrating the cost-saving capabilities of blobs as transient data storage units.
