The scaling paradox is that successful Layer 2 rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism compete for limited mainnet block space to post their data. This competition drives up calldata costs for everyone, creating a fee ceiling for L2s.
the-ethereum-roadmap-merge-surge-verge
Blog
Why EIP-4844 Cuts Ethereum Transaction Costs
A first-principles breakdown of how Proto-Danksharding re-architects Ethereum's data layer, delivering order-of-magnitude fee reductions for rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync.
introduction
THE BOTTLENECK
Introduction: The Fee Paradox
Ethereum's scaling strategy creates a cost paradox where cheaper L2s increase, not decrease, mainnet fees.
EIP-4844 introduces blob-carrying transactions, a new transaction type with dedicated, ephemeral data space. This separates rollup data from the execution gas market, preventing fee cannibalization between L1 users and L2 batch submissions.
Blobs are priced separately using a distinct fee market. This mechanism ensures L2 transaction costs can fall by 10-100x without congesting the core network, a critical unlock for protocols like Base and zkSync.
Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, the average cost to post data for an Arbitrum batch dropped from ~$50 to under $0.01, directly enabling sub-cent L2 transaction fees.
market-context
THE COST OF PERMANENCE
The Pre-4844 Bottleneck: Paying for Permanence You Don't Need
EIP-4844 slashes L2 transaction costs by separating temporary data availability from permanent on-chain storage.
Pre-4844, L2s paid for permanence. Every transaction batch required full, expensive calldata storage on Ethereum L1, a cost passed to users. This was the primary bottleneck for scaling.
Blobs provide temporary data availability. EIP-4844 introduces data blobs that persist for ~18 days, sufficient for fraud/validity proofs. This decouples short-term verification from long-term storage.
The cost difference is exponential. Blob storage is ~100x cheaper than calldata because nodes delete it after the window. This directly reduces L2 transaction fees for users on Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.
Evidence: Post-4844, average transaction fees on major L2s dropped by over 90%. This cost structure enables new use cases previously priced out by data fees.
key-trends
BEYOND THE MERKLE TREE
The Core Mechanics: How Blobs Change the Game
EIP-4844 introduces proto-danksharding, a new transaction type that decouples data from execution to slash L2 costs.
01
The Problem: Data as a Congestion Tax
Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism posted all transaction data directly to Ethereum's execution layer, paying ~$1-5 per transaction in pure calldata fees. This made L2s cheaper, but not cheap enough for mass adoption.
- Cost Structure: ~80% of an L2 tx fee was paying for Ethereum's expensive block space.
- Network Contention: L2 data competed with Uniswap swaps and NFT mints, creating a volatile fee market.
80%
Fee Overhead
$1-5
Per Tx Cost
02
The Solution: Blob-Carrying Transactions
Blobs are large data packets (~128KB) attached to blocks but processed by a separate fee market and pruned after ~18 days. This creates a dedicated, low-cost data lane for rollups.
- Separate Fee Market: Blob gas is independent, avoiding competition with mainnet DeFi.
- Ephemeral Storage: Nodes only store blobs briefly, minimizing state bloat versus permanent calldata.
~128KB
Per Blob
~18 days
Data Pruning
03
The Result: L2 Fee Compression
By posting data via blobs, rollups achieve 10-100x cost reductions for end-users. Protocols like zkSync Era and Base now have a predictable, low-cost data availability layer.
- Direct Impact: L2 transaction fees dropped to <$0.01 post-EIP-4844.
- Ecosystem Effect: Enables micro-transactions for gaming and social apps, making Starknet and Arbitrum Orbit chains viable for new use cases.
10-100x
Cheaper
<$0.01
Avg. L2 Fee
EIP-4844 IMPACT
The Proof: Pre vs. Post-Dencun L2 Fee Comparison
Quantifying the cost reduction for L2 transaction settlement on Ethereum before and after the Dencun upgrade, using real-world data from Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base.
| Cost Component | Pre-Dencun (Jan 2024) | Post-Dencun (Apr 2024) | Reduction Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
Avg. L1 Data Fee per Tx | $0.50 - $2.50 | $0.02 - $0.08 | 10x - 30x |
Blob Gas Price (Avg. Gwei) | N/A (Calldata) | 5 - 15 Gwei | N/A |
Calldata Gas Price (Avg. Gwei) | 10 - 30 Gwei | 10 - 30 Gwei | 0x |
Data Cost per Byte | ~16 gas | ~0.125 gas | ~128x |
Typical User Tx Cost (Optimism) | $0.40 - $1.20 | $0.02 - $0.05 | 20x - 25x |
Typical User Tx Cost (Arbitrum) | $0.30 - $0.90 | $0.02 - $0.06 | 15x - 20x |
Settlement Finality Time | ~30 min (Challenge Period) | ~30 min (Challenge Period) | 0x |
Blob Storage Duration | N/A | ~18 days | N/A |
deep-dive
THE BLOB ARCHITECTURE
First Principles: Separating Consensus from Storage
EIP-4844 introduces a dedicated data channel for rollups, decoupling transaction execution verification from long-term data storage to slash costs.
Consensus validates, storage persists. Ethereum's core innovation is separating the verification of data availability from its archival. Nodes only need to confirm blob data is available for a short window, not store it forever, which radically reduces the state growth burden.
Blobs are cheap, calldata is expensive. Pre-4844, rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism posted data as expensive calldata, paying for perpetual storage. Blobs are large, temporary data packets that expire, allowing these L2s to pass 90%+ cost savings directly to users.
The fee market splits. EIP-4844 creates a separate gas market for blobs, insulating L2 transaction fees from mainnet execution congestion. This prevents an NFT mint on Ethereum from spiking the cost to bridge via Hop or Across.
Evidence: Post-4844, the average cost for an Arbitrum transaction dropped from ~$0.23 to ~$0.02. This validates the architectural thesis: specialized data channels are mandatory for scalable, modular blockchains.
protocol-spotlight
THE POST-BLOB ECONOMY
Ecosystem Impact: Who Wins and What Unlocks
EIP-4844's data blobs are a deflationary shock for on-chain activity, shifting the economic calculus for entire application categories.
01
The L2 Scaling Trilemma: Solved
Rollups were caught between security (posting to Ethereum), cost, and decentralization. Blobs break the cost deadlock.
- Cost Security: L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync can post data for ~$0.01 per blob, securing transactions without prohibitive cost.
- Throughput Unlocked: Enables >100 TPS per major L2, moving the ecosystem toward a 10,000+ TPS aggregate reality.
- Decentralized Sequencing: Makes economically viable sequencers possible, reducing reliance on centralized operators.
~100x
Cheaper Data
>100 TPS
Per L2 Capacity
02
The On-Chain Data Explosion
Cheap, ephemeral data storage unlocks applications previously impossible due to calldata gas costs.
- Hyper-Frequent Updates: Games like Dark Forest and AI agents can broadcast state changes orders of magnitude more frequently.
- Cheap Data Attestations: Oracles (Chainlink, Pyth) can post higher-frequency price feeds and proofs directly to L1, bolstering DeFi security.
- Data Availability for All: Enables validiums and sovereign rollups to use Ethereum for secure DA without the full cost of an L2.
$0.01
Per Blob Cost
New App Category
Real-Time dApps
03
The End of the Bridging Premium
Cross-chain activity has been bottlenecked by L1 settlement costs. EIP-4844 makes native bridging and intents economically rational.
- Cheap Native Bridges: Protocols like Across and Circle's CCTP see cost per message drop dramatically, challenging third-party bridges.
- Intent-Based Systems Flourish: Solvers for UniswapX and CowSwap can post more batch settlements, improving fill rates and prices.
- Unified Liquidity Pools: Enables cost-effective cross-L2 liquidity strategies, moving toward a single Ethereum-centric liquidity layer.
-90%
Bridge Cost
Unified Liquidity
Economic Reality
04
The Modular Stack's Payday
EIP-4844 is the first production use of proposer-builder separation (PBS) and a dedicated DA layer, proving the modular thesis.
- Builder/Relayer Market Growth: Entities like Flashbots and bloxroute now optimize for blob inclusion, creating a new fee market.
- Specialized DA Layers: Validates the need for Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail, which now compete on price/performance for rollups that need even cheaper data.
- Execution Layer Focus: Ethereum L1 can specialize as the ultimate settlement and consensus layer, pushing scaling to its dedicated data layer.
New Market
Blob Building
Modular Proof
In Production
05
The User Experience Renaissance
For end-users, the abstraction of gas complexity is the final barrier to mass adoption. Cheap L2s make this possible.
- Sub-Cent Transactions: L2s can offer <$0.001 fees, enabling micro-transactions for social, gaming, and DeFi interactions.
- Gasless Onboarding: Apps can sponsor transactions en masse without unsustainable costs, mimicking web2's free-tier model.
- Predictable Pricing: Volatile L1 gas prices are abstracted away, leading to stable, predictable costs for end-users.
<$0.001
Target Tx Cost
Gasless Models
Economically Viable
06
The Validator Economics Shift
Blob fees introduce a new, volatile revenue stream for validators, decoupled from execution gas, changing staking incentives.
- Fee Market Diversification: Validator revenue now comes from Execution Gas + Blob Gas + MEV, reducing reliance on any single source.
- Increased Staking Yield: Initial blob fee burn is minimal, meaning most blob fees go to validators, potentially boosting staking APR.
- Proposer Incentive Alignment: Higher blob values increase the economic weight of being a block proposer, reinforcing the security of PBS.
New Revenue
Blob Tips
APR Boost
For Stakers
future-outlook
THE DATA LAYER
Beyond the Fee Drop: The Road to The Surge
EIP-4844 introduces proto-danksharding, a new transaction type that drastically reduces Layer 2 data posting costs by storing data in temporary 'blobs'.
EIP-4844 is proto-danksharding. It creates a new transaction type carrying large data 'blobs' priced separately from Ethereum execution. This separates data availability from state execution, the first step toward full danksharding.
Blob data is ephemeral. Unlike calldata, blobs are stored for ~18 days, not forever. This temporary storage model slashes the permanent storage cost burden that currently inflates L2 transaction fees.
Cost reduction is exponential. Current L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism spend 80-90% of their transaction cost posting data to Ethereum. EIP-4844 cuts this data cost by over 10x, enabling sub-cent L2 transactions.
Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, Base and zkSync Era reported L2 transaction fee reductions of up to 90%. This cost structure makes micro-transactions and high-frequency DeFi on Uniswap and Aave economically viable.
takeaways
EIP-4844: BLOBS EXPLAINED
TL;DR for Busy Builders
EIP-4844 introduces 'blob-carrying transactions' to decouple L2 data from expensive calldata, slashing rollup costs and unlocking new scaling paradigms.
01
The Problem: L2s Are Paying Mainnet Gas for Data
Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism post transaction data to Ethereum as calldata, competing for the same scarce block space as user transactions. This creates a high, volatile cost floor for all L2 transactions, limiting scalability.
- Calldata is permanent and expensive, costing ~$100k per month for a major L2.
- Data availability is the primary bottleneck for L2 cost reduction.
~$0.25
Avg L2 Tx Cost
>80%
Is Data Cost
02
The Solution: Blobs as a Separate Data Market
EIP-4844 creates a new transaction type that carries large ~128 KB data blobs. Blobs are stored by consensus nodes for ~18 days, not execution clients, creating a separate, cheaper fee market for data.
- Blob gas is priced independently from EIP-1559 base fee, avoiding competition with user transactions.
- Enables ~100 TPS per rollup, a 10-100x increase in practical data bandwidth.
~128 KB
Per Blob
-90%
L2 Cost Target
03
The Architecture: Proto-Danksharding
This is the first step towards full Danksharding. It implements the blob-carrying transaction framework and a blob fee market without requiring consensus changes for data sampling. Validators and clients handle blobs with minimal new logic.
- Uses KZG polynomial commitments for efficient verification.
- Paves the way for future scaling where blobs become abundant and nearly free.
KZG
Commitment Scheme
~18 Days
Data Retention
04
The Impact: New App & Chain Design Space
Cheap, abundant data unlocks designs previously too expensive. This is a bigger deal than just cheaper swaps on Arbitrum.
- Enables high-throughput on-chain games and social apps.
- Makes validiums and optimistic chains with off-chain data viable.
- Fuels modular blockchain stacks like Celestia and EigenDA by proving Ethereum can be a competitive data layer.
$0.001
Target L2 Tx
New Sectors
Enabled
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