Why Blobs Are Priced Separately from Gas

Separate Fee Markets are the primary goal. Decoupling blob pricing from gas prevents congestion in execution from spiking data costs for L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism.

Predictable Pricing enables new economic models. Protocols like UniswapX and Across can now build intent-based systems with reliable data posting costs, a prerequisite for complex cross-chain settlement.

The metric is stability, not price. The target is 3 blobs per block, creating a predictable supply curve. This allows L2 sequencers to hedge costs and offer users stable fees.

Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, L2 transaction fees are 80-90% data cost. This explicit cost layer lets StarkNet and zkSync Era optimize proofs and data compression independently of Ethereum's execution demand.

Separate markets optimize for different resources. The Ethereum execution layer (EVM) prices gas for compute and storage. Blobs price a new resource: temporary data bandwidth for rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism. This decoupling prevents L2 data posting from congesting and spiking gas fees for user transactions.

Blob pricing is inherently volatile and cheaper. The blob fee market follows its own EIP-1559 mechanism, separate from base gas. Its price is supply-constrained and demand-driven, leading to high volatility but a lower long-term cost basis than using calldata, which directly competes with DeFi apps on mainnet.

This enables specialized data scaling. Rollups now bid in a dedicated auction for data space, not general-purpose block space. Protocols like EigenDA and Celestia compete in this new market by providing alternative data availability layers, creating a multi-provider scaling landscape that was impossible under a unified gas model.

Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, rollup transaction costs dropped by over 90%. The blob count per block is capped, but the long-term target is 16 blobs per block, creating a predictable, scalable data pipeline distinct from execution congestion.

Separate resource markets prevent execution congestion from inflating data costs. Gas fees reflect EVM computation, while blob fees reflect bandwidth and storage. This mirrors how AWS S3 pricing is independent from EC2 compute costs.

Data availability is a commodity, while execution is a service. Blob pricing targets cost-recovery for validators storing data, not profit-maximization for sequencing transactions. This decoupling enables rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism to post data predictably.

EIP-4844's fee market uses a multi-dimensional EIP-1559 mechanism. Blob base fees burn independently, preventing gas token volatility from distorting rollup economics. This design ensures L2 transaction finality costs remain stable and low.

Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, Arbitrum's L1 data posting costs dropped by over 90%, while mainnet gas for swaps on Uniswap remained volatile. This proves the markets are now effectively decoupled.

Blobs are a dedicated resource. Ethereum separates blob pricing to prevent L2 transaction fees from spiking during mainnet congestion. This creates a distinct market for data availability, isolating the cost of scaling from the cost of execution.

The fee market is EIP-1559 for data. Blobs use a similar base fee and priority fee mechanism, but the target is blob slots, not gas. This predictable pricing is critical for L2 sequencers like Arbitrum and Optimism to forecast operational costs.

Blobs are ephemeral, not permanent. Data is pruned after ~18 days, which is why blob gas is cheaper than calldata. This temporary storage meets the needs of fraud-proof windows for rollups like zkSync and Starknet without bloating the chain.

Evidence: Post-EIP-4844, L2 transaction costs dropped by over 90%. The blob fee market now processes data for protocols like Base and Polygon zkEVM at a fraction of previous calldata costs.