Ethereum’s ‘BlobScriptions’ Soar, Carrying Blob Fees Along for the Ride
Disruptive Ethereum Blob Inscription Technique Sends Data-Saving Fees into Chaos
A groundbreaking new approach to embedding data into the Ethereum blockchain, known as “BlobScriptions,” has led to a surge in Blob fees — the costs associated with including data on Ethereum blocks.
Introduced on March 27 by the Ethscriptions protocol, BlobScriptions enables users to directly inscribe various types of data, including images and text, onto “blobs.” These blobs were integrated into the Ethereum network as part of the Dencun upgrade on March 13.
Within hours of BlobScriptions’ launch, gas fees for Blobs skyrocketed to as high as 585 gwei, equivalent to approximately $18, according to Ultrasound. money data. This marked a stark contrast to the previous average gas price for data minting on blobs, which was around one wei, translating to a negligible fraction of $0.01. However, Blob fees have since experienced a significant decrease from their initial peak. Currently, blob fees stand at 35.8 gwei, equivalent to $1.20, according to data.
Despite the rising costs, users have embraced BlobScriptions, generating over 4,500 inscriptions on blobs since its introduction, as reported by Dune Analytics.
In a March 27 announcement on X, Ethscriptions founder Tom Lehman, known by the alias Middlemarch, highlighted the escalating expense of “blobspace” and encouraged users to utilize the official blobscription protocol for minting BlobScriptions.
Similar to the early days of Bitcoin Ordinals, Ethereum users are opting to embed small text snippets and seemingly random images onto blobs. Recent activity on blobscription.io showcases hundreds of new images added in the past few hours. Notably, blob data is retained on Ethereum nodes for approximately 18 days, after which BlobScriptions data is removed from the network. However, Lehman assured users that the Ethscriptions indexer would store the data indefinitely.
Blobs were introduced through EIP-4844, a core feature of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade aimed at reducing transaction costs on layer-2 networks significantly.
Following the Dencun upgrade, transaction fees on Ethereum L2s experienced a drastic decline, with swap fees on Arbitrum dropping from approximately $1.25 to less than $0.02, while Polygon fees witnessed a similar reduction.
As a testament to the reduced fees associated with blobs, a developer managed to embed the entire script of the Bee Movie onto an Ethereum blob within 15 minutes of the upgrade’s launch, all for less than $13 in ETH gas fees.
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