Layer 2 Blockchains Become Cheaper After Ethereum’s Dencun Upgrade

Ethereum core developers implemented the Dencun upgrade on the mainnet, introducing “blobs,” which are expected to make Layer 2 transactions significantly cheaper. Including the EIP-4844, the upgrade was activated on the network at epoch 269568, at around 10 am ET March 14.

Ethereum Layer 2 rollups can now use blobs instead of the “calldata” method for posting transactions — offering a direct path to fee reduction and passing these savings to end users. Blobs are intended to enhance Ethereum by improving data availability while not affecting the current infrastructure, thereby reducing transaction costs on Layer 2s such as Base, Optimism, Arbitrum One, zkSync, Starknet, and several others. A separate fee market for blobs will attempt to maintain low transaction costs for Layer 2s, even in times of high network congestion.

While some Layer 2 chains plan to integrate blobs immediately, others may take a while to do so. Besides EIP-4844, there are eight other code updates added to Ethereum with Dencun. This includes EIP-4788, which introduces what’s known as an “enshrined oracle,” improving communication between Ethereum’s two base layers: the execution layer and the consensus layer.