On March 16, shortly after the Dencun upgrade, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base experienced an amazing rise in daily transactions, shattering the previous record of 2 million.
Prior to the modification, there were approximately 440,000 transactions per day; this jump followed a significant increase. Concurrently, on March 16, the number of daily new users increased to 666,866, a staggering 3,200% increase above pre-Dencun levels.
This rise is due to significant cost reductions following the update, with typical Base transaction prices reducing by more than 60%. Base, released by Coinbase in August, is the sixth-largest network in Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem, with a total value of $1.44 billion locked up and a 4.1% market share among layer 2s.
Data blobs, or proto-danksharding, were introduced by the Ethereum Dencun upgrade, specifically EIP-4844, which significantly decreased transaction fees by 60% to 90% on top layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync Era.
While rates for token swaps on Uniswap’s Optimism deployment have fallen as low as $0.01 since Dencun, Ethereum layer-1 gas fees remain very high.
Fee reductions have a significant impact on increasing user adoption and network activity, as evidenced by the noticeable rise in transactions and new users on the Coinbase Ethereum layer-2 network Base following the Dencun upgrade.
