Blob fees are rising due to a popular method of adding data to the Ethereum blockchain called “BlobScriptions.” These are the expenses a blob must pay in order to be added to an Ethereum block.
BlobScriptions were first introduced on March 27th by the Ethscriptions protocol. With this new functionality, users can directly engrave text and JPG files onto “blobs.” These blobs were included in the Ethereum network on March 13 during the Dencun upgrade.
Five hours after BlobScriptions launched, Blobs’ gas costs shot up to 585 gwei, or almost $18. This is a significant difference from the previous average gas price of roughly one wei, or a minuscule fraction of $0.01, for minting data on a blob prior to BlobScriptions.
Blob fees have, however, substantially down from their most recent peak. Blob fees are currently 35.8 gwei, or $1.20, based on Coinbrain conversion data as of this writing. Furthermore, according to Dune Analytics statistics, since the release of BlobScriptions, there have been more than 4,500 inscriptions on blobs.
Under the pseudonym Middlemarch, Tom Lehman, the founder of Ethscriptions, stated that “blobspace” was becoming more and more expensive. He urged users to adopt the official blobscription protocol to mint BlobScriptions.
Ethereum users are opting to mint little text fragments and seemingly random image assortments to blobs, much like in the early days of Bitcoin Ordinals. On blobscription.io, hundreds of fresh photos have been added in the previous several hours, according to the most recent activity.
It’s crucial to remember that blob data is only kept on Ethereum nodes for roughly eighteen days. BlobScriptions data will be deleted from the network at the end of this time. Lehman clarified, though, that the data will be kept “indefinitely” by the Ethscriptions indexer.
EIP-4844, a crucial data-saving function of Ethereum’s Dencun update, introduced blobs. This upgrade’s main goal was to drastically lower layer-2 network transaction costs.
Following the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum L2 transaction fees significantly decreased. Arbitrum swap fees dropped from about $1.25 to less than $0.02, while Polygon swap fees also dropped by that same amount. Less than 15 minutes after the update went live, one Ethereum developer even succeeded in minting the full Bee Movie script on an Ethereum blob for less than $13 in ETH gas fees.
