The Ethereum Pectra fork adds variable blob payments to improve L2 scaling

Ethereum developers are set to implement the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) in the upcoming Pectra fork to facilitate blob bearer transactions and improve network scalability.

EIP-7742 Ethereum Consensus Layer Creates Mechanism to Set Blob Gas Target and Max Values ​​”Dynamicly” Galaxy Digital Research Vice President Kristen Kim posted on X on October 17th after attending Ethereum “All Core Devs”. Meeting.

Blobs are large but transient pieces of data designed to make Ethereum layer-2 transactions cheaper.

Kim EIP-7742 should increase the currently fixed blob count, which Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said was nearing full capacity at the end of last month, and could soon curb scalability.

“Increasing blob count may also be included in pectra, and other changes unlikely to increase scalability, such as gas limits or scan time changes, will be included in the update,” Kim wrote.

Ethereum developer Alex Stokes added on GitHub that adding blob metrics to have a more “variable target value relative to the blob max” should “reduce rigidity” from the current fixed blob count.

The Pectra update is expected to happen later this year or early 2025.

Blobs were implemented in EIP-4844 on March 13 in the Denkun update.

Another idea is that the EIP-7623 could reduce Ethereum's maximum block size from 2.7 megabytes to 1 megabyte, freeing up more blob space.

The inclusion of EIP in the upcoming fork aligns with Buterin's vision of a combination of Ethereum's mainnet and layer-2 blockchain achieving 100,000 transactions per second, which Ethereum's technical roadmap has dubbed “Scale Up.”

Cheap layer 2s can come at a real price.

Ethereum exchanges chose to balance via Layer 2s, resulting in a significant drop in the Ethereum mainnet's overall network revenue share – which could hurt the price of Ether (ETH) in the long term, according to an industry analyst.

The revenue ratio between Ethereum and Ethereum Layer 2 has been 10:90 in the last four months, according to Matthew Siegel, head of digital asset research at asset manager VanEck, in a post on October 17.

Related: New Ethereum Proposal Aims to Increase Input by 50%

Ether will top $22,000 by 2030 based on a 90:10 earnings split, forcing Siegel to revise down VanEck's bullish forecast — the opposite of what happened over the past four months.

If that dividend remains the same, Siegel said Van Eckert's price target would drop 67 percent to $7,330.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap, one of Ethereum's biggest revenue drivers, could exacerbate the shift away from Ethereum by creating the new layer-2 “Unichain”.

At the time of publication, Ether (ETH) was trading at $2,615, down 0.5% in the last 24 hours.

Magazine: Proposed Change Could Save Ethereum From L2's ‘Roadmap to Hell'