officially b Ethereum Networking March 13, 2024 In Denkun Update, Blobs are a new data storage space designed to make scrolling cheaper and more efficient.
The consensus in the Ethereum community is that the best way to scale Ethereum is with bundles, also known as Layer 2s or L2's, and the best way to scale rolls is by introducing blobs.
Before crashes, if Ethereum went through a congested period, that would affect the price of transactions on all Layer 2s. The introduction of blobs removes the link between Ethereum's congestion and the cost of transactions on Layer 2s.
What are spots?
Blobs are a new data structure introduced to Ethereum in EIP-4844, better known as “proto-danksharding”. EIP stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposal—a process by which Ethereum core developers suggest improvements to Ethereum.
Proto-danksharding is a precursor to full danksharding, and it lays the groundwork by introducing blobs. To ease the transition to full-dunksharding, it's done in the same format used when full-dunksharding is implemented.
Full-danksharding, or just danksharding, is an upcoming upgrade to the Ethereum protocol. This represents what Ethereum Core devs believe is the final step (for now) in making Ethereum a truly scalable blockchain by making transactions faster and cheaper.
Proto-danksharding is a step towards implementing Danksharding – it introduces concepts from Danksharding like blobs into Ethereum. It reduces the risk of introducing drastic changes to the network quickly, rather than diving straight into full-danksharding, starting with the introduction of proto-danksharding and blobs.
How do stains work?
Before a crash, when Layer 2 wants to verify a transaction, it prepares transactions, and sends them to Layer 1 (Ethereum) for verification. The problem was, after the data was verified, it was still stuck on the Ethereum blockchain, taking up block space, forever.
This contributes to state bloat, and makes Ethereum more congested—which in turn makes Layer 2s more congested.
With blobs, when the data is sent to Layer 1 for authentication, it is sent as a blob, short for “binary big object”. Each blob has 4096 field elements and can hold up to 32 bytes of data per field element, which equates to around 75 MB per blob. You can think of it as a giant data table, or… a big database.
Blobs improve on the previous authentication method because data can be deleted from a blob after authentication. In this way, all transaction data from each package generated on Ethereum does not have to reside permanently on the Ethereum blockchain, occupying valuable space.
Blobs also operates using a separate blob payment market – promoting “blob gas”. Blob gas is gas free on the Ethereum mainnet, meaning the only things that use blob gas are the blobs themselves.
What's so special about drops?
Despite the funny names included in the Ethereum Denkun update, it is a great improvement. Blobs help decongest Ethereum, and make it cheaper and faster to use Blobs.
This is because data validated in blobs can be deleted after use. As such, it does not cause state bloat on the Ethereum mainnet. “State bloat” refers to the fact that the more data Ethereum generates, the more data it permanently resides on the blockchain, and the harder it is to maintain the “state” of the network.
Separating the blob gas market from the current gas market is also a big improvement. Since Blobs have a separate gas market, they will not be affected by the surge in Ethereum. If there is already a big event like the most expected on Ethereum NFT mint, the congestion created by this event penetrates Layer 2s and makes transactions expensive. Separating BlobGas markets from traditional Ethereum Gas markets removes the link between Ethereum network congestion and Layer 2 transaction costs and speed.
Blobs make layer 2 more profitable. Before the blip, the operating costs for Layer 2s and the dapps built on top of them were very high, when gas charges on them corresponded to congestion on the Ethereum network. Lower transaction fees enable builders and operators to run complex smart contracts or products at lower costs.
Dots at work
Looking at the onchain data from rollup.wtf, we can see that most Layer 2s with the highest transactions per second are already using blobs.
Jesse Pollack, founder of Layer 2 network Base, tweeted that the price of a simple exchange on Base dropped from $0.31 to $0.0005 after the crash.
However, it wasn't all sunshine and raindrops. Posting transactions at layer 1 is slower than expected. Creating a new gas market for Blob has succeeded in solving Ethereum congestion from lump sum transaction costs, but the gas market itself needs some adjustment before integration. Until it is.
An example of June 2024 is that blob transactions are more expensive than ever – but this can be taken as a sign that blob adoption is still in progress, and hopefully, as L2's become more efficient at using blobs, more block builders will start accepting blocks. They include swelling and increase the capacity of the blob – the costs are reduced.
Vitalik Buterin addressed both issues in a March 2023 blog post published shortly after Denkun's release. In it, Buterin cites two main areas of focus needed to continue increasing blob size: “progressively increasing blob capacity, eventually achieving a full view of data availability sampling at 16MB per data space” and “optimizing L2s to make better use of our available data space.”
So when spots see some growing pains, they were mostly expected, and solutions are underway.
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