Key Points
- A new method called “BlobScriptions” is contributing to the rise in Blob fees on Ethereum.
- With BlobScriptions, users can now inscribe various data onto blobs, such as text and images.
A recent innovation in adding data to the Ethereum blockchain, referred to as “BlobScriptions,” is leading to an increase in Blob fees. These fees are necessary for a blob to be included in an Ethereum block.
Introduction of BlobScriptions
The Ethscriptions protocol introduced BlobScriptions on March 27, allowing users to directly inscribe data like JPEGs and text onto “blobs” added to the Ethereum network during the Dencun upgrade on March 13.
Within five hours of its introduction, BlobScriptions led to a significant increase in gas fees for Blobs, rising to 585 gwei or around $18. This is a substantial jump from the previous average gas price of only one wei, which is a tiny fraction of $0.01.
Current Status of Blob Fees
Despite the initial surge, Blob fees have since decreased from their peak. Currently, blob fees stand at 35.8 gwei, equivalent to $1.20, based on Coinbrain conversion data. Over 4,500 inscriptions have been made on blobs following the introduction of BlobScriptions, according to Dune Analytics data.
Middlemarch, the alias used by Tom Lehman, the Ethscriptions founder, acknowledged the rising cost of “blobspace.” He is encouraging users to follow the official blobscription protocol when minting BlobScriptions.
Similar to the early days of Bitcoin Ordinals, Ethereum users are opting to mint small text pieces and seemingly random image assortments onto blobs. Recent activity on blobscription.io reveals hundreds of new images added in the past few hours.
It is worth noting that blob data stored on Ethereum nodes lasts for approximately 18 days. However, Lehman mentioned that the Ethscriptions indexer would store the data indefinitely.
Blobs were brought in through EIP-4844 during Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, focusing primarily on reducing transaction costs on layer-2 networks.
After the Dencun upgrade, transaction fees on Ethereum L2s dropped significantly. Swap fees on Arbitrum decreased from around $1.25 to below $0.02, and Polygon fees also saw a similar decline. In a remarkable demonstration of this, an Ethereum developer managed to mint the entire script of the Bee Movie on an Ethereum blob less than 15 minutes after the upgrade, spending less than $13 in ETH gas fees.
