The Pectra upgrade, aimed at improving Ethereum's efficiency and capacity, introduces significant changes in data allocation from L2s.
Blob Capacity Utilization
Since November 2024, blob usage has hovered around 3 blobs per block, indicating full capacity. The upper limit of 6 means that any additional blobs come at a cost. The Pectra upgrade is expected to raise this target to 6 blobs per block, with an upper limit rising to 9. It took around 8 months for blob utilization to hit full capacity after the Dencun upgrade.
Who Is Consuming All The Blobs?
Charts indicate the number of blobs uploaded weekly by various L2s. With the new target of 6 blobs per block, approximately 300k blobs are available weekly. The Base blockchain consumes about one third of this capacity, while others like Taiko, World Chain, and Arbitrum also significantly utilize blobs.
What Happens Next?
Pectra serves as a temporary solution, and despite positive advancements, the need for complete sharding remains crucial to meet the required data processing capacity. Future solutions like Data Availability Sampling will enhance capacity while enabling users to verify data availability. Current market conditions indicate that the demand for blobs will continue to rise.
The Pectra upgrade marks an important step for Ethereum, but further improvements and solutions will be necessary to meet the growing data processing needs.
