Following the Dencun upgrade on Ethereum's mainnet on March 13, transaction fees on Layer 2 (L2) protocols have seen a substantial reduction, with some experiencing drops of up to 99%. Considered a significant scalability-focused enhancement, the Dencun upgrade has been heralded as one of Ethereum's most crucial upgrades since the merger.
Starknet, a prominent Ethereum-based L2 protocol, has observed a remarkable 99% decrease in gas fees post-upgrade. Sharing a screenshot of the latest gas fees, Starknet revealed a reduction from over $6 to a mere $0.04. Similarly, other L2 platforms such as Optimism, Base, and Zora OP have reported significant drops in gas fees following the Dencun upgrade. Average transaction fees on Optimism and Base fell to $0.05 and $0.064, respectively, while Arbitrum and zkSync Era recorded fees of $0.5 and $0.16.
Arbitrum One, a widely utilized L2 platform, has announced plans to introduce a significant ArbOS upgrade, incorporating blob support for the Arbitrum rollup chain. This enhancement is expected to further optimize transaction processing and contribute to reducing gas fees on the platform.
The Dencun hard fork introduced nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), with EIP-484 notably introducing data blobs to L2 protocols. These data blobs present a new transaction data type that bypasses the traditional "call data" process, resulting in faster transactions with reduced fees. Despite taking two years to develop, the Dencun upgrade has been acknowledged as one of Ethereum's most complex forks, paralleling the size of Byzantium in terms of the total number of EIPs implemented.
While the Dencun upgrade marks a significant step towards scalability and reduced gas fees, experts caution that it may offer only a temporary solution. As the adoption of rollups utilizing blobs increases, there could be a heightened competition for blob space, potentially leading to increased fees on low-cost L2 chains in the future, consequently impacting transaction costs.
