The recent Dencun upgrade on the Ethereum network has brought about a significant decrease in transaction fees for Ethereum layer-2 (L2) protocols. Some protocols have witnessed a remarkable reduction of up to 99% in transaction fees. This scalability-focused upgrade is being hailed as one of the most impactful upgrades since the Merge.
Starknet, a prominent L2 platform built on Ethereum, has experienced a staggering 99% decrease in gas fees following the Dencun upgrade. The protocol shared a screenshot showing that gas fees have dropped to $0.04, compared to the previous amount of over $6.
Other L2 platforms such as Optimism, Base, and Zora OP mainnet have also observed a significant decline in gas fees after the Dencun upgrade. The average transaction fees for Optimism now stand at $0.05, $0.064 for Base, $0.5 for Arbitrum, and $0.16 for zkSync Era. Optimism and chains utilizing Optimism’s technology, like Base, have seen the most substantial reductions in gas fees within 24 hours of the upgrade.
Arbitrum One, one of the most widely used L2 platforms, plans to launch its ArbOS upgrade today, which will introduce blob support to Arbitrum rollup chains. The Dencun hard fork included nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), with EIP-484 introducing data blobs as a new transaction data type for L2s. These data blobs bypass the traditional “call data” process, enabling faster transactions at lower costs. The Dencun upgrade has been in development for two years.
Scalability and low gas fees were the primary objectives of the recent Ethereum upgrade. While Dencun has helped L2s reduce transaction costs, experts believe it may only be a temporary solution and not sufficient for scaling the Ethereum network.
As more rollups adopt blobs and competition for blob space intensifies, the low-cost advantage of L2 chains using blobs could lead to increased fees in the future, resulting in higher transaction costs.