Ethereum Layer 2s show a dramatic drop in transaction fees after Dencun

Yesterday’s Dencun upgrade on Ethereum appears to have fulfilled its promise of reducing transaction costs on Layer 2s.

Major Layer 2 chains that implemented blobs have seen their average transaction fees drop dramatically.

For the uninitiated, the upgrade provided Layer 2s with a new transaction type called blobs. These blobs serve as a new point of location for the chains when posting information on Ethereum, instead of the traditional “calldata” method, offering a direct path to fee reduction.

Data from Layer 2s, such as in the Optimism ecosystem, including OP Mainnet, Base, and Zora, as well as others like zkSync and Starknet, all indicate a drop in transaction fees of several folds.

For example, the median gas fees on Base have fallen from around $0.5 on March 13 (right before Dencun went live) to about $0.0012, according to the latest on-chain data aggregated by Marcov on Dune. Meanwhile, the average fees on Base stand at $0.06. Similar numbers are applicable for OP Mainnet, which is also part of the Optimism ecosystem, just like Base.

Median transaction fees across Layer 2s | Source: Dune (via Marcov)

On Starknet, reductions in fees were observed as well. Argent, one of the largest wallet providers on the network, noted on X that average fees for a swap on Starknet stood at $0.04 (at the time of the post) as opposed to over $6.8 a few days prior to Dencun.

Meanwhile, the most widely used Layer 2, Arbitrum One, has yet to integrate with Dencun improvements. It plans to launch its ArbOS upgrade later today, introducing blob support to Arbitrum rollup chains.

More than 3000 blobs have been used so far. It is anticipated that Layer 2 chains utilizing blobs might experience higher fees in the future. As the number of rollups employing blobs increases, competition for blob space is expected to intensify, leading to slightly higher transaction costs.