Ethereum’s layer-2 (L2) protocols have experienced a significant decrease in transaction fees following the Dencun upgrade on March 13th. This upgrade, which is focused on scalability, has been hailed as one of the most important updates since the Merge.
A notable example is Starknet, an Ethereum-based L2, which has seen a 99% reduction in gas fees after the upgrade. They shared a screenshot showing that gas fees have dropped to $0.04, compared to over $6 prior to the Dencun upgrade.
Other L2 platforms, including Optimism, Base, and Zora OP mainnet, have also seen a drastic decline in gas fees. Optimism’s average transaction fees dropped to $0.05, $0.064 for Base, $0.5 for Arbitrum, and $0.16 for zkSync Era. In the first 24 hours after the upgrade, Optimism and other chains based on its technology, like Base, experienced the most significant reductions in gas fees.
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. This upgrade is made possible by EIP-484, one of the nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals introduced in the Dencun hard fork. EIP-484 introduces data blobs as a new transaction data type for L2s, bypassing the traditional “call data” process and enabling faster transactions at lower fees. The Dencun upgrade has been two years in the making.
The Dencun upgrade aimed to address scalability and reduce gas fees, which were the primary objectives. While it has helped L2s cut transaction costs, experts believe that Dencun may only be a temporary solution and might not be sufficient to scale the Ethereum network.
As more rollups adopt blobs and the competition for blob space intensifies, the low fees associated with L2 chains using blobs may increase in the future, resulting in higher transaction costs.