Status of Blob Market After Ethereum Pectra Upgrade: L2 Costs Significantly Decrease, Node Data Pressure Increases

On May 7, 2025, Ethereum completed the Pectra upgrade. This upgrade included multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), among which EIP-7691 increased the target and maximum number of blobs per block. Blobs were introduced through EIP-4844 in the 2024 Dencun upgrade, providing dedicated data publishing space for rollups. After the Dencun upgrade, the network maintained a target of 3 blobs per block and a maximum of 6, with each blob being 128kb, equivalent to approximately 5.5GB of data capacity per day. After the Pectra upgrade, the target and maximum number of blobs per block were raised to 6 and 9, respectively, increasing the daily blob data capacity to about 8.15GB. This change impacted the blob market, rollups, and Ethereum validators, reducing competitive pressure among rollups while increasing the network's data availability (DA) capacity.

Key Findings

• After Pectra went live, the daily number of blobs purchased via rollup increased from approximately 21,200 to 25,600 within five complete trading days. Nevertheless, the average number of blobs per block is still 33% lower than the new target value of 6.

• Due to the actual number of blobs per block being far below the updated target value, blobs have once again become almost free, marking the first occurrence since mid-April 2025. The fees paid by the rollup for blobs are less than 0.001 cents per day, with a total of only 0.00025 cents paid since the launch of Pectra. This significantly reduces the amount of ETH burned by the rollup for data space usage and publishing on Ethereum.

• Nodes must retain rollup blob data for at least 18 days before deletion. The daily increase in blob purchase quantities has led to a new high in the amount of data that consensus layer nodes need to retain before data pruning, estimated at 44.6GB.

• The reduction in blob costs has improved the profit margins of rollups, with one trading platform benefiting the most in terms of net income after deducting on-chain costs. Nevertheless, since the launch of Pectra, the transaction costs of some mainstream rollups have remained unchanged or even slightly increased.

Blob Market

Since the launch of Pectra, the daily number of blobs purchased by rollup has increased by 20.8% compared to before the upgrade. In the first 60 days of Pectra, rollup averaged 21,200 blobs purchased daily. Over the five full trading days after the upgrade, the average daily purchase increased to 25,600 blobs. The corresponding daily data capacity has increased from 2.7GB before the upgrade to the current 3.3GB.

Despite the increase in blob purchase volume, since the launch of Pectra, only two-thirds of the new target value blob quantity has been used on average each day. Therefore, while the previous average blob usage rate of Pectra was in line with the target, the rollup has yet to reach the new demand level to consistently achieve the new target rate.

As a result, blobs have once again become almost free, as each block only used two-thirds of the target blob quantity. This is the first time blobs have become so cheap since mid-April 2025. Since the launch of Pectra, the median price per blob has been only $0.00000000035. This means that the rollup pays a maximum of $0.0000092 per day, with a total blob cost of only $0.0000395. In other words, the rollup pays less than 0.001 cents per day, totaling no more than 0.00025 cents. This fee does not include the type-3 transaction fees required to execute the blob on-chain, only the cost of the blob itself.

In the 60 days before Pectra, the rollup paid an average of $16,250 per day in blob fees, totaling approximately $1,095,000. This fee has decreased by nearly 100%.

Data Capacity and Impact on Ethereum Nodes

After the implementation of Pectra, a larger proportion of the total data capacity provided by blobs on Ethereum remains unsold each day. Therefore, although rollups have purchased more blobs and more data space, the relative utilization rate of the total daily capacity is lower. Once the demand for rollups reaches the new target level, the blob market will operate more efficiently from a capacity perspective, as the new target rate is only 33% lower than the maximum, compared to 50% under the old parameters.

Ethereum generates approximately 7,100 blocks every day, with each block able to contain up to 9 blobs, indicating a maximum daily blob capacity of about 8.17GB, with a target value of 5.45GB; this value will fluctuate with the actual number of blocks. However, currently only 3.3GB of data space has been purchased, which is about 40% of the maximum daily capacity and 61% of the target capacity. In comparison, in the month prior to Pectra, an average of 50% of the total capacity and 99% of the target capacity was purchased daily.

Each blob can hold up to 128KB of data. The rollup does not have to use the full 128KB (for example, using 100KB is also acceptable), but a single blob cannot exceed this limit. The difference between the purchased amount of blob capacity and the actual usage shows the gap between the daily actual data filled by the rollup and the limit. The average filling rate after Pectra for blobs is 86%, while it was 82% in the 60 days before the upgrade.

The daily increase in the amount of blob data purchased requires consensus layer nodes to store more rollup data. Nodes must retain this data for at least 18 days before deletion. Before Pectra, this meant that nodes had to retain between 40GB and 44GB of data. In the days following Pectra, this value continued to rise, reaching a historical high of 44.6GB by May 12, 2025. If the current blob demand persists, nodes are expected to need to store about 60GB of rollup data; if the target rate is achieved, they may need to store around 95GB to 100GB.

Rollup Costs and ETH Burn

Since the launch of Pectra, the rollup has spent an average of $11,015 per day on blob-related costs (including blob objects and type-3 execution layer transaction fees), compared to $20,660 in the 60 days prior to the upgrade, a decrease of 51%.

The sharp rise in Ethereum L1 transaction fees has kept the costs of rollup in blob activities at a certain level. Within a week of Pectra's launch, the Ethereum L1 base fee increased by over 650%. Without this surge, the cost of executing blobs via rollup would have been lower, and the amount of ETH burned through blob activities would also have been less.

The ETH burned during the data publishing activities through blobs (including the cost of purchasing blobs and the expenses of executing transactions using type-3) has significantly decreased after the launch of Pectra. In the 60 days prior to the upgrade, an average of 11.22 ETH was burned daily, with only 37.1% coming from execution layer fees. After the upgrade, an average of 3.26 ETH is burned daily (a 71% decrease), with 99.99% coming from execution layer base fees.

Impact on L2

After deducting on-chain costs, the relative and absolute profit margins of rollups have mostly improved. A certain DEX and a certain trading platform show the strongest profit margins among the observed rollups, with a seven-day moving average of 98.86% and 98.54%, respectively. A certain L2 has seen the most significant improvement in profit margins after on-chain costs, increasing from over 50% a few days ago to currently over 80%.

After on-chain costs, the net income obtained by rollups has increased after Pectra, due to factors including a decrease in data costs and an increase in activity and transaction fees. The revenue and net profits of each rollup have at least doubled, with one trading platform generating the highest absolute profit, earning 1.22 million dollars under current market conditions, with a net gain of 1.12 million dollars after on-chain costs.

Conclusion

Rollup has not yet fully utilized the Ethereum data availability scaling provided by Pectra. Therefore, it reduces the fees that rollup pays daily for blob DA activities. This upgrade currently provides a more favorable financial environment for rollup while also increasing the daily usage of blobs. The adjustments made by Pectra to the Ethereum blob parameters also raise a critical question: nodes must bear more pressure for storing blob data. As Ethereum expands its blob DA, node operators will need to take on more data storage responsibilities.