Offchain Labs: Ethereum L2 needs to introduce "reactive pricing" to achieve large-scale scaling

ME News message, April 3 (UTC+8). At EthCC 2026, Edward Felten, co-founder of Offchain Labs, said that the Ethereum layer-2 network (L2) needs to introduce “responsive pricing” to support a user base on the scale of billions and reduce fee volatility caused by network congestion. Felten noted that although EIP-1559 reformed the fee mechanism, current Gas price volatility remains the primary means of preventing network overload, and this kind of volatility is not conducive to mainstream users’ acceptance. Responsive pricing can process more transactions at lower Gas prices without exceeding the network’s capacity. Fee instability has long been viewed as a key obstacle to large-scale adoption, especially compared with the more predictable cost structure in traditional financial systems. Industry focus has shifted from simply improving throughput to how to make fees more predictable while still accurately reflecting the cost of congestion. Notably, Arbitrum One introduced a dynamic pricing mechanism as early as January this year, as the first practical exploration of balancing fee stability and network security. (Source: ODAILY)