Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Thursday that the amount of “usage” he has seen from layer 2 networks after last week’s landmark Dencun upgrade is lower than expected.
In response to a question from Carpet radio On Thursday at ETH Taipei, Buterin asked whether Dencun’s implementation was better than he expected.
“It depends on what you mean by better,” the prominent crypto developer replied.
Buterin then praised Ethereum developers for deploying the update “flawlessly,” before reflecting on what he considered Dencun’s lackluster contribution to network traffic on layer 2 networks since going live last Wednesday.
“The amount of usage is interestingly low, right?” Buterin said.
Dencun introduced blobs, a new data storage solution that – through a process called proto-dankhardening – now makes it possible to store layer 2 data on-chain for a temporary period of about a month (rather than for always). drastically reduce low 2 gas rates to almost zero.
Buterin said Thursday that Ethereum’s core developers had hoped going into Dencun that layer 2 networks would use an average of three blobs per block; current levels are approximately 67% below that target.
To be clear, it is not the case that layer 2 networks have had less traffic since Dencun; on the contrary, most of them have more than doubled in transaction volume since last week.
Traffic on Coinbase’s layer 2 network Base yesterday reached numbers as high as the number of transactions on Coinbase.com and Coinbase Wallet started to fail intermittently yesterday. This morning, gas prices on Base suddenly rose to about a third of pre-Dencun levels after trading bots flooded the network in a meme coin-related frenzy.
1/ Transaction costs on Base have increased today.
The cause appears to be the increased activity of trading bots willing to pay high priority fees.
As a result, it is now more expensive to transact on Base than on other L2s that use blobs. pic.twitter.com/smjsd1lcNl
— Kofi (@0xKofi) March 21, 2024
Nevertheless, Buterin and other Ethereum stakeholders appear to have expected even bigger spikes in layer 2 traffic given Dencun’s dramatic reduction in L2 gas rates – especially at a time when gas rates on the Ethereum mainnet are soaring. unbearable for many retail users.
Marius Van Der Wijden, a core Ethereum developer, said it may be too early to judge the success of blobs, as some layer-2 networks have yet to integrate Dencun.
“Not all L2s have switched to blobs yet,” Van Der Wijden said Declutter. “It means L2s have a lot of room to grow.”
For example, Polygon has yet to be fully updated to Dencun. Polygon Labs VP Product David Silverman previously told Declutter that he expects all Layer-2s, including Polygon, to be fully integrated with Dencun within a month or two.
Van Der Wijden also said that a silver lining to the relatively low blob usage on tier-2s so far is the rock-bottom gas prices that have made such traffic possible. Rising demand for blob space will likely increase layer 2 transaction costs, but to what extent remains to be seen.
In Taipei, Vitalik Buterin echoed that sentiment on Thursday.
“I do think it’s good for contemporary rollups [transaction costs] are very cheap,” he says.
But the Ethereum creator emphasized that he is more excited about the use of blobs ultimately meeting his expectations.
“I certainly look forward to seeing usage increase in the coming months,” he added.
Edited by Andrew Hayward