Expert Highlights Scalability Limits of Ethereum’s Layer 2

The upcoming Pectra upgrade in the Ethereum network will provide “months, not years” before the capacity of BLOB objects intended for Layer 2 is exhausted, warned Polynomial co-founder Gautham Santhosh.

6/ Core devs know this is critical.@VitalikButerin said increasing blobs from 3 to 6 is more important than ALL other Pectra upgrades combined.

But doubling capacity only buys us months, not years. https://t.co/5UDzD7e9p5

— f(gautham)? (@gauthamzzz) January 17, 2025

As a result, Layer 2 solutions may soon reach the limit of effectively scaling the main network.

On March 13, during the Dencun hard fork, EIP-4844 was activated, implementing the Proto-Danksharding option to create a new type of transactions for BLOB objects.

This space is intended for the temporary storage of large volumes of data, which has significantly reduced fees in the Layer 2 ecosystem, especially on Rollup-based solutions.

Since November, the daily volume of utilized BLOB objects has exceeded 21,000, according to Dune Analytics.

Base and Taiko account for 55% of daily activity. In other words, sustained demand for Layer 2 could quickly exhaust available capacity, Santhosh explained.

“At the current growth rate, we are only months away from everything ‘breaking’,” the specialist lamented.

The target and maximum figures are three and six BLOBs per block, respectively. When the target is met, a base fee is charged to regulate demand from Layer 2.

Since November 2024, active use of BLOB objects has consistently reached the target value. As a result, competition among dozens of Layer 2 solutions has intensified with the rise in base fees.

“It’s like having a highway with only three lanes for 50 growing cities. […] This affects everyone. DEX sees higher costs, derivative protocols face spikes in base fees, users pay more,” Santhosh explained.

The Pectra upgrade, scheduled for March 2025, is expected to increase the BLOB object limit per block to nine, with the target set at six. Santhosh believes this will not “save” the situation but merely postpone the “collision with the wall” by a few months.

As a solution, the expert suggested implementing PeerDAS and transitioning to enhanced data layer scaling after Pectra.

Back in September, Web3 researcher Cygaar called for increasing fees for BLOB objects to restore the ETH burn rate.