Blobs cut fees by an order of magnitude

A 2024 Ethereum upgrade called EIP-4844 introduced 'blobs,' a dedicated, cheaper data lane sized specifically for the kind of compressed transaction data rollups post back to Ethereum. This single change cut Layer 2 fees roughly tenfold across the board, and by 2026 every major rollup posts its data through blobs.

The impact has been massive: Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Linea, Scroll, and a long tail of newer chains together now carry roughly 85% of all Ethereum-related transaction volume. Layer 2s aren't a niche experiment anymore, they're where most of the activity actually happens.