Exploring the Rise of Blob Inscriptions on Ethereum Network

Ethereum’s blobs transaction fees witnessed an unprecedented surge yesterday with the debut of “BlobScriptions.”

Blobs represent a novel transaction type that alleviates layer-2 fees on the Ethereum network and was introduced through the Dencun upgrade. Since its inception, the minimum gas price for a Blob to secure inclusion in an Ethereum block has stood at one WEI, roughly $0.01.

However, this fee experienced an astounding spike of more than 10,000% yesterday, reaching almost $300, following the introduction of BlobScriptions by Ethscriptions.

As of press time, the average Blob fees have subsided to approximately $6.57, or 13.97 gwei, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard curated by Dragonfly’s analyst Hildobby.

What are BlobScriptions?

BlobScriptions, akin to Bitcoin Inscriptions, allow the network users to inscribe NFT-like assets, encompassing images, texts, and tokens, onto Ethereum’s blobs.

Alex Thorn, Galaxy Digital‘s head of research, said:

“Ethereum created a special place with reduced fees to encourage specific types of transactions (blobs), then people started putting jpg there.”

Before its launch, Tom Lehman, the founder of Ethscriptions operating under the pseudonym “Middlemarch” on X, urged the community to seize the opportunity to “ethscribe something big” on the network, highlighting that “Blobs are essentially free right now.”

As of press time, more than 1,000 inscriptions were inscribed on blobs within the past 4 hours, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Notably, the surge in these assets has led to significant congestion in blob transactions, resulting in fierce contention for space within Ethereum blocks. Consequently, the number of pending blobs in a block has soared by over 3,700%, with blob space utilization at 100%, per Ethernow data.

What does this mean for the network?

Several stakeholders have differing opinions on how BlobScriptions could impact Ethereum’s operation.

A developer, Daniel, opined that the proliferation of these assets could trigger a surge in layer2 network transaction fees.

According to him:

“Ethereum is already very congested, so don’t play with blob inscriptions, which will cause a surge in layer2 transaction fees. Several bytes of data occupy 128kb of storage space, wasting a large amount of on-chain resources.”

However, Christine Kim, a researcher with Galaxy Digital, explained that the current trend was unsustainable. She said:

“Blob fees rise exponentially because of [BlobScriptions], which eventually makes it uneconomical to keep spamming blob space with inscriptions, leaving blob space once again available for economically valuable activity like l2 DA.”