- Offchain Labs has implemented EIP-4844 on Arbitrum with the Atlas upgrade.
- Following the upgrade, users have reported a massive drop in transaction fees.
- Beyond introducing blobs to Arbitrum, the Atlas upgrade will also introduce additional cost-cutting features to the network.
On Wednesday, March 13, the Dencun upgrade launched on the Ethereum mainnet with the long-anticipated EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding. It promises to dramatically slash the cost of transactions on Layer 2 chains.
While a few Layer 2 chains have enjoyed the benefits of EIP-4844 from day one, thanks to earlier preparations, the race is still on among most chains to implement the upgrade. As the race heats up, Ethereum’s leading Layer 2 chain by TVL, Arbitrum, is the latest to cross the finish line, offering users an estimated ten times fee reduction.
Arbitrum Gets Ethereum Blobs
On Thursday, March 14, Offchain Labs, the developers of the Arbitrum network, disclosed that they had launched the ArbOS 20 upgrade, nicknamed “Atlas,” unleashing several vital components of the Dencun upgrade, including EIP-4844 on the prominent Ethereum Layer 2.
With the upgrade, Arbitrum joins the likes of Base, Optimism, and Starknet in leveraging the new feature that would see it shift from storing data on Ethereum within Calldata to the more inexpensive and temporary blobs. Following the upgrade, users and DApps are already reporting a ten-times drop in transaction fees from an average of $0.5 to $0.05.
Beyond the introduction of blobs, Offchain Labs also disclosed that the Atlas upgrade contained additional features to drive down costs slated to go live on Monday, March 18. These features include reducing its “Layer 1 Surplus Fee” from 32 gwei per compressed byte to 0 and reducing the minimum Layer 2 base fee from 0.1 gwei to 0.01 gwei.
While Layer 2 chains built on Arbitrum’s tech stack called Orbit chains will have to independently deploy the Atlas update to reap the benefits of EIP-4844, Layer 3 chains built directly on Arbitrum One would not have to take any action.
On the Flipside
- Despite the Atlas upgrade, ARB, the native token of the Arbitrum network, is trading at the $1.98 price point, representing a nearly 7% decline in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data at the time of writing.
- Polygon Labs recently disclosed that blobs will not come to the Polygon zkEVM till May 2024.
Why This Matters
Arbitrum One is the largest Ethereum Layer 2 chain by TVL. The launch of blobs on the network promises to make usage of the blockchain significantly cheaper for users while unlocking new frontiers for developers.
Sponsored
Read this for more on blobs:
What Are Ethereum Blobs, and How Do They Boost Scalability?
See what the Dencun upgrade means for Polygon (MATIC) chains:
Here’s What Ethereum Dencun Means for Polygon (MATIC) Chains
