Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Blob Market Analysis: L2 Costs Decrease, Node Pressure Increases

On May 7, 2025, the Ethereum mainnet completed the Pectra upgrade, implementing a series of improvement proposals, including the increase of the target and maximum blob count per block proposed by EIP-7691. Blobs were introduced during the 2024 Dencun upgrade, providing dedicated data publishing space for rollups. After the Pectra upgrade, the target and maximum number of blobs per block were raised from 3 and 6 to 6 and 9, respectively, resulting in a daily blob data capacity of approximately 8.15GB. This change has impacted the blob market, rollups, Ethereum validators, and the supply of ETH.

Main Findings

• After Pectra went live for five full trading days, the daily number of blobs purchased via rollup increased from approximately 21,200 to 25,600, but the average number of blobs per block is still 33% lower than the new target value of 6.

• Due to the actual usage being far lower than the new target value, blobs have almost become free. The daily blob fee for rollup is less than 0.001 cents, and since the upgrade, only 0.00025 cents have been paid in total, significantly reducing the ETH burned by rollup for data space usage.

• Nodes must retain rollup blob data for at least 18 days. The daily increase in blob purchase volume has led to a new high in the amount of data that consensus layer nodes need to retain before data pruning, estimated to be 44.6GB.

• The reduction in blob costs has improved rollup profit margins, with Base benefiting the most from net income after deducting on-chain costs. However, the transaction costs for some mainstream rollups remain stable or have slightly increased.

Blob Market Analysis

After the launch of Pectra, the daily average blob purchase volume for rollup increased by 20.8%, from 21,200 in the 60 days before the upgrade to 25,600, corresponding data capacity increased from 2.7GB to 3.3GB.

Despite the increase in purchase volume, only two-thirds of the new target value was utilized. As a result, blobs have once again become nearly free, with a median price of just $0.00000000035 per blob. The daily blob fee for rollups is less than 0.001 cents, totaling no more than 0.00025 cents. In comparison, Pectra paid an average daily blob fee of $16,250 for rollups in the first 60 days.

Impact on Ethereum Nodes

Although the rollup has purchased more blobs, the relative usage ratio of the total daily capacity is lower. Currently, only 3.3GB of data space has been purchased, accounting for 40% of the daily maximum capacity and 61% of the target capacity.

The average blob fill rate increased from 82% before the upgrade to 86%. The increase in the daily purchase volume of blob data requires consensus layer nodes to store more rollup data. As of May 12, the amount of data that nodes need to retain has reached a historical high of 44.6GB. If the current demand continues, nodes are expected to store about 60GB of rollup data; if the target rate is achieved, they may need to store between 95GB and 100GB.

Rollup Cost and ETH Burn

After the launch of Pectra, the average daily blob-related spending for rollups decreased from $20,660 to $11,015, a drop of 51%. However, due to the sharp rise in Ethereum L1 transaction fees (which increased by over 650% in a week), the cost of executing blobs for rollups remains at a certain level.

The amount of ETH burned through blob activities has significantly decreased. The average daily burn was 11.22 ETH before the upgrade, which dropped to 3.26 ETH after the upgrade, with 99.99% coming from the execution layer base fee.

Impact on L2

Most rollups have seen an increase in profit margins. Linea and Base have the strongest profit margins, with a seven-day moving average of 98.86% and 98.54%, respectively. Blast has shown the most significant improvement in profit margins, rising from over 50% to above 80%.

The revenue and net profit of each rollup have at least doubled, with Base performing the best, generating $1.22 million and netting $1.12 million.

Conclusion

The rollup has not yet fully utilized the scaling capabilities provided by Pectra, but it has reduced the daily blob DA activity costs. Upgrading to rollup has created a more favorable financial environment while increasing blob usage. However, node operators need to bear more data storage responsibilities, which is an issue that needs to be addressed in the Ethereum scaling blob DA process.