Changes in the Ethereum Blob Market After the Pectra Upgrade: Significant Decrease in L2 Costs, Increased Pressure on Nodes

On May 7, 2025, Ethereum completed the Pectra upgrade. In this upgrade, the target and maximum blob counts per block were increased from 3 and 6 to 6 and 9, respectively. This change raised the daily data capacity provided through blobs from approximately 5.5GB to 8.15GB. This article will explore the impact of the Pectra upgrade on the blob market, rollups, Ethereum validators, and the supply of ETH.

Blob Market Changes

After the Pectra upgrade, the daily purchase of blobs for rollup increased from approximately 21,200 to 25,600, a rise of 20.8%. However, the average number of blobs per block is still 33% lower than the new target value.

Due to the actual usage being far below the target value, blobs have almost become free. After the upgrade, the median price for each blob is only $0.00000000035. The fees paid by rollups for blobs each day are less than 0.01 cents, with a total payment of only about 0.00004 cents. This stands in stark contrast to the average daily blob fees of $16,250 before the upgrade, representing a nearly 100% decrease.

Impact on Ethereum Node

Although the rollup has purchased more blobs, the utilization ratio has actually decreased relative to the newly added total capacity. Currently, about 3.3GB of data space is being purchased daily, accounting for only 40% of the maximum capacity and 61% of the target capacity.

The increase in blob data volume 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, it is expected that nodes may need to store around 60GB of rollup data; if the target utilization rate is reached, storage requirements may increase to 95-100GB.

Rollup Costs and ETH Burn

After the Pectra upgrade, the daily expenditure of rollups on blob-related costs decreased from $20,660 to $11,015, a drop of 51%. However, due to the sharp rise in Ethereum L1 fees (over 650% increase in a week), the cost of executing blobs by 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, a decrease of 71%. It is noteworthy that 99.99% of the ETH burned after the upgrade comes from the execution layer base fee.

Impact on L2

The profit margins of most rollups have improved. The 7-day moving average profit margins of Linea and Base reached 98.86% and 98.54% respectively. Blast showed the most significant improvement in profit margins, increasing from over 50% to more than 80%.

The revenue and net profit of each rollup have at least doubled. Base performed the best, generating $1.22 million under current market conditions, with a net of $1.12 million after deducting on-chain costs.

Conclusion

The upgrade of Pectra to rollup has created a more favorable financial environment while increasing the daily blob usage. However, node operators need to bear more data storage responsibilities. As Ethereum continues to expand its blob data availability, how to balance network scalability with node pressure will become a key issue.