Galaxy: The Current Status of Ethereum Blobs and the Blob Market in the Post-Pectra Era

Galaxy: Current Status of Ethereum Blobs and the Blob Market in the Post-Pectra Era

Author: Zack Pokorny, Galaxy Research Analyst; Compiled by: AIMan@Golden Finance

Introduction

On May 7, 2025, the Ethereum Pectra upgrade was launched on the mainnet. In the implemented Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), EIP-7691 increases the number of target blobs and the maximum number of blobs per block. In last year’s Dencun upgrade, EIP-4844 (formerly Danksharding) introduced blobs to provide a dedicated data publishing space for rollups. Since the launch of Dencun, the Ethereum network has maintained a target number of 3 blobs per block and a maximum number of blobs; Based on a data size of 128kb per blob, this means that the amount of data transferred through the blob is about 5.5GB per day. After the Pectra upgrade, the number of target blobs and the maximum number of blobs per block increased to 6 and 9, respectively, and the blob data capacity increased to about 8.15 GB per day. This change has had an impact on the blob marketplace, rollups, and Ethereum validators, with an increase that reduces the scarcity of the amount of fixed blob space that rollups compete for, and increases the network’s data availability through blobs (DA) capacity. The following article explores the impact of the Pectra upgrade’s changes to Ethereum blob parameters on the blob marketplace, rollups and their users, Ethereum validators, and the ETH supply.

Key Points

• In the five full days since Pectra went live, the number of blobs purchased daily by rollup increased from about 21,200 to 25,600. Despite the increase, the average number of blobs per block is still 33% lower than the new target (6 blobs per block).
• Due to the actual number of Blobs per block being far lower than the updated target fee rate, Blobs have been almost free since mid-April 2025. Since the launch of Pectra, the fees paid through Rollup have been less than one-thousandth of a cent per day, with the total cost of Blob objects being only four-thousandths of a cent. This significantly reduces the amount of ETH consumed for purchasing and publishing Rollup data space on Ethereum through Blobs.
• Nodes must retain rollup blob data for at least 18 days before removing it from their machines. The increase in the number of blobs purchased daily has led to a new high of 44.6GB in the amount of data that consensus layer nodes must maintain between two pruning events.
• The reduction in Blob costs has improved the relative and absolute profit margins of Rollups, with Base being the biggest beneficiary in terms of net income after deducting on-chain costs. Meanwhile, since the launch of Pectra, the transaction costs of some top Rollups have remained unchanged or even slightly increased.
• All data used is sourced from the public dashboard of Galaxy Research regarding the Ethereum blob market and its impact on Rollups.

Blob Market

Since Pectra launched on May 7, 2025, the number of blobs purchased daily on the rollup platform has increased by 20.8% compared to before the upgrade. In the 60 days prior to the Pectra upgrade, the rollup platform purchased an average of 21,200 blobs daily. In the five days following the upgrade, they averaged 25,600 blobs purchased per day. This means that the data capacity purchased daily before the upgrade was 2.7 GB, and now it is 3.3 GB.

Despite the increase in the number of blobs purchased, the average daily blob usage per block has only been two-thirds of the new target blob limit since the launch of Pectra. Therefore, while the average number of blobs per block remained at the target rate before the increase in blobs on Pectra, the demand for rollups has not yet reached the level of consistently hitting the new target rate.

Therefore, since each block only used two-thirds of the blob target, the blob is actually free. This is the first time blobs have been this cheap since mid-April 2025. Since the launch of Pectra, the median cost of each blob object has been just 0.0000000035 dollars (nine zeros). This has resulted in rollups paying no more than 0.0000092 dollars (five zeros) per day since the activation of Pectra; in the full five days after Pectra was activated, only a total of 0.0000395 dollars was paid for blob object fees. You read that right, since the launch of Pectra, rollups have been paying less than one-thousandth of a cent per day, while the total cost of blob objects is four-thousandths of a cent. Please note that this figure does not include the type 3 transaction costs required to execute the blob on-chain, only the cost of the blob object itself.

This means that the blob object fees paid to Ethereum by rollups have decreased by nearly 100%—in the 60 days prior to Pectra rollups, the average daily blob fees paid were $16,250, totaling $1.095 million.

Data Capacity Usage and Its Impact on Ethereum Nodes

In the post-Pectra era, a larger portion of the daily total data capacity provided by Blob on Ethereum remains unsold. Therefore, although Rollup is purchasing more Blob from the network to gain more data space, the share of daily Blob total data capacity purchased has been relatively small since the launch of Pectra. Once the Rollup demand reaches the updated target rate, the Blob market will operate more efficiently from a capacity perspective, as the new target rate is only 33% lower than the maximum, compared to 50% under the old parameters.

The updated blob capacity is 9 blobs per block, with an estimated daily Ethereum block count of around 7,100 blocks. Ethereum can sell a maximum of approximately 8.17GB of blob space daily, with 5.45GB available based on the target blob count per block. This value will fluctuate with the actual daily block count. However, only 3.3GB of data space has been sold so far—just 40% of the maximum available data capacity for the day, and only 61% of the target count. In contrast, one month before the implementation of the Pectra program, when the target blob count (3 blobs per block) was reached, the average daily sales were 50% of the total capacity and 99% of the target count.

Each Blob object can hold up to 128 kilobytes (KB). Rollup data does not need to occupy the entire 128KB of each Blob (for example, each Blob can use 100KB if necessary), however, the capacity of a single Blob cannot exceed the limit of 128KB. The difference between the purchased Blob capacity (green line in the chart) and the used Blob capacity (red line in the chart) highlights how many Blob objects’ 128KB limit are filled with rollup data each day. After upgrading to Pectra, the average occupancy rate of Blobs is 86%, compared to 82% during the 60 days before the upgrade.

The increase in the daily volume of purchased Blob data has led to consensus layer nodes needing to carry more Rollup data on their machines. Nodes must retain Rollup Blob data for at least 18 days before they can remove it from their machines (prune). Prior to Pectra, this meant nodes had to continuously carry between 40GB to 44GB of data. In the days following Pectra, as Rollup purchases more Blobs, this number has been steadily rising, and with the saturation of new Blob parameters, this number may continue to increase. As of May 12, 2025, the unpruned Rollup data held by consensus layer nodes is estimated to have reached a historical high of 44.6GB. If the demand for Blobs remains at the current level, consensus layer nodes will have to carry about 60GB of Rollup data; at the target rate, they will have to carry about 95GB to 100GB of data.

Rollup Costs and ETH Burning

Since the launch of Pectra, Rollups have paid an average of $11,015 in Blob-related fees per day, including costs for Blob objects and Type-3 execution layer transactions. In contrast, during the 60 days prior to the update, the average daily payment was $20,660, which means the total daily cost of purchasing and executing Blobs has decreased by 51%.

The significant increase in Ethereum Layer 1 fees has resulted in high costs paid by Rollups on blob events. Within days of Pectra’s activation, Ethereum Layer 1 base fees increased by more than 650% week-on-week. Without this spike, Rollups would have had less to do to execute blobs, and Rollup Blob activity would have consumed less ETH.

Since the activation of Pectra, the amount of ETH consumed to publish rollup data via blobs (including ETH used to buy blobs and executed on Ethereum Layer 1 via Type 3 transactions) has dropped significantly. In the 60 days prior to the upgrade, an average of 11.22 ETH was consumed per day, with the execution layer fee accounting for only 37.1% of the total daily consumption. Since the activation of Pectra, only 3.26 ETH has been consumed per day (a decrease of 71%), and 99.99% of the total consumption comes from the base fee for Type 3 execution layer transactions.

Impact on L2

After the launch of Pectra, both the relative and absolute profit margins of Rollup, after deducting on-chain costs, have significantly improved. Among the observed Rollups, Linea and Base have the highest profit margin percentages after deducting on-chain costs, calculated using a seven-day moving average, at 98.86% and 98.54% respectively. Blast has seen the most significant increase in profit margin percentage after deducting on-chain costs, rising from a high of 50% to a low of 60% in the days leading up to the launch of Pectra, and now exceeding 80%.

After Pectra went live, on-chain costs increased, but the net benefits brought by Rollup declined. This is mainly due to the combined effect of reduced data costs (as mentioned above) and increased activity and transaction costs. The observed revenue of each Rollup platform and the net profit after deducting on-chain costs have both roughly doubled, but in absolute terms, Base is the biggest beneficiary in recent cases. Base’s revenue is $1.22 million, and after deducting on-chain costs, the net profit is $1.12 million.

Conclusion

Rollup has not fully leveraged the data availability improvements brought by the Pectra upgrade on Ethereum. As a result, it lowers the costs owed to Ethereum for DA activities conducted via Blob on a daily basis. This upgrade, at least for now, makes Rollup financially more favorable for its operations while increasing the daily usage of Blobs. The changes to the Ethereum Blob parameters introduced by Pectra also raise critical points regarding the node requirements for storing Blob data. As Ethereum begins to scale its Blob DA, this may impact node operators who must meet higher Blob data holding requirements.