Ethereum developers have achieved a technological milestone. “dream” last week Denkun Upgrade Transactions on the layer 2 network were to change the Ethereum ecosystem forever. Exponentially cheaper This makes it more accessible.
How is the situation now, a week later?
Overall, Dencun delivered exactly as promised. Across Layer 2 networks that have already incorporated software updates, gas rates have fallen to unprecedentedly low levels, by more than 90% in most cases.
At the time of writing, median transaction fees for layer 2 networks Arbitrum, Starknet, Optimism, and Optimism-based chains Base and Zora have all fallen below 1 cent. sand dune and Ethereum analytics platform Growing Pie. This represents a 91% to 95% cost reduction for each network.
Each day, these costs continue to decrease from 1 cent to less than 1 cent.
Enabling Dencun to virtually eliminate gas fees is a new data storage solution called proto-danksharding, based on Blobs. Blobs allow layer 2 data to be temporarily stored on-chain for about a month rather than stored permanently. This was previously the only option available.
Dencun’s drastic reduction in on-chain fees not only affected ETH transfers and token swaps, but also larger NFT-related transactions.
On Zora — Layer 2 network built by people of the same name NFT mining platform—The most common transactions are (expected) NFT transfer. Nonetheless, the average transaction cost on the network is currently 9/10th of a penny.
Compare these small numbers to the Ethereum mainnet, where the current cost of selling an NFT is $72 on average. Etherscan. Just a few weeks ago, the cost was due to a network outage. Closer to $400 Per NFT transfer.
However, not all Layer 2 networks have been properly implemented yet. Some will take a little longer to integrate Dencun-related updates across their settlement agreements. Polygon, for example, has not yet seen a full reduction in gas rates. The average transaction cost on the network is currently around $0.72. David Silverman, former Vice President of Products at Polygon Labs said decryption He expects all Layer 2, including Polygon, to be fully integrated with Dencun within a month or two.
Dencun’s impact is already significant, but some critics outside the Ethereum ecosystem, and even developers within it, have pointed out that transaction costs are likely to increase as network traffic increases.
Nonetheless, most Layer 2s where gas rates have been reduced have already seen a sharp increase in network activity. daily trading volume twice For Optimism, Base, Arbitrum and Zora for a week after upgrade; On Starknet, it almost tripled. Gas prices across all networks currently average less than 1 cent.
Many L2 developers believe this continued decline is fundamental change Describes how users participate in Ethereum. It moves the majority of everyday transactions from the costly mainnet to L2.
However, recent advances in Layer 2 do not seem to have harmed L1. At least not yet. Traffic on the Ethereum mainnet is said to remain the same as last year’s figures. Etherscan; In fact, it went up slightly compared to last week.
Editor: Andrew Hayward
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