Layer-2 Networks Begin to Reap Benefits from Dencun

After the Dencun upgrade and the implementation of EIP-4844, transaction gas fees on Ethereum’s layer-2 networks have significantly decreased. This event was activated on the evening of March 13 and marks the first step in focusing on rollups and allowing the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency network to operate as a suitable database for layer-2 blockchains (L2).

Before the event took place, there were many analyses predicting that this Ethereum upgrade would reduce transaction fees (gas fees) on layer-2 networks to nearly zero. Dencun provides the necessary scale to support millions of users on L2, bringing more newcomers into the Ethereum ecosystem.

Indeed, as predicted, the fees recorded on L2 have decreased significantly after the event, even lower by up to 10 times compared to before Dencun.

According to analysis on Dune Analytics, the average transaction fee for Optimism is $0.05 USD; Base has an average transaction fee of $0.064 USD, while zkSync Era, which previously favored reducing gas fees for users, now has an average transaction fee of only $0.161 USD. These figures before Dencun often fluctuated around $0.5 to $1 USD when the Ethereum network experienced surges in activity and overload in recent times.

Related: Successful Deployment of Dencun Upgrade

Reduced gas fees post-Dencun through user experiences

Looking at the average fee level, we may not yet see clearly how many times the gas fees have been reduced before and after Dencun. Some experiences below will illustrate the impact post-Dencun:

The @0xCygaar account minted 999 ERC20 tokens on a test contract deployed on zkSync last year. In reality, the cost has decreased by about 10 times.

Cost before using blobs: $0.81 USD. Cost after using blobs: $0.08 USD.

Did a quick benchmark test to see EIP-4844 savings in action.

I minted 999 ERC20 tokens on a test contract I deployed on @zksync last year.

Cost pre-blobs: $0.81
Cost post-blobs: $0.08

Around a 10x reduction in fees 🔥 pic.twitter.com/w9Wg6U30gw

— cygaar (@0xCygaar) March 13, 2024

On the Optimism side, gas fees have been minimized after the BedRock upgrade, and now, after integrating blobs, gas fees continue to be reduced even further.

How much do you think this @Optimism transaction will cost post-blobbification? Closest guess gets a lil hand-drawn NFT https://t.co/LgXN47q06n

— smartcontracts.eth (✨🔴_🔴✨) (@kelvinfichter) March 13, 2024

Base also quickly integrated blobs into its blockchain, reducing gas fees for a transaction by more than 600 times.

after 2 years of hard work, blobs are now live on @base

before: $0.31
after: $0.00 (but actually $0.0005)

wallets need to update to handle these cost reductions! pic.twitter.com/solIX9D4HM

— Jesse Pollak (jesse.xyz) 🛡️ (@jessepollak) March 14, 2024

Other layer-2s built on Optimism’s OP Stack platform, such as Zora and Ancient8 Chain, also reported gas fees lower by several times compared to before March 13.

The gas cost of a Zora mint:

Before: $0.61
After: $0.0009

New era unlocked. pic.twitter.com/OMNE7mxAUr

— jacob (@js_horne) March 14, 2024

Announcements from Layer-2

In addition, the most notable may be Starknet, after account X officially announced successful network synchronization with the Dencun upgrade and gas fees have decreased to around $0.01-0.04 USD. Previously, a single gas transaction on Starknet cost around $2 USD, sometimes rising to $7 USD during peak times.

gm blobs.

happy swapping pic.twitter.com/1vZH6K0xhJ

— Starknet 🦇🔊 (@Starknet) March 13, 2024

Meanwhile, Arbitrum has not yet completed the Dencun update, so transaction fees have not changed. The project announced that the Dencun upgrade will be implemented on the evening of March 14.

Once the upgrade starts executing, we expect it will take an hour or two for blob transactions to begin posting and for new EIP-4844 pricing changes to begin to be seen.

ArbOS Atlas also introduces additional Arbitrum fee reductions for Arbitrum One. We expect this to be…

— Arbitrum (💙,🧡) (@arbitrum) March 13, 2024

However, the reduction in gas fees on layer-2 networks to low levels at the current time may be because Dencun has only been launched for less than 24 hours and there are still not many projects using blobs, so the situation may change when other platforms start using Ethereum’s EIP-4844 in the future.