Pectra Upgrade Ethereum Blob Market Analysis: Layer 2 costs significantly drop, Node storage pressure increases

On May 7, 2025, Ethereum completed the Pectra upgrade. An important aspect of this upgrade is the increase in the target and maximum number of blobs per block. Blobs were introduced through last year's 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, increasing the daily blob data capacity to approximately 8.15GB. This change has impacted the blob market, rollups, and Ethereum validators.

Main Findings

1. Within five complete trading days after the launch of Pectra, the number of blobs purchased daily through rollup increased from approximately 21,200 to 25,600. Nevertheless, the average number of blobs per block is still 33% lower than the new target value.

2. Due to the actual usage being far below the new target value, blobs have nearly become free. The fees paid by the rollup for blobs are less than one-thousandth of a cent per day, with a total payment of only four-thousandths of a cent since the upgrade. This has significantly reduced the amount of ETH that the rollup burns for data space usage.

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

4. The drop in blob costs has improved the profit margins of rollups, with one trading platform seeing the largest net income increase after deducting on-chain costs. However, the transaction costs of some mainstream rollups remain unchanged or have even slightly increased.

Blob Market Analysis

After Pectra went live, the daily purchase of blobs by rollup increased by 20.8% compared to before the upgrade. The average daily purchase was 21,200 blobs in the 60 days prior to the upgrade, and in the five full trading days after the upgrade, the average daily purchase was 25,600 blobs. The corresponding daily data capacity increased from 2.7GB to 3.3GB.

Despite the increase in purchase volume, only an average of two-thirds of the new target value was used. As a result, blobs have once again become almost free. Since the upgrade, the median price for each blob has only been $0.00000000035. This means that the rollup pays a maximum of $0.0000092 per day, with a total blob cost of only $0.0000395. In comparison, in the 60 days before the upgrade, the rollup paid an average of $16,250 per day in blob fees, totaling approximately $1,095,000. The fees have dropped by nearly 100%.

Impact on Ethereum Nodes

After the implementation of Pectra, a larger proportion of the total data capacity provided by blobs on Ethereum is not being purchased daily. Currently, only 3.3GB of data space has been purchased, which accounts for 40% of the daily maximum capacity and 61% of the target capacity. In contrast, in the month before the upgrade, an average of 50% of the total capacity and 99% of the target capacity was purchased daily.

The daily increase in the amount of blob data purchased means that consensus layer nodes must store more rollup data. As of May 12, the amount of data that nodes need to retain has reached a historic high of 44.6GB. If the current demand continues, nodes are expected to need to store approximately 60GB of rollup data; if the target rate is reached, they may need to store 95GB to 100GB.

Impact on Rollup

Since the launch of Pectra, rollups have spent an average of $11,015 per day on blob-related costs, a 51% drop from $20,660 in the 60 days prior to the upgrade. However, the sharp rise in Ethereum L1 transaction fees (over 650% increase within a week) has kept the costs for rollups in blob activities at a certain level.

The amount of ETH burned through blob data publishing activities has significantly decreased. The average daily burn was 11.22 ETH before the upgrade, dropping to 3.26 ETH after the upgrade (a decrease of 71%), with 99.99% coming from the execution layer base fee.

After deducting on-chain costs, the profit margins of most rollups have improved. A certain DEX and a certain trading platform have the strongest profit margins, with seven-day moving averages of 98.86% and 98.54%, respectively. The profit margin of a certain platform has improved the most, rising from over 50% to over 80%.

After the on-chain costs, the net income obtained by the rollups has increased after Pectra. The revenue and net profit of each rollup have at least doubled, with one trading platform achieving the highest net profit of 1.12 million dollars.

Conclusion

The upgrade of Pectra to rollup provides a more favorable financial environment while increasing the daily usage of blobs. However, this also increases the data storage pressure on Node operators. As Ethereum expands its blob data availability, balancing network scalability with Node operating costs will become a key issue.