180 Days After EIP-4844: Will Blob Sharing Solve Dilemma for Small Rollups?

Abstract

Ethereum has adopted a rollup-centric roadmap to scale its network while preserving both security and decentralization. Rollups are layer 2 scaling solutions that process transactions off-chain while posting summarized data on-chain to maintain security and reduce costs. Posting data on-chain remains expensive, which led to the introduction of blobs via EIP-4844 that offer a cost-effective solution for data availability (DA). Although blobs significantly reduce DA costs compared to traditional calldata, many cost-sensitive small rollups struggle to fully utilize the fixed blob capacity. Blob sharing, which allows multiple rollups to collaboratively utilize a single blob, has been proposed as a solution to these challenges. In this paper, we empirically analyze nearly six months of data to assess the effectiveness of blob sharing. Our simulation results demonstrate that blob sharing can lower overall costs by approximately $\mathbf{8 0 \%}$ to 99%. These findings imply that the benefits of blob sharing are even greater than initially expected, providing strong incentives for both small and big rollups to actively collaborate in its adoption.