Ethereum blob usage and rollup economics in October 2026

Rollup Demand and Capacity

Rollups buy 3.3GB of data capacity daily, which uses 40% of the maximum capacity available each day. The Pectra upgrade increased the target number of blobs per block from 3 to 6 and the maximum from 6 to 9, which expanded daily blob data capacity to 8.17GB per day. This change means rollups face less scarcity for the fixed amount of blobspace. Since Pectra, rollups purchase 25,600 blobs daily, a 20.8% increase from the 21,200 blobs they purchased daily before the upgrade. Base consumes approximately one third of the available capacity, buying between 50,000 and 60,000 blobs per week. Taiko consumes 20,000 to 25,000 blobs weekly, while World Chain and Arbitrum consume between 10,000 and 20,000 blobs each. Because the actual number of blobs per block stays 33% below the new target of 6, blobs stay virtually free. The capacity of the network through blobs grew from 5.5GB daily to 8.15GB daily after the implementation of EIP-7691. Each blob object holds up to 128 kilobytes of data. The median cost per blob object since Pectra went live sits at $0.00000000035. Rollups pay no more than $0.0000092 daily since the activation. Total blob object fees since Pectra went live amount to just $0.0000395.

Node Storage and PeerDAS

Consensus layer nodes must hold rollup blob data for at least 18 days before they can prune it. Before Pectra, nodes carried between 40GB and 44GB of data. As of May 2025, nodes held an estimated 44.6GB of unpruned rollup data. If the current level of demand for blobs sustains, nodes will carry around 60GB of rollup data. At the target rate of 6 blobs per block, nodes must carry between 95GB and 100GB of data. The Fusaka upgrade, which launched on December 3, 2025, introduced PeerDAS to allow validators to sample blob data instead of downloading every blob in full. This change helps validators manage the increasing data load. You know that rollups rely on blobs to keep costs low. The expansion from 3 to 6 blobs per block relies on the ability of validators to verify data through small samples. The implementation of EIP-7685 also reduces latency between layers.

Rollup Margins and L2 Competition

The reduction in blob costs improved the profit margins for rollups after they pay onchain costs. Linea and Base hold the strongest percent margins after onchain costs at 98.86% and 98.54% respectively. Since Pectra, rollups pay a daily average of $11,015 in blob-related costs, which includes both blob object and type-3 execution layer transaction costs. This represents a 51% decline from the $20,660 daily average paid in the 60 days before the upgrade. Base earns the most net income in absolute terms. Blast expanded its percent margins from the high 50% range to over 80% after Pectra. Arbitrum One has $15.2 billion in TVL, while Base has $10.9 billion. Before the upgrade, rollups paid a daily average of $16,250 in blob fees, totaling $1.095 million. This total reflects a near 100% decline in blob object fees paid to Ethereum by rollups. Since Pectra, 99.99% of the total burned ETH comes from base fees of type-3 execution layer transactions. Does the high volume of blob usage by a few dominant rollups threaten the long-term stability of the Ethereum fee market?

ETH Burn and Deflation Thresholds

Ethereum burns ETH through execution and blob transaction fees. In the 60 days before the upgrade, rollups burned 11.22 ETH daily. Since Pectra, the daily burn from rollup data posting has fallen to 3.26 ETH. This 71% decline occurred even as the Ethereum layer 1 base fee increased more than 650% week-over-week. For the 2026 period from January 1 to October 9, the network destroyed 16,524.553 ETH through fees against 796,623.377 ETH of gross issuance. This results in a fee-burn offset of 2.074%. To reach a deflationary state with 1% annual issuance and 120,330,000 ETH supply, the base fee must reach 30.62 Gwei. If the annual issuance reaches 0.5%, the base fee needs to be 15.31 Gwei. If the annual issuance reaches 2%, the base fee must reach 61.23 Gwei. Max Resnick proposed increasing the minimum base fee from 1 wei to 160,217,286 wei to speed up price discovery. This proposal aims to prevent the 32-minute delay seen when the network struggles to reach appropriate fee levels during congestion. Under a hypothetical 200 million gas limit, the base fee needed to offset issuance reaches only 4.16 Gwei.