Ethereum increases data capacity with latest scaling

Ethereum, the second largest blockchain network in the world, has increased the amount of data it can process at once.

While it is a small and expected change, it will impact how the network handles increasing application usage and provides a clearer picture of how Ethereum plans to scale as that usage continues to grow.

It comes as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed earlier this week that the network’s updates have transformed it into a “fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network,” which could achieve security, decentralization and scalability simultaneously.

The new focus points to a mechanism called blobswhich ensures that transaction data from Layer 2 rollups such as Base, Optimism, Arbitrum and Mantle is reliably published on Ethereum.

Rollups are a way to conduct transactions outside of Ethereum’s main network while still relying on it for security. They do the same in terms of privacy zero knowledge rollups such as zkSync Era, StarkNet and Scroll, among others.

Activated Tuesday evening, the second planned BLOB parameter fork only increased the network’s blob target from 10 to 14 and the blob limit from 15 to 21.

Blobs work by keeping summary data accessible to all network participants for a limited period of time, so that transactions can be audited and status changes confirmed without relying on trusted intermediaries.

Data availability layers such as Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail provide alternative ways to publish summary data. However, sometimes it’s a trade-off between tighter Ethereum integration and higher throughput or lower costs.

Still has, since the first one Fusaka BPO fork, demand for blobs has risen steadily without approaching capacity limits, indicating significant headroom in Ethereum’s data layer.

Data visualization from GrowThePie on whether the blob capacity is available keeping up with demand since then, average blob usage has been shown to be hovering well below target levels even as total blob costs have gradually increased, indicating that aggregation activity is increasing but not yet limited by supply.

Such dynamics support Ethereum’s strategy to incrementally scale data availability before congestion occurs.

Scale by design

Observers speak to Declutter The fork shows that Ethereum can now scale by adjusting capacity as needed.

“The BPO2 fork underlines that Ethereum’s scalability is now parametric, not procedural. The blob space is far from saturated and the network can expand throughput by simply tuning capacity,” said Andrew Gross, who works in technical communications at Blockscout, an open-source block explorer for chains based on the Ethereum virtual machinetold Declutter.

The result, Gross notes, is “smoother overall cost dynamics, more data space, and a system that scales dynamically.”

Ethereum’s modular architecture “turns data availability into a manageable resource” rather than becoming a limitation, Gross said. “In effect, Ethereum has evolved into an elastic base layer, capable of growing with demand without sacrificing decentralization or coordination stability.”

The latest small fork could “have an impact in cases where blobs are the bottleneck, for example providing some additional leeway for rollups that post consistently near the target,” Christine Erispe, a developer advocate at Ethereum Philippines, told me. Declutter.

This means there would be “more L2 batches per unit time, or the same batches at a lower marginal blob price,” she said, adding that in terms of price stability “raising the target reduces the chance of ‘living at the edge’ (near max), and that’s where rollups see the worst blob fee spikes and the most chaotic batch timing.”

The update also indicates that Ethereum can “manage short-term pressures with continued DA tuning, but it is a step in a larger plan,” Erispe said. “These parameter changes give Ethereum operational flexibility,” and the like structural changes could be ‘the long game’.