A groundbreaking method called “BlobScriptions” is revolutionizing the way data is stored on the Ethereum blockchain. Introduced on March 27 by the Ethscriptions protocol, BlobScriptions allow users to directly inscribe data, such as images and text, onto “blobs,” which were introduced as part of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade on March 13.
Shortly after the introduction of BlobScriptions, the gas fees for blobs skyrocketed to 585 gwei, equivalent to approximately $18. This was a significant increase from the average gas price of one wei, which was only a fraction of $0.01 prior to BlobScriptions.
However, the Blob fees have since dropped significantly from their peak. At present, the fees stand at 35.8 gwei, equivalent to $1.20, according to Coinbrain conversion data.
Since the launch of BlobScriptions, users have made over 4,500 inscriptions on blobs, as reported by Dune Analytics.
In a post on March 27, Ethscriptions founder Tom Lehman, known as Middlemarch, acknowledged the rising cost of “blobspace” and encouraged users to mint BlobScriptions using the official blobscription protocol.
Similar to the early days of Bitcoin Ordinals, Ethereum users are now minting small pieces of text and seemingly random assortments of images on blobs. Recent activity on blobscription.io reveals hundreds of new images added in just a few hours.
It is important to note that blob data is only stored on Ethereum nodes for approximately 18 days. After this period, BlobScriptions data will be removed from the network. However, Lehman assured users that the Ethscriptions indexer would store the data indefinitely.
Blobs were introduced through EIP-4844 as a core feature of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade. This feature aimed to reduce transaction costs on layer-2 networks significantly. Following the upgrade, transaction fees on Ethereum L2s dropped dramatically, with fees on Arbitrum falling from $1.25 to below $0.02 and Polygon fees experiencing a similar decrease.
To celebrate the reduced fees brought by blobs, one Ethereum developer managed to mint the entire script of the Bee Movie on an Ethereum blob within 15 minutes of the upgrade going live, all for less than $13 in ETH gas fees.