Vitalik Buterin Wants to Raise Blob Count to Scale Ethereum

Ethereum’s scalability push is gaining momentum with a Vitalik Buterin sponsored plan to increase Blob count.

Key Notes

Ethereum developers are considering avenues to enhance the network's scalability.Vitalik Buterin has proposed increasing the blob count.Further upgrades to boost network growth, like Pectra, are under development.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is concerned about the network’s capacity limitation, which has led him to suggest an increase in “blob count”. He strongly believes this step will boost the scalability of the Ethereum ETH $2 669 24h volatility: 2.0% Market cap: $321.28 B Vol. 24h: $17.36 B blockchain. Notably, this concept of blob count came with the major Dencun upgrade, which was activated at the beginning of this year.

Concept of Blob Space and Blob Count

Blob space, introduced by EIP-4844 (also known as proto-danksharding), is a specialized data storage area built to improve the scalability of the network. Its design allows it to store large amounts of data temporarily. The primary beneficiaries of this concept are Layer-2 rollups.

Following recent developers’ calls, Buterin noted that the blob space is currently 75%, thereby emphasizing the need for immediate action. He mentioned that some changes need to be made via Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-7623 to increase the blob count. This led the Canadian computer programmer to say that he thinks “the ecosystem is sleeping on the fact that it’s uncomfortably close to a ceiling”.

While blob space is the area, blob count is the total number that can be included in each Ethereum block. Ordinarily, the target for a block is at least three and at most six. Buterin is advocating that the minimum be increased to four blobs and the maximum to eight per block. He is positive that this will allow for more data storage.

More data stored in pee blocks is likely to improve the capacity for L2 networks to post their data on Ethereum. In the long run, this addresses congestion on the network, which Buterin pointed out as a core challenge that has deterred many L2s from moving to blobs.

“We cannot afford to let the momentum slip on moving more layer 2s over to using blobs,” the Ethereum co-founder said, adding that “EIP-7623 is crucial for this because it ensures that the worst-case size of a block massively decreases.”

EIP-7623 proposes to increase the call data cost for transactions, primarily using Ethereum for Data Availability (DA). It would reduce the maximum block size from 2.7 megabytes to approximately 1MB. This will allow for an increase in the block gas limit or the number of blobs.

Ethereum Co-founder’s Proposal Gains Support

Vitalik Buterin acknowledged the role that L2s play in the scalability of the Ethereum network but emphasized the need for them to be decentralized.

Jesse Pollak, the main creator of Coinbase L2 Base, supported his proposal to increase blob count. Pollak believes it “reduces worst-case block size and adds needed capacity for fast-growing L2s” and “the growth is exponential”.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum ecosystem is preparing for the Prague and Electra upgrade, collectively called Pectra. The upgrade includes EIPs that will improve scalability, introduce account abstraction, and increase validator staking limits. However, there is still a proposal to split Pectra into PectraA and PectraB to hasten its deployment.

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