Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum block space for binary data is 75% full

What’s new? Ethereum blockchain co-founder Vitalik Buterin has warned that the space in blocks for storing blob count is close to the limit, but the ecosystem community ignores this fact. During the Ethereum developers’ conference, he said that the blob count is about 75% full, and suggested increasing the maximum limit by implementing an Enhanced Improvement Proposal (EIP) number 7623.

Cointelegraph’s material

What else is known? Compressed large binary data sets, or blobs, were introduced as part of the March Dencun upgrade, which increased the scalability of the blockchain and reduced fees on Layer 2 (L2) networks based on it by up to 90%.

These blobs, and the space to store them (blob space), are part of EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding. Blop space is intended for temporary storage of large amounts of data, primarily for use by L2 networks. In turn, blob count refers to the number of blobs that can be included in each individual Ethereum block.

According to Buterin, increasing the blob count will help further scale the blockchain and increase the capacity of L2 networks.

Currently, the average is three blobs per block, with a maximum of six. Buterin proposes to increase the target to four blobs with a limit of eight.

Buterin’s proposed EIP-7623 would reduce the maximum block size from 2,7MB to 1MB and increase the number of blobs.

Buterin previously explained that blobspace transactions are similar to regular transactions, except that they carry an additional piece of data in the form of blobs. “Blobs are extremely large (~125 kB), and can be much cheaper than similar amounts of calldata,” the developer explained during the Dencun implementation.

In the new announcement, Buterin expressed concern that some L2 networks are hesitant to use blobs due to market congestion, and EIP-7623 will help address this issue.

In 2025, Ethereum developers will update Pectra, which will improve the scalability of the network, introduce account abstraction functionality to allow wallets to be used as smart contracts, and increase the ETH limit in staking for each individual validator.

The developers decided to split Pectra into two phases due to the high complexity of the upgrade.