Headline: Ethereum quietly boosts blob capacity, giving rollups more headroom as usage grows Ethereum has quietly increased the amount of data it can publish in each block — a small, routine change with outsized implications for how the chain handles growing Layer 2 activity. What changed On Tuesday evening, Ethereum activated the second scheduled "Blob Parameter Only" (BPO2) fork. The update raised the blob target from 10 to 14 and the blob limit from 15 to 21. In short: more blob space is now available per block. Why blobs matter Blobs are the mechanism that lets Layer 2 rollups publish transaction data to Ethereum in a way that’s accessible to the whole network for a limited period. That availability enables fraud proofs and state verification without trusting intermediaries. Blobs are used by optimistic and other rollups such as Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Mantle, and play the same role for zero-knowledge rollups like zkSync Era, StarkNet, and Scroll. The change is part of Ethereum’s incremental approach to scaling data availability — tuning capacity as demand grows rather than making dramatic architectural changes all at once. How demand looks today Data from GrowThePie shows average blob usage has stayed well below the network’s target since the first Fusaka BPO fork, even as total blob fees have crept higher. That pattern suggests rollup activity is increasing but not yet constrained by blob supply, giving Ethereum room to scale without immediate congestion. Alternative data availability options such as Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail exist, but they typically involve trade-offs between tight Ethereum integration and higher throughput or lower costs. What industry voices say Observers told Decrypt the fork demonstrates Ethereum can scale by adjusting parameters rather than hard protocol overhauls. “The BPO2 fork underscores that Ethereum’s scalability is now parametric, not procedural. Blob space remains far from saturation, and the network can expand throughput simply by tuning capacity,” said Andrew Gross of Blockscout. He added this leads to “smoother rollup fee dynamics, greater data headroom, and a system that scales dynamically,” calling Ethereum “an elastic base layer” that can grow with demand without sacrificing decentralization. Christine Erispe, a developer advocate at Ethereum Philippines, said the update could matter most where blobs are a bottleneck: “It gives some extra headroom for rollups that consistently post near the target — more L2 batches per unit time, or the same batches at lower marginal blob price.” Raising the target also reduces the chance of hitting maximum capacity, which is when rollups see the worst fee spikes and chaotic batch timing, she noted. Erispe framed the change as “operational agility” that fits into a larger, long-term scaling plan. Bigger picture The tweak is modest but strategic: it reinforces Ethereum’s strategy of incremental data-availability tuning and signals that capacity can be adjusted before congestion forces painful trade-offs. As rollup activity grows, these parametric changes give Ethereum a practical lever to manage near-term scaling pressures while the ecosystem continues to develop complementary data-availability layers and long-term solutions. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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