$ETH After one month of implementing Pectra – the largest upgrade since "The Merge" (2022) – Ethereum has recorded significant changes in scalability, transaction costs, and pressure on validators.

1. Breakthrough From "Blob Scaling" (EIP-7691)

🔹 What is a blob?

  • This is a temporary data structure that helps store large information on the consensus layer, reducing the load on the main layer.

  • Benefits:

    • Reduces transaction fees on L2 (Base, Arbitrum, Optimism) to just a few cents.

    • Increases processing throughput (TPS) for rollups.

📊 Real-world efficiency:

  • Before Pectra: blob cost ~$16,000/day.

  • After Pectra: Reduced by 99.99%, now only 0.004 cents/day (according to Galaxy Research).

  • Blob usage increased by 33%, reaching ~28,000 blobs/day (Coin Metrics).

2. L2 Benefits, But Validators Face Pressure

✅ Rollups (Base, Arbitrum, Optimism):

  • Cheaper transactions, increased profit margin.

  • Example: Base reduces fees to below 0.01 cents/transaction.

⚠ Challenges for validators:

  • Processing more data → Increased hardware costs.

  • Small validators are forced to merge into large pools to avoid penalties (slashing).

  • Centralization risk: But according to Blockscout, this could decentralize in the long run.

3. ETH Price Rises Strongly After Pectra

📈 Price volatility:

  • Early May: ~$1,800.

  • May peak: ~$2,800.

  • Currently (7/6): $2,510 (+27% in 30 days).

🔍 Reason:

  • Improving scalability attracts capital into Ethereum and L2s.

  • DeFi and NFT projects on Ethereum benefit from low fees.

4. Remaining Issues

🔸 Blobs not fully utilized:

  • Despite capacity increase, new rollups are only using ~50% (according to Galaxy).

  • Expected to increase as L2s optimize.

🔸 Validator centralization risk:

  • Need to monitor whether large staking pools (like Lido, Coinbase) are gaining too much power.

Future Prospects

  • Ethereum continues to venture into modular blockchain:

    • Execution layer (EVM) + Consensus layer (PoS) + Data layer (blob) operate independently.

  • Competing with Solana, Avalanche:

    • ETH aims for scalability, while Solana focuses on transaction speed.

Observation: Pectra has initially succeeded in reducing fees, but the issue of decentralization and balancing benefits between L2 and validators still needs time to resolve.

(Source: Decrypt, Galaxy Research, Coin Metrics)