Starknet’s v0.13.3 Cuts Blob Gas Costs by 5x

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As a seasoned crypto investor with a knack for deciphering the intricacies of blockchain technology, I find myself rather impressed by Starknet’s latest update (version 0.13.3). The reduction of blob gas prices by 5x is nothing short of revolutionary, especially considering the growing demand for Ethereum blobs.

Starknet rolled out update 0.13.3, aiming to meet the increasing need for Ethereum data blobs by slashing gas prices associated with them by a factor of five.

Based on the announcement, the update has been activated on the test network and is expected to go live on Ethereum’s main network in the near future.

In simpler terms, ‘Blobs’ or ‘Binary Large Objects’ serve as storage for data during transactions on secondary networks known as Layer 2 rollups. The primary Ethereum network (Layer 1) focuses on main operations, while more efficient transaction handling is delegated to Layer 2 networks, such as Starknet.

Each transaction is stored as a “blob” in our system. When these blobs are uploaded to Ethereum’s main network (Layer 1), they occupy space on the blockchain. As more transactions occur, more blobs are needed, which can drive up costs for users if the cost of storing and processing these blobs increases.

To tackle this issue, Starknet presents two fundamental strategies: ‘compressing state differences’ and ‘combining transactions’.

Combining several transactions into fewer blocks is what we call Transaction consolidation. This process helps reduce the number of blocks and thus, the costs users pay, as they’re only charged for the fresh data their transaction contributes to the blocks. Previously, every transaction paid the entire cost associated with each block’s data, regardless of whether that information was shared among other transactions.

Currently, Starknet assesses the data input of each transaction and adjusts it with a discount to account for the common data within a block. This way, users are charged solely for their proportionate share of the data, thereby decreasing expenses.

In simpler terms, the second modification, ‘state-differential compression’, shrinks the data prior to its transmission to Ethereum’s main layer (Layer 1). This, along with other changes, makes it so that blob gas is now 5 times less expensive. This means users will only pay for the data they actually use, thereby significantly reducing costs.

Over the past month, there was a 43% rise in the typical count of blobs found within an Ethereum block, with approximately 3 blobs now appearing per block, according to data from Dune Analytics.

The increase in blob charges is advantageous for Ethereum’s economic structure since it promotes the destruction of Ether tokens. This is analogous to how Ethereum burns a share of its standard transaction costs, and blob fees also get destroyed, which helps decrease the number of Ether tokens available on the market. To illustrate, data from Ultra Sound Money indicates that over 21 Ether tokens were burned in just one week as a result of blob fees.

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, has praised Starknet’s efforts in enhancing Layer 2 scaling. He stated that there are two key aspects to L2 scaling: firstly, Ethereum expanding its data storage capacity (blob capacity), and secondly, rollups becoming more efficient with the data they handle. It’s encouraging to see Starknet taking up this challenge.

Moving forward, Starknet intends to enhance the way blobs are utilized. In upcoming releases like Starknet version 0.13.4, they aim to implement ‘stateful compression’, a feature that will refine the management of storage keys and contract addresses for even better optimization.

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2024-11-18 19:16