2025-06-13 –, Side Stage - Cinema 6
EIP-4844 introduced cheaper, although temporary storage on Ethereum, allowing rollups to publish data cost-efficiently. With new and old rollups alike opting for such storage, blob count limits are set to increase with future network upgrades in the hope they meet demand. Another emerging approach to supplement blobspace consists of efforts for more efficient utilization, in essence by preventing (in aggregate) wasting valuable bytes to zero padding. In this talk, we explore proposed mechanisms, highlighting their suitability for different types of rollup architectures, as well as the challenges posed to research and development teams on both layers. Our goal is to consolidate a research direction towards more efficient utilization of blobspace, complementing the Danksharding roadmap.
Despite growing competition for blobs, blobspace itself often goes underutilized, creating an opportunity to further optimize its allocation in anticipation of and as a mitigation tool against increased demand. This work surveys emerging proposals such as blob sharing, dynamic blobs, and other heuristics aimed at recovering and reallocating idle capacity, while reducing operational costs for rollups.
Further, we examine the technical requirements and social coordination challenges these mechanisms may introduce. We further seek to understand how different types of rollups and interoperability clusters benefit from different solutions. As part of this exploration, we present zkSharding - a sharded validity rollup architecture - as a case study illustrating the practical effects of such mechanisms.
This research builds on existing efforts to optimize blobspace allocation, highlighting the economic desirability and technical feasibility of blobspace-saving mechanisms for rollup operators and the wider Ethereum ecosystem.
Raluca Diugan is a researcher at =nil; Foundation, building the zkSharding architecture. She focuses on questions pertaining to data availability and works on the design of the synchronization layer that enable shards to share the operational burdens of DA and proving. Previously, she worked as a privacy and decentralized systems researcher across a variety of projects, primarily within academia. Raluca is convinced of the impact potential decentralized technologies can have in shaping a better Internet and economies.