Following the Dencun upgrade, costs were significantly reduced, which coincided with a 350% increase in Base daily transactions. A few days after the Dencun update, on March 16, daily transactions on the Coinbase Ethereum layer-2 network Base surged to a record 2 million.
Base was handling about 440,000 transactions a day prior to the upgrade. This increased to 1.1 million the next day and kept rising in the days that followed, reaching 2,064,920 on March 16. Additionally, on March 16, the number of daily new users on Base surged to 666,866, a whopping 3,200% increase above the average for the days preceding Dencun.
The Dencun update has resulted in a significant decrease in Base costs, which has been connected to the 350% increase in transactions. According to Blockscout, Base’s average transaction fees have decreased by more than 60% since the upgrade.
According to industry tracker L2beat, Base, which was introduced by Coinbase in August, is currently the sixth-largest network in the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem, with a locked-value of $1.46 billion and a 4.1% market share among layer 2s.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844, which included data blobs or proto-danksharding to lower layer-2 transaction fees, was implemented with the Ethereum Dencun upgrade. With the improved L2 data availability, some networks saw a 90% reduction in gas costs as a result of the upgrade.
Dune Analytics reports that after the change, average transaction prices on top layer-2 networks Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync Era decreased by 60% to 90%. With a combined locked value of $23 billion, Arbitrum and Optimism continue to lead the layer-2 ecosystem, with a 42% and 23% market share, respectively.
Gas costs for switching tokens on a decentralized platform According to protocol creator Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s Optimism deployment dropped as low as $0.01 after Dencun.
Ethereum layer-1 gas fees, meanwhile, have increased recently as the value hit $4,000 but has now dropped down. According to Gasfees.io, the current cost of an Ether transfer is about $2.1, a USD Coin transfer is about $5, and a swap on Uniswap is about $16.
