What is EIP-4844?
EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), deployed in Ethereum’s March 2024 Dencun upgrade, introduced “blob-carrying transactions” — a new transaction type that lets Layer 2 rollups post compressed data to Ethereum at dramatically lower cost than calldata. The name “Proto-Danksharding” reflects its role as the first step toward full Danksharding (Dankrad Feist’s sharding proposal).
How blobs work
Blobs are large data attachments (128 KB each) that live on the Ethereum consensus layer for ~18 days, then are pruned. Crucially, blobs have a separate fee market from regular EIP-1559 base fee — typically pricing 10-100× cheaper than equivalent calldata. Each block can include up to 6 blobs (768 KB), targeted at 3 blobs (384 KB). The blob fee adjusts based on blob market demand independently from regular transaction demand.
Why EIP-4844 matters for rollups
Pre-EIP-4844, L2 rollups paid mainnet gas for posting transaction data via calldata — the dominant cost component of L2 user fees. EIP-4844 reduced this cost by 90%+ in most cases, translating to L2 transaction fees of cents instead of dollars. Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and ZK rollups all migrated to blob posting within weeks of Dencun deployment.
Why blobs aren’t permanent
Blob data is pruned after ~18 days. Rollups need only ensure data availability for fraud-proof / validity-proof windows; once a state transition is finalised, the original data is no longer required for security. This temporary storage model lets Ethereum scale data availability without permanently bloating node storage.
Path to full Danksharding
EIP-4844 is “proto” because it implements blob carrying without the full Danksharding plan. Future upgrades will add data availability sampling (DAS) — allowing nodes to verify blob availability without downloading full data. Full Danksharding aims for ~16 MB per slot (32 blobs of 512 KB each), versus current ~768 KB max.
Türkiye context
For Türk DeFi developers building on L2s, EIP-4844 dramatically improved user experience economics. Transactions previously costing USD 5-20 on Optimism or Arbitrum now cost USD 0.05-0.50, making Türk consumer-facing crypto products commercially viable.
Related: EIP-1559, Data Availability Layer, Optimistic Rollup, ZK Rollup.