According to Bloomberg, Ethereum, the most commercially used blockchain, is experiencing an unexpected surge in storage costs due to the misuse of a recently introduced type of information storage known as 'blobs'. Originally launched in March with the latest Ethereum network upgrade, blobs, short for binary large objects, were intended to help lower costs. However, they are now being filled with arbitrary data such as images, text, and audio, leading to increased storage prices.
The misuse of blobs, now referred to as 'blobscriptions', was initiated by Tom Lehman and Michael Hirsch. They created a website, BlobScriptions.io, that allows anyone to inscribe data onto a blob. Lehman views this as a way of democratizing blobs, which were initially intended for use by billion-dollar organizations. For about $20, anyone can post a blobscription, many of which are likely done by bots. Despite the unclear commercial value, bot operators are likely betting on the appreciation of some of these works.
However, blobs only remain on Ethereum for about 18 days. Services like Ethscriptions extend the lifespan of blobscriptions by keeping the data for longer periods. This gives blobscriptions an unexpected longevity, as long as these services continue to store the data.
Many Ethereum insiders expect the dominance of blobscriptions to be short-lived. Jim McDonald, co-founder of Ethereum staking provider Attestant, believes that over time, blobs for Layer 2s will be priced at reasonable levels for their purposes, making Ethereum too expensive for those who want to use it as a 'graffiti wall'. However, if blobscriptions continue to grow or remain steady, Layer 2's prices, which were drastically reduced by the March software upgrade, may rise faster than expected. This would necessitate the development of new tools and potentially more upgrades to bring them down again.