Polygon to slash transaction fees with Ethereum's EIP-4844

The Dencun upgrade is slated to go live on March 14, 2024. The launch of EIP-4844 will follow soon, tentatively scheduled for May 1, 2024. When launched, EIP-4844 will bring special resources to cut transaction fees heavily. An estimate for the same has not been provided, but rough numbers say that the drop could be in the range of 2x–5x.

What makes EIP-4844 ideal for cutting down transaction fees is the introduction of Blobspace. Simply put, Blobspace facilitates storing and managing large objects for 18 days. This is in contrast to the way Calldata works. Large objects managed by Blobspace could be files, data, or documents. It further aims to improve the performance and management systems.

There are two core aspects of a transaction that determine the cost. These are the steps involved in executing a transaction and making its data available. It is primarily the second aspect that drives the cost up, making transactions more expensive than they should be. Calldata forms a portion of 80% of the transaction fee.

EIP-4844’s launch will follow the launch of the Feijoa upgrade, which is slated for April. Polygon EVM requires a 10-day timelock standard, so there would be a gap between the two launches.

Its launch will not affect Polygon CDK, for transaction fees are already economical for projects that are built with it. However, when EIP-4844 goes live later this year, the prices will fall further to benefit the users better.

Simply put, EIP-4844 will follow the mainnet launch of the Dencun Upgrade, bringing down the transaction fees by 2x-5x. It will serve as an alternative to call data that otherwise fuels up prices. EIP-4844 will leverage Blobspace to store and manage large objects like BLOBs—binary large objects.

The announcement has done fairly well for MATIC, the native token of the Polygon ecosystem. MATIC was last seen exchanging hands at $1.16, with an increase of 4.33% in the last 24 hours. It further reflects a rise of 12.90% in the last 7 days and 38.88% in the last 30 days. The development comes days after Polygon announced that Astar EVM is connecting to AggLayer and tapping into unified liquidity with Polygon zkEVM.

The idea is to unlock access to cross-chain transactions and interoperability.

Astar zkEVM connecting to Polygon CDM marks the beginning of the age of aggregation. AggLayer will now enable cross-chain transactions and interoperability.

As for EIP-4844, a reduction of 2x-5x in transaction fees significantly affects the users. For instance, the transaction fees of $1 will come down to $0.60–$0.36 once EIP-4844 goes live. Needless to say, this is only an estimated reduction, with actual numbers to be made public once it goes live. Blob will be an alternative to calldata, acting primarily on making transaction data available for a reasonable time and for a reasonable price.