Also known as: Proto-Danksharding, Blob Transactions, Blobs
In short
EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding) is the improvement proposal added to Ethereum with the March 2024 Dencun upgrade that lets rollups, the Layer 2 scaling solutions, publish their transaction data in cheap, temporary data spaces called blobs.
Rollups execute transactions outside the Ethereum mainnet and write the results and data to the mainnet. Before Dencun, this data was recorded as calldata; because calldata is stored permanently and shares the same fee market as EVM execution, it was expensive. EIP-4844 defines a new transaction type that carries blobs. Each blob carries about 128 KB of data, cannot be read by the EVM, and is deleted after being stored on consensus layer nodes for about 18 days. This period is considered sufficient to verify that the data is available to everyone.
Blobs are priced in a separate fee market with their own base fee, similar to EIP-1559. The integrity of the data is secured with a cryptographic method called KZG commitments; a community-participation trusted setup ceremony was held for this. After the upgrade, transaction fees on many Layer 2 networks fell markedly.
Its name comes from the researchers Protolambda and Dankrad Feist, who contributed to the proposal. EIP-4844 is a preliminary step toward full danksharding, which aims to increase data capacity on a much larger scale; when blob demand exceeds capacity, blob fees can also rise.
Last updated: November 9, 2026 · This content is for information purposes only and is not investment advice.
