Is Ethereum L2 taking off soon? Will OP be the biggest beneficiary of theCancun upgrade?

The exact date for the Ethereum Cancun upgrade is set! This oft-delayed milestone upgrade has finally arrived.

On March 11, according to the summary of the 129th Ethereum Core Developers Meeting, the Ethereum Cancun upgrade will be activated on the mainnet at Beacon Slot 8626176 (estimated to be 21:54 on March 13, Beijing time).
The biggest highlight: EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), whose main purpose is to reduce Ethereum gas fees by using blobs to carry transactions.
The biggest beneficiary: Ethereum L2s

@LouthingE Recently, we have sorted out and compared the impact that the Cancun upgrade will have on L2s, the largest Ethereum network, and given the biggest beneficiaries.

EIP4844 (Proto-Danksharding): What impact will it have on L2 transaction costs?

Which L2 will win the fee war?

The Cancun upgrade is the most significant upgrade since the Ethereum merger (The Merge). It is regarded as a game-changing upgrade that will also move Ethereum to the next stage of development.

What impact will the Cancun upgrade have? Which L2 project will win the fee battle? This article will compare and analyze the largest Ethereum L2s at the moment: Starknet, ZkSync, Optimism, Scroll and Arbitrum.

Comparison method:

Includes evaluating transaction costs for each L2, comparing average data availability (DA) to execution costs (expressed as a percentage)
These costs were then projected onto 3 scenarios of new DA costs after 4844 (pessimistic, moderate and DA=0)
This analysis includes all types of transactions (transfers, exchanges, multiple calls...)

(Collecting the exact same and consistent data source in each L2 is very challenging. Therefore, we will consider the data that each L2 has access to.)

StarkNet

The attached figure shows that DA costs currently account for approximately 90% of the total costs, with execution costs accounting for the remaining 10%.

The green and red sections show the average DA cost on L1 (pre-EIP-4844), and the purple bar represents the execution cost (expressed as a percentage).

ZkSync

The attached chart shows that the average DA cost is about 65% and the execution cost is 35%.

Scroll

Scroll ( http://scrollscan.com) recommends an average DA cost of 62-63% for swap/multiple calls, and an average cost of 90% for transfers. We estimate the average DA cost to be 70%.

Without weighting each type of trade, we will consider the average DA cost to be 70% (while the execution cost is 30%)

Optimism

According to their March 3rd article, the OP claimed that transaction fees were reduced by 70x after the implementation of EIP 4844, based on estimates from their Superchain Savings Estimator (SSE).

However, the exact method used to justify this is not specified in detail. We can now refer to this data and wait for 4844 to be officially implemented.

Arbitrum

We currently do not have access to data from Arbitrum to compare DA weights versus execution costs, so we cannot include them in this analysis.

However, Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs published a great article about this: What does EIP4844 mean for L2 users? 》

Now that we have the average cost of DA and the execution cost of L2, let's consider three post-EIP-4844 scenarios to measure the impact on each L2 price.

1) Pessimistic scenario
2) Medium scene
3) Extreme scenario: DA = 0

1) If DA cost drops to 50%, the overall transaction fee will be reduced:
Starknet: x1.8 (overall cost is 55% of current levels)
Scroll: x1.5 (overall cost is 65% of current level)
Zksync: x1.5 (overall cost is 67.5% of current levels)
Arbitrum：N/A
2) If DA cost drops to 90%, the overall transaction fee will be reduced:
Starknet: x5 (overall cost is 19% of current levels)
Scroll: x2.7 (overall cost is 37% of current level)
Zksync: x2.4 (overall cost 41.5% of current levels)
Arbitrum：N/A
3) If the DA cost drops to 0, the overall transaction fee will be reduced:
Starknet: x10 (overall cost is 10% of current level)
Scroll: x3.3 (overall cost is 30% of current level)
Zksync: x2.9 (overall cost is 35% of current levels)
Arbitrum：N/A
Conclusion (1)

🏆 If Optimism’s predictions hold true, they will win the E-4844 fee war

They claim that the cost of Base, Zora, and Mode will be reduced by 70 times

This means that when DA drops to 0, OP Stack’s DA cost will account for 98.5% of transaction fees

Conclusion (2)

After Optimism, the other biggest gainers, in order, are:
StarkNet
Scroll
Zksync
Arbitrum：N/A