Opinion: Ethereum L1 and L2 balance can be restored by increasing the minimum blob fee and increasing L2 usage

Golden Finance reported that crypto KOL cygaar wrote on X: "The relationship between Ethereum L1 and L2 is now quite unbalanced. L2 gets the benefits of Ethereum security without contributing much value to ETH. I think there are two ways to restore balance:

1. Increase the minimum blob fee. Currently, for rollups, the blob fee is basically zero, which means that Ethereum gets almost no value from the L2 DA cost. In the world before EIP-4844, rollups have always been the largest source of Gas consumption for ETH, causing ETH to face strong deflationary pressure. However, because DA blobs are basically free, rollups no longer consume too much ETH. This, coupled with the reduction in execution activity on Ethereum L1, has caused ETH to become inflationary again. A perhaps more short-term solution is to increase the base blob fee. L2 must pay a certain amount of fees to use Ethereum DA. One could argue that increasing Ethereum DA costs will cause L2 to turn to alternative DA solutions, but I think that chains that want to truly inherit Ethereum security will still pay these costs.

2. Increase L2 usage The current blob pricing curve is set this way because researchers predict more demand for L2. However, outside of a few major events (initial blob launch, blob scriptions, LZ airdrop), the cost of a blob has not risen above the minimum fee. If demand and usage of L2 increases, we may reach a state where the blob pricing curve can appropriately price DA blobs, leading to healthy levels of ETH burn on L1. In addition to DA costs being sizable, the amount of gas used for rollup settlements may also increase to sizable amounts.

This is the path that is most beneficial to the Ethereum ecosystem in the long run, but also requires intrinsic demand for L2 blockspace. We need more interesting consumer-facing applications to attract users and drive more on-chain usage. In this world, blob fees are almost never at the minimum price, and rollups will pay a large amount to inherit Ethereum's security. ”