After the Dencun Upgrade, L2 Network Fees Have Dropped!

• The Dencun upgrade went live on Ethereum on March 13. 
• Fees for using L2 networks dipped significantly.
• There are at least 40 rollups on Ethereum, and 35 are currently under development.

The Dencun upgrade went live on the Ethereum network on March 13, which resulted in a significant drop in the fees required to use L2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Coinbase’s Base. 

As per the data from l2fees.info, a website capable of tracking the network fees of using L2 networks, the cost of using Optimism dropped to less than $0.01, that of using StarkNet stands at $0.05, and that of Polygon zkEVM is $0.39. Additionally, the fees for Arbitrum One currently amount to $0.40. 

The data from L2BEAT shows that there are 40 rollups on Ethereum, while at least 35 are currently under development. Jack Gorman, a data scientist at the VC firm Variant Fund, showed that these L2s have witnessed twice as many transactions as Ethereum itself over the past year.

Notably, using the Ethereum Layer 1 network is considered expensive, and as per the co-creator of the blockchain, Vitalik Buterin, the Dencun upgrade is expected to reduce the transaction fee significantly. 

With the Dencun upgrade, Layer 2 tokens such as Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), Lido DAO (LDO), and Metis (METIS) saw increased interest from investors. It is widely believed that the cost of using L2 networks will drop tenfold once the upgrade is fully adopted across networks.

It is important to note that QCP Capital, a crypto asset trading firm, predicted that the price of Ethereum (ETH) could fall in the near future despite the Dencun upgrade. The firm noted that ETH’s risk reversals turned negative for upcoming expiries, which suggests that investors are more worried about prices dropping.