Ethereum blobs are now being used to create inscriptions like on Bitcoin

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Quick Take

Inscriptions comprised the highest percentage of blobs posted Wednesday compared to usage on Ethereum Layer 2s.
Wednesday’s increased blob inscriptions also coincided with a spike in the fee on Base, which reached $300 before falling to about $30.

Dune Analytics data show that Ethereum blobs are being used to create inscriptions, much like Ordinals on Bitcoin, at a record rate.

March 27 saw 2,437 blob inscriptions, which comprised 22.8% of the blobs posted in the day, according to a Dune Analytics user named Hildobby. That's the highest usage of blobs posted among other Ethereum Layer 2s such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base and Linea.

Moreover, increased blob inscriptions coincided with a spike in the fee on Base, reaching $300 before falling to about $30. Ethereum is also seeing a dip in slot utilization, likely due to blob-induced large block sizes.

"Inscriptions on EVM chains are data embeds found in transactions' call data, which, much like Ordinals on Bitcoin, aim to mimic the versatility of smart-contract based ERC-20s and NFTs," user Hildobby wrote on Dune Analytics' website. "Inscriptions go against EVM design decisions, with gas costs being the only benefit, at the expense of indexing, non-compatibility and integration challenges."

Ethereum's Dencun update on March 13 allowed the creation of data blobs, which increase the inclusion of data in Ethereum transactions without hindering block processing time. Blobs are like bitcoin inscriptions, where data are associated with the smallest unit of bitcoin, called a satoshi. Tokens minted with such data are called Bitcoin Ordinals.

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MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.