Ethereum Blob surge triggers network congestion alert, Layer2 data congestion risk emerges after Fusaka upgrade

January 27 News, Ethereum has emerged with new technical concerns following the Fusaka upgrade. Research organization MigaLabs released a report stating that as the number of blob data packets submitted by Layer2 networks to the Ethereum mainnet increases, the network becomes more prone to failures or discards when processing high-data-volume blocks. This indicates that current Ethereum is not yet fully adapted to higher-scale data throughput demands.

The Fusaka upgrade was deployed in December 2025, with the core goal of providing higher data channels for Layer2 scaling. Before the upgrade, each block could carry a maximum of 9 blobs, while the upgrade roadmap allows capacity to eventually increase up to 8 times the original. Ethereum Foundation executive Alex Stokes also admitted at the time that this is a very new technology, and the network’s performance under extreme conditions remains uncertain.

Shortly after the upgrade, Ethereum developers began gradually raising the blob limit. The first adjustment increased capacity to 15, the second update on January 7 further increased it to 21. However, MigaLabs found that high-blob blocks approaching the limit often cause subsequent block propagation failures or delays, which in turn put pressure on network stability.

Leonardo Bautista Gomez, founder of MigaLabs, stated that this is not alarmist but a reminder to Ethereum core developers that before fully understanding network feedback, they should not blindly increase blob capacity. He believes that under high data loads, distributed nodes already face physical and network bottlenecks when propagating large amounts of information.

The PandaOps team under the Ethereum Foundation also observed similar phenomena. Engineer Sam Calder-Mason pointed out that some issues may be related to “time betting,” where validators delay block publication to increase MEV profits, thereby amplifying instability caused by high-blob blocks. However, he also emphasized that the overall network is not currently in danger, but before further expansion, more efficient data propagation mechanisms need to be deployed.

This ongoing technical contest over Ethereum blobs and Layer2 scaling is becoming a key topic in the 2026 Ethereum roadmap. If a balance between throughput and stability cannot be achieved, future expansion of Ethereum’s data layer may be more challenging than expected.