Ethereum’s second Blob Parameter-Only (BPO) hard fork, a significant technological advancement intended to improve the network’s scalability, has been successfully executed. By expanding the amount of data that can be processed in each block, this change directly affects Layer 2 solutions.
This is anticipated to reduce transaction costs and enhance overall efficiency for users of Ethereum-based protocols.
In order to increase network data capacity, Ethereum’s blob limit was increased from 15 to 21 on January 7, 2026, while the blob target was raised from 10 to 14.
In order to drastically lower transaction costs and increase the competitiveness of the L2 ecosystem, the upgrade enables Layer 2 rollups to batch more transactions. Future hard forks like “Glamsterdam” are anticipated to further raise gas restrictions and implement parallel transaction processing as part of a larger plan of the business.
On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 1:01:11 UTC, Ethereum engineers carried out the network’s second Blob Parameter-Only (BPO) hard fork, which was a major step in the platform’s ongoing scalability strategy.
The maximum amount of data blobs per block was raised from 15 to 21 by the upgrade. In order to ensure network stability, the intended number of blobs per block was increased from 10 to 14 at the same time.
Ethereum’s data throughput capacity is directly increased by this improvement. The network can now handle up to 2,688 KB of blob data in a single block because each blob can carry 128 KB of data.
The purpose of this expanded capacity is to make it more affordable for Layer 2 rollups to post transaction data to the Ethereum mainnet, which is essential to their functioning and security.
The ecosystem of Layer 2 networks, including Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum, is the main beneficiary of the BPO hard fork. The improvement immediately addresses the high costs related to data availability by enabling more transaction data to be batched into a single block.
This is anticipated to lower end-user transaction costs on various L2 platforms, increasing the Ethereum ecosystem’s competitiveness with another Layer 1 blockchains.
In addition to lowering L2 costs, the change helps keep gas prices on the Ethereum mainnet stable. The main network is made less congested by shifting more transactional activity to rollups. Ethereum’s average transaction fees have shown increased consistency since the first BPO hard fork on December 9, 2025, according to data; this most recent update is anticipated to support this trend.