Ethereum's New 'Blob' Storage Overloaded, Causing Fees to Briefly Spike Over $260

• Ethereum recently upgraded to add "blobs" to store data more cheaply, but a new project called Ethscriptions caused blob fees to spike this week by overloading the new blob space.

• Blob fees jumped to over $260 on Wednesday, stress testing the nascent blob market before subsiding to around $8 on Thursday.

• The blob space is important for Layer 2 networks built atop Ethereum that need to park data on the blockchain more cheaply.

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the spike pushed blob fees into "price discovery mode," but they remain cheaper than the old way of storing data.

• Future work is still needed to increase blob capacity and help Layer 2 networks optimize blob usage, but progress will be incremental now.