Original article by Storm, a data researcher at Paradigm
Original source: X
编译: Wenser,Odaily星球日报
Editor's note: Network congestion has always been the focus of many on-chain ecosystem players, and Solana's network congestion once made about three-quarters of transactions impossible, but this phenomenon is not unique, and many EVM ecosystems, including the Base chain, have similar problems. Paradigm data researcher Storm explains this phenomenon based on this, and here's what he has to say.
The problem of low-cost blockchain networks: monopoly of network resources
Approximately 68% of the Base Chain network has been taken over by a single protocol of dubious utility.
Due to its low cost of use and mispricing of storage, the current status of the Base chain is that a few users monopolize most of the network's resources. This has a big or small impact on every low-cost blockchain.
The image above shows the current usage status of Base. The size of each rectangle = the state used by each type of contract. (Note: This chart is generated in a similar way to previous super-resolution scaling studies on Ethereum).
What are the existing problems?
Question 1:
Due to the existence of XEN, 0.3% of Base users monopolize 67.8% of the blockchain network resources.
Question 2:
The status is permanent. Nodes in the Base network now need to permanently store and propagate this ZEN-related junk data.
Question 3:
Until gas pricing is redesigned, storage abuse is likely to continue.
What are the implications for blockchain scaling?
Whether you're scaling a blockchain network to 100x or 1,000x, you need to make efficient use of computing resources. It is not feasible to consume most of the resources of the blockchain network so inefficiently.
How bad is it?
From an absolute point of view, the problem is relatively small. The contract storage size of the Base chain is only about 50 GiB (compared to around 245 GiB on Ethereum). And over time, the severity of the problem has gradually decreased. XEN's share peaked in October, when it took up around 85% of network resources.
Is the problem solved?
So far, there are no effective mitigations in place to prevent future misuse of network resources. Nothing can stop one or ten new protocols like XEN from appearing, making the network state equally full of junk data, especially as network fees continue to fall.
Is there a problem with only Base?
Not really. XEN has a strong impact on every major EVM chain. For example, XEN is now the largest smart contract on Ethereum. Over the past year, it has accounted for 8.8% of all Ethereum network resources, and now its share has dropped to 3.5%.
Is XEN an example?
XEN is just one of the general examples. When low-cost computing resources are combined with speculation, these resources are used in unexpected ways. Cases such as blobscriptions, gas tokens, and ORE mining for Solana can all fall under this category of activities.
What can we do?
In short, storage needs to be repriced to reflect the true burden it places on the network. There are many ways to do this, and they don't affect the average user to the same extent. But fundamentally, storage pricing is difficult.
Why is storage pricing difficult?
Most of the operations in trading are easy to price because they happen instantaneously. But storage activity is different.
Once you pay for the storage, the data is stored "permanently" by the network. So, it's like planning pricing for a lifetime subscription. Sooner or later, every blockchain network will need to face the problem of storing these junk data. I've been modeling some potential fixes, but it's still a pending task.