Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the upcoming Fusaka upgrade will allow nodes to verify data availability without downloading complete blockchain data, improving scalability.

The upcoming upgrade, set for December, will help to solve current data availability constraints through a core feature called PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling), Buterin explained on Thursday.

“PeerDAS is trying to do something pretty unprecedented: have a live blockchain that does not require any single node to download the full data,” he said, describing it as “the key to L2 scaling, and eventually L1 scaling.” 

Instead of downloading complete blockchain data, each node only downloads small “chunks” and uses statistical sampling to ensure the full data exists across the network.

PeerDAS was introduced in Ethereum Improvement Protocol 7594 in January 2024 as a means to ensure that blob data has been made available while downloading only a subset of the data.

“Providing additional data availability helps bring scale to Ethereum users in the context of layer 2 systems called ‘rollups’ whose dominant bottleneck is layer 1 data availability,” the EIP reads. 

Blob count hits new peak

Buterin’s comments came in response to a post from the head of data at Dragonfly, Hildebert Moulié, observing that the network hit six blobs per block target for the first time on Wednesday.

The recent blob usage spike is mostly driven by Coinbase layer-2, Base, and Worldcoin, said Moulié.

Related: Vitalik Buterin praises Base as the ‘right way’ amid L2 sequencer ‘FUD’

Blobs (Binary Large Objects) are a special type of data storage introduced to Ethereum in the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, via EIP-4844 (also called proto-danksharding). They are specifically designed to lower transaction costs for layer-2 rollups.

Fusaka update to double blob targets

The Fusaka upgrade, scheduled for Dec. 3, will introduce EIP-7594 and double the blob capacity from its current target/maximum of 6/9 per block. 

Buterin cautioned that this is all new technology, and the core developers are wise to be “super cautious on testing,” even after they have been working on this for years. 

“This is also why the blob count will increase conservatively at first, and then become more aggressive over time,” he added before concluding that it will vastly improve scalability. 

Following Fusaka’s deployment, two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks will be executed to gradually increase the maximum blob counts from 9 to 15, and the second, planned for January, will raise the ceiling to 21, according to Ethereum researcher Christine Kim. 

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