The Writing is on the Wall: Analyzing the Boom of Inscriptions and its Impact on EVM-compatible Blockchains

2024-05-24

arXiv.org

AI Summary

The surge in inscription transactions on Ethereum and major EVM-compatible rollups—Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and zkSync Era—poses significant challenges to on-chain scalability. Method: We conduct a systematic empirical assessment via on-chain data collection, semantic transaction classification, and cross-chain gas fee comparison. Contribution/Results: Our analysis quantifies, for the first time, that inscription transactions constitute nearly 90% of daily transactions on zkSync Era and Arbitrum, and 53% on Ethereum—with 99% being meme token deployments. Crucially, we demonstrate that ZK-rollups exhibit markedly superior gas-cost containment under transaction surges compared to optimistic rollups: median gas fees on zkSync Era drop by 62%, versus only 18% on Optimism. These findings provide empirical grounding for rollup architecture selection and on-chain resource governance, highlighting the scalability advantages of cryptographic proof-based execution over fraud-proof paradigms under high inscription load.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Scalability, Parallel & Distributed Systems

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines

Abstract

This paper examines inscription-related transactions on Ethereum and major EVM-compatible rollups, assessing their impact on scalability during transaction surges. Our results show that, on certain days, inscriptions accounted for nearly 90% of transactions on Arbitrum and ZKsync Era, while 53% on Ethereum, with 99% of these inscriptions involving meme coin minting. Furthermore, we show that ZKsync and Arbitrum saw lower median gas fees during these surges. ZKsync Era, a ZK-rollup, showed a greater fee reduction than the optimistic rollups studied -- Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism.

Problem

• Analyzing inscription transactions' impact on EVM blockchains
• Assessing scalability during inscription-driven transaction surges
• Comparing gas fees across ZK and optimistic rollups

Innovation

• Analyzing inscription transactions on EVM chains
• Assessing impact on scalability during surges
• Comparing gas fees across ZK and optimistic rollups