Offchain Labs: Ethereum L2 needs to introduce "reactive pricing" to achieve large-scale scaling

ME News message, April 3 (UTC+8). At EthCC 2026, Offchain Labs co-founder Edward Felten said that Ethereum L2 networks (Ethereum layer-2 networks, L2) need to introduce “responsive pricing” to support a scale of billions of users and reduce fee volatility caused by network congestion. Felten noted that although EIP-1559 reformed the fee mechanism, current gas price volatility is still the primary means of preventing network overload, and this kind of volatility is not conducive to mainstream users’ acceptance. Responsive pricing can handle more transactions at lower gas prices without exceeding the network’s carrying capacity. Fee instability has long been viewed as a key obstacle to large-scale adoption, especially compared with the more predictable cost structure in traditional financial systems. The industry’s current focus has shifted from simply improving throughput to how to make fees more predictable while accurately reflecting the cost of congestion. Notably, Arbitrum One introduced a dynamic pricing mechanism as early as January this year, as the first practical exploration of balancing fee stability and network security. (Source: ODAILY)