Network Upgrades Drive Higher Throughput Without Fee Pressure

[lingriiddd]

December’s divergence between transaction growth and declining fees can largely be traced to recent protocol upgrades. On Nov. 27, Ethereum increased its block gas limit to 60 million, allowing more transactions per block. This was reinforced by the Fusaka upgrade, which introduced PeerDAS to expand data availability and lower rollup costs.

Polygon experienced a similar effect following its Madhugiri hard fork, which reduced consensus times to one second and improved throughput efficiency. The network has increasingly positioned itself around stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization—use cases that generate frequent, low-urgency transactions that boost volume without stressing fees.

Arbitrum’s results highlight rollup economics in action, as transaction batching and compressed calldata allow activity to scale independently of Ethereum’s fee market.

[bonk]

these upgrades are giving them a new life tbh