Ethereum L2s need responsive pricing to scale, says Offchain Labs

Edward Felten said Ethereum L2s need responsive pricing to scale, as Arbitrum’s new model tests an alternative to EIP-1559-style fee swings.

Ethereum layer-2 networks need “responsive pricing” to scale to billions of users and reduce the fee swings that still accompany congestion, Offchain Labs co-founder Edward Felten said during a keynote at EthCC 2026.

Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade launched in August 2021, as part of the London hard fork. It reformed the Ethereum fee market by modifying the gas fee limit and introduced a feature that burns part of the transaction fees, removing them permanently from circulation.

Felten said gas-price swings are still the main mechanism for protecting networks from being overrun during periods of heavy demand, even though that produces the kind of fee volatility mainstream users tend to reject.

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