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

ME News message. April 3 (UTC+8). Offchain Labs co-founder Edward Felten said at EthCC 2026 that Ethereum layer-2 networks (L2s) 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 main tool to prevent network overload, and this volatility is not friendly for mainstream users to accept. Responsive pricing can process more transactions at lower Gas prices without exceeding the network’s capacity to carry traffic. Unstable fees have long been seen as a key obstacle to mass adoption, especially compared with the more predictable cost structure in traditional financial systems. Industry focus has already shifted from simply increasing throughput to how to make fees more predictable while genuinely reflecting congestion costs. Notably, Arbitrum One has already been the first to introduce a dynamic pricing mechanism this January as an initial attempt to balance fee stability and network security. (Source: ODAILY)