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

Johnnatan Messias, Krzysztof Gogol, Maria Inês Silva, Benjamin Livshits

TL;DR

This study analyzes the late-2023 inscription surge across Ethereum and major EVM-compatible rollups (Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, ZKSync Era) to assess scalability, costs, and user behavior. By aggregating on-chain inscriptions and identifying them via the data: prefix, the authors quantify spikes, protocol dominance, and mint/claim-centric activity, and compare gas-fee dynamics between rollups and the Ethereum mainnet. Key findings show inscriptions dominating up to ~90% of transactions on Arbitrum and ZKSync Era on peak days, ~53% on Ethereum, with 99% of inscriptions related to mint/claim of meme-coins and limited active trading. The results highlight rollups' ability to reduce median gas fees during surges, reveal data-availability concerns tied to blob-based storage, and provide a public dataset for reproducibility and further research into blockchain scalability and data availability. Overall, the work documents inscriptions as a stress test that informs both market dynamics and the design of future layer-2 data strategies.

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.

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

TL;DR

This study analyzes the late-2023 inscription surge across Ethereum and major EVM-compatible rollups (Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, ZKSync Era) to assess scalability, costs, and user behavior. By aggregating on-chain inscriptions and identifying them via the data: prefix, the authors quantify spikes, protocol dominance, and mint/claim-centric activity, and compare gas-fee dynamics between rollups and the Ethereum mainnet. Key findings show inscriptions dominating up to ~90% of transactions on Arbitrum and ZKSync Era on peak days, ~53% on Ethereum, with 99% of inscriptions related to mint/claim of meme-coins and limited active trading. The results highlight rollups' ability to reduce median gas fees during surges, reveal data-availability concerns tied to blob-based storage, and provide a public dataset for reproducibility and further research into blockchain scalability and data availability. Overall, the work documents inscriptions as a stress test that informs both market dynamics and the design of future layer-2 data strategies.

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.
Paper Structure (14 sections, 5 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 14 sections, 5 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background on Inscriptions
  3. Operation Types
  4. Comparison with NFTs and ERC-20s
  5. Data Collection
  6. Empirical Analysis
  7. Overall Transactions
  8. Inscriptions Characterization
  9. Inscription Trading
  10. Impact on Gas Fees
  11. Discussion
  12. Related Work
  13. Conclusion
  14. Glossary

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Daily distribution of inscription transactions in our data set: (a) absolute number of inscription transactions; and (b) percentage of inscription transactions compared to the total number of transactions.
  • Figure 2: Percentage breakdown of the top 3 inscriptions attributes --- protocol, operations, and tokens --- for the chains analyzed in our study: Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, Optimism and ZKsync Era.
  • Figure 3: Price per token at every transaction on ZKsync Era considering zrc-20 sync and era-20 bgnt tokens.
  • Figure 4: Daily transaction count and median transaction cost in USD paid by the user: (a) transactions count; and (b) median transaction cost.
  • Figure 5: Distribution of gas fees in GWei relative to transaction count: (a) L2 rollups; and (b) Ethereum mainnet.