Why is Ethereum slow and expensive to use?
ethereum.org puts Ethereum's main chain at roughly 15 transactions a second, so when it gets busy, people bid against each other and fees rise.1,2 Layer 2 networks take some of that load off the main chain.1
One busy road
Ethereum is a layer 1: the base blockchain that other projects build on top of.1 ethereum.org puts the main chain at roughly 15 transactions a second.1 It says the network has reached its capacity, at more than a million transactions a day.1
Every transaction pays a fee, called gas.3 The fee is the units of gas used, times the base fee plus an optional tip called the priority fee.3 Fees are paid in ETH, and often shown in gwei, where 1 ETH equals 1 billion gwei.3
Why fees jump
Gas prices go up and down every twelve seconds, based on how busy Ethereum is.3 When the amount of work on the network goes past a set level, fees start to rise. The further past it goes, the faster they rise.3
As the network gets busier, senders try to outbid each other, which can make Ethereum very expensive.2 In November 2017, a popular game called CryptoKitties caused so much traffic that gas fees became extremely high.3
Why not just make Ethereum bigger?
The "blockchain trilemma" says a simple blockchain can only have two of three things: decentralised, secure and scalable.1 Making the main chain faster would need bigger nodes and more specialised hardware.4 Fewer people could then run a node, which would weaken decentralisation.4
The Ethereum community has said it will not give up decentralisation or security in order to scale.1 ethereum.org says keeping it easy to run a node is key to stopping power from gathering in a few hands.2
The answer: layer 2
A layer 2 is a separate blockchain that extends Ethereum.1 It handles transactions away from the main chain, then settles them on Ethereum.1 By combining many transactions into one transaction on layer 1, it cuts fees by a lot.1
The Ethereum community now favours scaling through rollups, a kind of layer 2, over splitting the main chain into pieces.2 The authors of an upgrade proposal called EIP-4844 went further. They called rollups the only "trustless" way to scale Ethereum for now, and possibly for good.5 Trustless here means it adds nobody new that you have to trust.6
A cheaper lane for rollup data
On 13 March 2024, an Ethereum upgrade called Dencun went live.7 It added data "blobs", a cheaper place for rollups to post their data for a short time.7 ethereum.org says this brought significantly lower fees for people using layer 2 rollups.7 Blobs have their own fee, separate from normal gas.5
The next lesson explains how rollups do their work, and the two main kinds.
- What is layer 2?. ethereum.org, updated 23 July 2026.
- Scaling. ethereum.org developer docs, updated 13 April 2026.
- Ethereum fees: what is gas and how to pay less?. ethereum.org, checked 22 October 2026.
- Intro to Ethereum Layer 2: benefits and uses. ethereum.org, checked 22 October 2026.
- EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions. Ethereum Improvement Proposals (Buterin, Feist and others), created 25 February 2022.
- Bridges. ethereum.org developer docs, updated 3 April 2026.
- Timeline of all Ethereum forks (Cancun-Deneb, "Dencun"). ethereum.org, checked 22 October 2026.
General education built from the publicly available sources listed above. Not financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Naming a company, project or regulator is not an endorsement either way. Last checked 2026-10-22. Terms and disclaimer.