**News Flash: Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade Sparks Layer-2 Transaction Failures**

Ethereum's Dencun upgrade in March, aimed at reducing fees, has inadvertently led to a spike in transaction failures on layer-2 networks, according to a Galaxy research report.

- **Key Findings**:

- Post-upgrade, daily transactions on Ethereum L2s doubled to 6.65 million.

- Transaction failures surged, driven mainly by bot activity exploiting lower fees.

- Base network saw failure rates up to 21%, Arbitrum 15.4%, and OP Mainnet 10.4%.

- **Bot Activity**:

- High-activity addresses (100+ transactions/day) faced failure rates of 41.6% on Base.

- Lower activity addresses (≤5 transactions/day) had a max failure rate of 4%.

- **Other Networks**:

- Solana also reported high failure rates, with 25%-45% of non-vote transaction fees spent on failed transactions.

Despite the setbacks, some experts argue that bots contribute to market liquidity and efficiency. The Dencun upgrade introduced data blobs (proto-danksharding) via EIP-4844, easing data storage burdens but also triggering these unintended consequences.