Blob costs have dropped and L2 revenue has risen, and the profit in between has ended up in the hands of sequencer operators. For now, this has no direct link to regular users or L2 token holders. In essence, this profit is the difference between the transaction fees L2 collects from users and the DA costs paid to the Ethereum mainnet.
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Identifying L2 Revenue and Cost Structure
First, understand how the L2 you are following makes money and where it goes.
What to do: Use on-chain data platforms like Dune Analytics or Coin Metrics to look up the sequencer revenue and DA cost data for that L2.
How to do it: Find profit panels for sequencers on L2s like Base, Arbitrum, or Optimism. After the Dencun upgrade, Base earned about $94 million in profit, while paying only about $4.9 million in DA costs (mainly Blob fees) to the Ethereum mainnet. Mainstream L2s like Optimism and Arbitrum also maintain healthy profit margins.
Completion standard: You have confirmed the L2's revenue and cost figures, and can see the profit changes resulting from the drop in DA costs before and after the Dencun upgrade.
Distinguishing "Sequencer Revenue" from "Sequencer Profit"
High revenue does not mean high profit; you need to deduct DA costs to see what's left. After Blob costs came down, profit margins generally rose.
Case A: Optimistic Rollup — Galaxy statistics show that after the Dencun upgrade, the profit margin for Optimistic Rollups surged from 22.65% to 92.3%.
Case B: ZK-Rollup — During the same period, the profit margin rose from 27.27% to 66.7%.
Completion standard: You know whether most of the profit from the L2 you're tracking stays with the project team or has already flowed to token holders or the ecosystem through some distribution mechanism.
Tracking Where the Profit Goes — It Either Goes to You or to the Project Team
Profit doesn't vanish; it must end up somewhere. The difference is whether the project team is willing to share it.
What to do: Check the L2's official documentation and governance forum to see if profit has been linked to the token through a governance proposal.
How to do it: In January 2026, Optimism passed a proposal to use 50% of Superchain sequencer net revenue for regular OP token buybacks. Arbitrum announced in July 2026 that 8% of the net revenue from partner L2s like Robinhood Chain would go into a DAO treasury controlled by token holders. However, some L2 projects have no distribution plan — the profit just stays in the project's treasury.
Completion standard: You can determine whether the profit currently belongs to "unallocated DAO treasury", "buyback mechanism activated", or "fully retained by the project team".
After Blob fees dropped, L2 transaction fees also fell significantly, with the median Blob fee at one point dropping to $0.0000000005. Users directly benefit because each L2 transaction now costs less gas. But "less cost" and "getting a share" are two different things — the L2 project collects less from you, but its cost paid to the mainnet also decreases. The difference is still controlled by the sequencer operator. If the project does not distribute this profit through governance, it will not automatically flow to you.
How to Verify
Open the L2's official governance forum or snapshot page, and search for keywords like "revenue", "buyback", "distribution". If no relevant proposal has passed in the past six months, it means the sequencer profit currently belongs to the project team, and token holders indeed do not get a share.
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Next Steps
Add the L2's governance forum to your regular browsing list. If you see a revenue distribution or buyback proposal entering the voting stage, pay attention to the distribution ratio, buyback frequency, and whether the source of funds is "net revenue" or "gross revenue". Also, keep an eye on the upcoming Fusaka upgrade — it introduces a minimum base fee for Blobs (EIP-7918), which will push up L2 DA costs and squeeze sequencer profit margins. At that point, L2 profits will be redistributed, which may push more project teams to launch revenue distribution proposals.
